Emmett Till killing reopened by government over 'new information'

Fox News ^ | July 12, 2018

[rightwingintelligentsia]

The federal government has reopened its investigation into the slaying of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose brutal 1955 killing in Mississippi shocked the world.

A Justice Department report to Congress says the agency is reinvestigating Till's slaying after receiving what it calls "new information."

Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was kidnapped from his uncle's home in the town of Money and killed after he wolf-whistled at Carolyn Donham, a shopkeeper.

Three days later, his mutilated body was found in the muddy Tallahatchie River, weighted down with a cotton gin fan. His left eye was missing, and his right eye was dangling on his cheek. The body was identified only by a ring he was wearing.

Two men -- Donham's then-husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam -- were charged with murder but acquitted in the slaying of Till. The men later confessed to the crime in a magazine interview, but weren't retried and are now dead.

[RedMonqey]

White victims have been murdered for “disrespecting” blacks by yelling at them to slow down when they drove recklessly through their neighborhood

This "maybe" a residual effort of the culture being "incubated" in the South(As a Southerner I can say this and I have witnessed this in action).

Somewhere down the line in our history brewed the idea of a man, however humble, was a "king" in his own right and woe to anyone who dared step on his robes. And it seems the more desperate, the more violent the person reactions.

It may have something to the fact that the Scots(whose descendants later heavily populated in the South) were subjects of the king so long with intermittent periods of self rulership(of a sort).

In America, these people got what was denied them so long and what made Kings and lords in the old world.

Land.

And woe to anyone who stepped on HIS land and told him what to do on HIS land. Which may help why the poorest white man, who didn't have slaves and realistically never would, marched off to support the right of those who did have slaves(and sneered at the ones who didn't.) Northerners "dissed" Southerners and they rallied around the flag they would also die.

The newly freed slaves were born into this situation which they carried with them like a mutation, not always apparent but simmers along until the right conditions set it off.

The killers of Emmett Till were part of that "system" and Emmett posed a threat, however distant it seems to most today but was very real to those involved.

Add in race and one sees the forces in a collision course. Just my opinion, of course.

[Steve Schulin]

Thanks for posting this. Our national constitution has guaranteed equal protection of the law since long before the Civil Rights Act, and federal action after the jury acquittal was not some overreach by the federal government. Heck, we allow a whole category of persons to be deprived of their life without due process under color of law even today, and that warrants immediate federal action too.

The news reports I've read this week all seem to indicate that the woman was interviewed for a recent book, and that she told a story that was different than the jury was told. This new info triggers new federal follow-up of some sort. That the news stories are coming out now, instead of when DOJ announced the planned follow-up (in a report to Congress dated late March 2018) seems to contradict any notion that this was something that folks of ill will intended as a publicity piece.

Have you ever looked at the "EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATIONS, ETC." section in the Congressional Record and tried to find out more about one of the documents abstracted therein? Well, that's the section where this DOJ report was announced (Congressional Record, April 5, 2018, p. H3057-8). Here's the text of the item:
"4365. A letter from the Assistant Attorney General, Department of Justice, transmitting the seventh annual report to Congress pursuant to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007, and first Annual Report to Congress pursuant to the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Reauthorization Act of 2016, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 509 note; Public Law 110-344, Sec. 3(c)(2); (122 Stat. 3935); to the Committee on the Judiciary."

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a document listed in that "EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATIONS, ETC." section that I wanted to find out more about (it was a DOD document informing Congress which reserve units might soon be activated for duty). After spending a half an hour or so without finding the referenced document anywhere on the web, I sent an online suggestion to my Congressman. Maybe if Congress provided pdfs of these documents they receive, we'd have heard about the Emmett Till update months sooner. "Dear Representative Rice:

I was reading the Congressional Record today, and a have a question that I hope you can answer. There's a section titled "EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATIONS, ETC." I was interested in the first document listed in that section in the June 29 Congressional Record. Each document described in that section is assigned a number. I went to www.house.gov and searched the external communications database there using the number assigned to the document I was interested in. The search was successful in finding an abstract of the document (the abstract contained the same info that I had just read in the description of the document in the Congressional Record. I was disappointed that there wasn't a link to a pdf image of the document. My question is: would you please consider sponsoring legislation to ensure that every document described in that section of the Congressional be made freely available for online viewing?

By the way, I searched some of the involved department's websites to try and find the document there, to no avail.

Thanks and best wishes,

Steven B. Schulin
506 43rd Avenue South
North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
843-685-6824
steve.schulin@gmail.com