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36–017 PDF 2007

EMMETT TILL UNSOLVED

CIVIL RIGHTS CRIME ACT

JOINT HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION,

CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

AND THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, 

AND HOMELAND SECURITY

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

ON

H.R. 923

JUNE 12, 2007

Serial No. 110–31

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

CHRIS CANNON, Utah 

RIC KELLER, Florida 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PERRY APELBAUM, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

JOSEPH GIBSON, Minority Chief Counsel 

(III)

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES

JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chairman 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan 

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

DAVID LACHMANN, Chief of Staff 

PAUL B. TAYLOR, Minority Counsel 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM, AND HOMELAND SECURITY

ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia, Chairman

MAXINE WATERS, California 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California

BOBBY VASSAR, Chief Counsel 

MICHAEL VOLKOV, Minority Counsel 

(V)

C O N T E N T S 

JUNE 12, 2007

Page 

THE BILL 

H.R. 923, the ‘‘Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act’’ ........................... 2

OPENING STATEMENT 

The Honorable Jerrold Nadler, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of New York, and Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 

Rights, and Civil Liberties .................................................................................. 1

The Honorable Trent Franks, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Arizona, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 

Rights, and Civil Liberties .................................................................................. 12

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Michigan, Member, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 

Rights, and Civil Liberties, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary ....... 13

The Honorable Howard Coble, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of North Carolina, and Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and 

Homeland Security ............................................................................................... 14

The Honorable Louie Gohmert, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Texas, and Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland 

Security ................................................................................................................. 15

The Honorable Robert C. Scott, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Virginia, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security ........................................................................................................ 15

The Honorable Steve Chabot, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Ohio, and Member, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland 

Security ................................................................................................................. 16

WITNESSES 

Ms. Grace Chung Becker, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, United States 

Department of Justice, Washington, DC 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 17

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 19

Ms. Myrlie Evers-Williams, Bend, OR 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 39

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 42

G. Douglas Jones, Esquire, Birmingham, AL 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 43

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 45

Mr. J. Richard Cohen, President and Chief Executive Officer, Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, AL 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 52

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 53

Rita L. Bender, Esquire, Skellenger Bender, Seattle, WA 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 57

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 59

Mr. Alvin Sykes, President, Emmett Till Justice Campaign Inc., Kansas City, 

MO 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 61

Page

VI

APPENDIX 

Material Submitted for the Hearing Record .......................................................... 81

(1)

EMMETT TILL UNSOLVED

CIVIL RIGHTS CRIME ACT 

TUESDAY, JUNE 12, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION,

CIVIL RIGHTS, AND CIVIL LIBERTIES,

AND THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIME, TERRORISM,

AND HOMELAND SECURITY

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC.

The Subcommittees met, pursuant to notice, at 10:18 a.m., in 

Room 2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable Jerrold 

Nadler (Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil 

Rights, and Civil Liberties) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Nadler, Conyers, Scott, Jackson Lee, 

Waters, Cohen, Davis, Ellison, Sensenbrenner, Coble, Chabot, Lungren, Franks, and Gohmert. 

Staff Present: David Lachman, Chief of Staff; Keenan Keller, Majority Counsel; Susana Gutierrez, Professional Staff Member, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties; 

Bobby Vassar, Chief Counsel, Rachel King, Majority Counsel; and 

Veronica Eligan, Professional Staff Member, Subcommittee on 

Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. 

Mr. NADLER. Good morning. This hearing of the Subcommittee 

on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, and the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security will come 

to order. I should say this joint hearing will come to order. Today’s 

hearing will review legislation introduced by our colleague, the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Lewis, designed to address unsolved 

crimes from the civil rights era. 

The Chair now recognizes himself for an opening statement. 

Today, the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and 

Civil Liberties and the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and 

Homeland Security jointly consider H.R. 923, the ‘‘Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act,’’ introduced by our colleague, the 

gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Lewis. 

[The bill, H.R. 923, follows:]

2

1

I 

110TH CONGRESS 

1ST SESSION H. R. 923

To establish an Unsolved Crimes Section in the Civil Rights Division of 

the Department of Justice, and an Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Investigative Office in the Civil Rights Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and for other purposes. 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

FEBRUARY 8, 2007

Mr. LEWIS of Georgia (for himself, Mr. HULSHOF, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. SCOTT

of Virginia, Mr. RANGEL, Mr. BISHOP of Georgia, Mr. CLYBURN, Mr. 

BUTTERFIELD, Mrs. MCCARTHY of New York, Mr. HASTINGS of Florida, 

Mr. FATTAH, Mr. CLEAVER, Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas, 

Mrs. CHRISTENSEN, Mr. WATT, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Mr. CUMMINGS, 

Mr. MEEKS of New York, Mr. PAYNE, Ms. WATERS, Mr. JOHNSON of 

Georgia, Mr. CLAY, Ms. LEE, Mrs. JONES of Ohio, Ms. KILPATRICK, Mr. 

TOWNS, Mr. SCOTT of Georgia, Mr. ELLISON, Mr. DAVIS of Alabama, 

Mr. MOORE of Kansas, Ms. WATSON, Ms. CORRINE BROWN of Florida, 

Mr. WYNN, Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD, Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin, Mr. 

GRIJALVA, Mr. AL GREEN of Texas, Mr. SCHIFF, Mr. SERRANO, Mr. 

MCDERMOTT, Mr. KUCINICH, Mr. JEFFERSON, Mr. MARSHALL, Mr. 

RUSH, Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi, Ms. CARSON, Mr. HONDA, Ms. 

NORTON, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. BECERRA, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Ms. WOOLSEY, 

Mr. NADLER, Mr. BOSWELL, Mr. VAN HOLLEN, Ms. WASSERMAN

SCHULTZ, Mr. COHEN, Mr. MEEK of Florida, Mr. GUTIERREZ, and Ms. 

CASTOR) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary 

A BILL

To establish an Unsolved Crimes Section in the Civil Rights 

Division of the Department of Justice, and an Unsolved 

Civil Rights Crime Investigative Office in the Civil Rights 


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•HR 923 IH

Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and for 

other purposes.

1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 

3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 

4 This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Emmett Till Unsolved 

5 Civil Rights Crime Act’’. 

6 SEC. 2. SENSE OF CONGRESS. 

7 It is the sense of Congress that all authorities with 

8 jurisdiction, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation 

9 and other entities within the Department of Justice, 

10 should—

11 (1) expeditiously investigate unsolved civil 

12 rights murders, due to the amount of time that has 

13 passed since the murders and the age of potential 

14 witnesses; and 

15 (2) provide all the resources necessary to ensure 

16 timely and thorough investigations in the cases in17 volved. 

18 SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS. 

19 In this Act: 

20 (1) CHIEF INVESTIGATOR.—The term ‘‘Chief 

21 Investigator’’ means the Chief Investigator of the 

22 Unit. 

23 (2) CRIMINAL CIVIL RIGHTS STATUTES.—The 

24 term ‘‘criminal civil rights statutes’’ means—


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1 (A) section 241 of title 18, United States 

2 Code (relating to conspiracy against rights); 

3 (B) section 242 of title 18, United States 

4 Code (relating to deprivation of rights under 

5 color of law); 

6 (C) section 245 of title 18, United States 

7 Code (relating to federally protected activities); 

8 (D) sections 1581 and 1584 of title 18, 

9 United States Code (relating to involuntary ser10 vitude and peonage); 

11 (E) section 901 of the Fair Housing Act 

12 (42 U.S.C. 3631); and 

13 (F) any other Federal law that—

14 (i) was in effect on or before Decem15 ber 31, 1969; and 

16 (ii) the Criminal Section of the Civil 

17 Rights Division of the Department of Jus18 tice enforced, prior to the date of enact19 ment of this Act. 

20 (3) OFFICE.—The term ‘‘Office’’ means the 

21 Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Investigative Office es22 tablished under section 5. 

23 (4) DEPUTY.—The term ‘‘Deputy’’ means the 

24 Deputy for the Unsolved Civil Rights Era Crimes 

25 Unit. 


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1 (5) UNIT.—The term ‘‘Unit’’ (except when used 

2 as part of the term ‘‘Criminal Section’’) means the 

3 Unsolved Civil Rights Era Crimes Unit established 

4 under section 4. 

5 SEC. 4. ESTABLISHMENT OF SECTION IN CIVIL RIGHTS DI6 VISION. 

7 (a) IN GENERAL.—There is established in the Crimi8 nal Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department 

9 of Justice an Unsolved Civil Rights Era Crimes Unit. The 

10 Unit shall be headed by a Deputy for the Unsolved Civil 

11 Rights Era Crimes Unit. 

12 (b) RESPONSIBILITY.—

13 (1) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other 

14 provision of Federal law, and except as provided in 

15 section 5, the Deputy shall be responsible for inves16 tigating and prosecuting violations of criminal civil 

17 rights statutes, in cases in which a complaint alleges 

18 that such a violation—

19 (A) occurred not later than December 31, 

20 1969; and 

21 (B) resulted in a death. 

22 (2) COORDINATION.—

23 (A) INVESTIGATIVE ACTIVITIES.—In inves24 tigating a complaint under paragraph (1), the 


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1 Deputy shall coordinate investigative activities 

2 with State and local law enforcement officials. 

3 (B) VENUE.—After investigating a com4 plaint under paragraph (1), or receiving a re5 port of an investigation conducted under section 

6 5, if the Deputy determines that an alleged 

7 practice that is a violation of a criminal civil 

8 rights statute occurred in a State, or political 

9 subdivision of a State, that has a State or local 

10 law prohibiting the practice alleged and estab11 lishing or authorizing a State or local law en12 forcement official to grant or seek relief from 

13 such practice or to institute criminal pro14 ceedings with respect to the practice on receiv15 ing notice of the practice, the Deputy shall con16 sult with the official regarding the appropriate 

17 venue for the case involved. 

18 (3) REFERRAL.—After investigating a com19 plaint under paragraph (1), or receiving a report of 

20 an investigation conducted under section 5, the Dep21 uty shall refer the complaint to the Criminal Section 

22 of the Civil Rights Division, if the Deputy deter23 mines that the subject of the complaint has violated 

24 a criminal civil rights statute in the case involved 


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•HR 923 IH

1 but the violation does not meet the requirements of 

2 subparagraph (A) or (B) of paragraph (1). 

3 (c) STUDY AND REPORT.—

4 (1) STUDY.—The Deputy shall annually con5 duct a study of the cases under the jurisdiction of 

6 the Deputy or under the jurisdiction of the Chief In7 vestigator and, in conducting the study, shall deter8 mine the cases—

9 (A) for which the Deputy has sufficient 

10 evidence to prosecute violations of criminal civil 

11 rights statutes; and 

12 (B) for which the Deputy has insufficient 

13 evidence to prosecute those violations. 

14 (2) REPORT.—Not later than September 30 of 

15 2007 and of each subsequent year, the Deputy shall 

16 prepare and submit to Congress a report containing 

17 the results of the study conducted under paragraph 

18 (1), including a description of the cases described in 

19 paragraph (1)(B). 

20 SEC. 5. ESTABLISHMENT OF OFFICE IN FEDERAL BUREAU 

21 OF INVESTIGATION. 

22 (a) IN GENERAL.—There is established in the Civil 

23 Rights Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the 

24 Department of Justice an Unsolved Civil Rights Crime InVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA

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1 vestigative Office. The Office shall be headed by a Deputy 

2 Investigator. 

3 (b) RESPONSIBILITY.—

4 (1) IN GENERAL.—In accordance with an 

5 agreement established between the Deputy Investi6 gator and the Deputy, the Deputy Investigator shall 

7 be responsible for investigating violations of criminal 

8 civil rights statutes, in cases described in section 

9 4(b). 

10 (2) COORDINATION.—

11 (A) INVESTIGATIVE ACTIVITIES.—In inves12 tigating a complaint under paragraph (1), the 

13 Deputy Investigator shall coordinate the inves14 tigative activities with State and local law en15 forcement officials. 

16 (B) REFERRAL.—After investigating a 

17 complaint under paragraph (1), the Deputy In18 vestigator shall—

19 (i) determine whether the subject of 

20 the complaint has violated a criminal 

21 rights statute in the case involved; and 

22 (ii) refer the complaint to the Deputy, 

23 together with a report containing the de24 termination and the results of the inves25 tigation. 


HR923.AAH
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•HR 923 IH

1 (C) RESOURCES.—The Federal Bureau of 

2 Investigation, in coordination with the Depart3 ment of Justice, Civil Rights Division, shall 

4 have discretion to re-allocate investigative per5 sonnel to jurisdictions to carry out the goals of 

6 this section. 

7 SEC. 6. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS. 

8 (a) IN GENERAL.—There are authorized to be appro9 priated to carry out this Act $10,000,000 for fiscal year 

10 2008 and each subsequent fiscal year through 2017. 

11 These funds shall be allocated by the Attorney General 

12 to the Unsolved Civil Rights Era Crime Unit of the De13 partment of Justice and the Civil Rights Unit of the Fed14 eral Bureau of Investigation in order to advance the pur15 poses set forth in this Act. 

16 (b) ADDITIONAL APPROPRIATIONS.—Any funds ap17 propriated under this section shall consist of additional ap18 propriations for the activities described in this Act, rather 

19 than funds made available through reductions in the ap20 propriations authorized for other enforcement activities of 

21 the Department of Justice. 

22 (c) COMMUNITY RELATIONS SERVICE OF THE DE23 PARTMENT OF JUSTICE.—In addition to any amounts au24 thorized to be appropriated under title XI of the Civil 

25 Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C. 2000h et seq.), there are 


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•HR 923 IH

1 authorized to be appropriated to the Community Relations 

2 Service of the Department of Justice $1,500,000 for fiscal 

3 year 2008 and each subsequent fiscal year, to enable the 

4 Service (in carrying out the functions described in title 

5 X of such Act (42 U.S.C. 2000g et seq.)) to provide tech6 nical assistance by bringing together law enforcement 

7 agencies and communities in the investigation of violations 

8 of criminal civil rights statutes, in cases described in sec9 tion 4(b). 

10 SEC. 7. SUNSET. 

11 Sections 1 through 6 of this Act shall expire at the 

12 end of fiscal year 2017. 

13 SEC. 8. AUTHORITY OF INSPECTORS GENERAL. 

14 Title XXXVII of the Crime Control Act of 1990 (42 

15 U.S.C. 5779 et seq.) is amended by adding at the end 

16 the following: 

17 ‘‘SEC. 3703. AUTHORITY OF INSPECTORS GENERAL. 

18 ‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—An Inspector General appointed 

19 under section 3 or 8G of the Inspector General Act of 

20 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.) may authorize staff to assist the 

21 National Center for Missing and Exploited Children—

22 ‘‘(1) by conducting reviews of inactive case files 

23 to develop recommendations for further investiga24 tions; and 

25 ‘‘(2) by engaging in similar activities. 


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•HR 923 IH

1 ‘‘(b) LIMITATIONS.—

2 ‘‘(1) PRIORITY.—An Inspector General may not 

3 permit staff to engage in activities described in sub4 section (a) if such activities will interfere with the 

5 duties of the Inspector General under the Inspector 

6 General Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.). 

7 ‘‘(2) FUNDING.—No additional funds are au8 thorized to be appropriated to carry out this sec9 tion.’’.

Æ


HR923.AAK
12

Mr. NADLER. Our Nation’s history is regrettably replete with acts 

of violence committed with impunity against African Americans 

generally and civil rights workers in particular. In many cases, 

these crimes are committed as acts of political terror designed to 

prevent African Americans from enjoying the same rights as other 

Americans: the right to vote, the right to travel, the right to walk 

into a restaurant or a theater, even the right to walk down the 

street unmolested. 

For nearly a century, this Congress sat on its hands and refused 

to act. Anti-lynching bills were regularly buried. Civil rights bills 

were considered beyond the pale. Law enforcement looked the other 

way or was actually complicit in these acts of terrorism. And the 

all-White courts never convicted clearly guilty perpetrators of assaults and murders. 

As a Nation, we have moved forward. We enacted civil rights 

laws, including criminal statutes that would punish civil rights 

crimes. We moved beyond the culture of impunity that protected 

these criminals. We have moved forward, but we have not adequately addressed the past. 

Today, we will take an important step in doing just that by giving law enforcement the tools it needs to redress old wrongs. H.R. 

923 is designed to expand the prosecution of unsolved civil rights 

crimes. The amendment in the nature of a substitute I will offer 

would authorize $11.5 million annually to the Criminal Section of 

the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice, the Civil 

Rights Section of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Community Relations Department of FBI. 

The bill would designate specific administrative authority for the 

investigation and prosecution of unsolved civil-rights-era crimes 

and require an annual accounting to Congress on the progress of 

the investigative initiatives and provide grants to States to take on 

the task of bringing the criminals to justice and cleansing our society of this great stain. 

I want to welcome our witnesses, and I look forward to their testimony. 

I would now recognize our distinguished Ranking minority Member, the gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Franks, for his opening statement. 

Mr. FRANKS. I want to thank you, Chairman Nadler and Chairman Scott, for holding this joint legislative hearing on H.R. 923, 

the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007. This is 

critically important legislation that provides additional funds for 

the investigation and prosecution of unsolved civil-rights-era murders. 

Emmett Till was only 14 years old in 1955 when he was kidnapped and brutally murdered while visiting family outside the 

small town of Money, Mississippi. Two men kidnapped Emmett 

from his great-uncle’s home, beat him and then drove him to 

Tallahatchie, the river, where they shot him. They tied a gin fan 

around his neck with barbed wire and dumped his body into the 

river. All of this because Emmett spoke to Carolyn Bryant, a White 

woman, at the town grocery store. 

The defendants, Bryant’s husband and his half brother, were 

brought to trial just 4 weeks after Emmett’s murder and were acVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
13

quitted. The jury found that the prosecution failed to prove that 

the body recovered from the river was in fact Emmett Till. Although the defendants later confessed to the murder, it was too little, too late for Emmett Till and his family. 

In 2004, with the assistance of the Department of Justice, local 

officials in Mississippi renewed the investigation into Emmett’s 

murder. Unfortunately, by this time the defendants had died. 

Emmett’s story is not unique. Many civil-rights-era murders remain unsolved. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice in recent years has renewed its dedication to investigating 

these cases. To assist the Department in its efforts, the Emmett 

Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act authorized additional funds 

for the investigation and prosecution of unsolved civil-rights-era 

murders. The bill also directs the Civil Rights Division to report to 

Congress annually on the number of open cases and ongoing investigations, the number of prosecutions and closed cases and the 

number of attorneys working on these cases. 

I want to commend Mr. Lewis of Georgia, the co-sponsor and the 

sponsor of this bill for the dedication that he has shown on this 

issue. 

I want to extend a special welcome to Ms. Rita Schwerner Bender, widow of slain Civil Rights activist Michael Schwerner; and Ms. 

Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Civil Rights activist Medgar 

Evers. God bless you both, and I look forward to hearing from you 

and our other witnesses here today. 

Thank you Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

I would now recognize the distinguished Chairman of the full 

Committee, the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Conyers, for his 

opening statement. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, distinguished witnesses. 

This is an important continuation of the most exciting, tumultuous, unbelievable part of American history in the 20th century. 

Right in this room and because of what we are doing, that history 

now comes back alive for the first time. 

We have two Subcommittees, and I commend Subcommittee 

Chairman Nadler, Subcommittee Chairman Scott and all of its 

Members and the Ranking Member for this incredible recapitulation of what went on during that period of time. 

Just think back with me. It was in 1963 that we lost Medgar 

Evers. Then in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, where freedom somewhere occurred, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner gave their lives. 

We have Attorney Cohen here, who with Morris Dees broke the 

back of the Ku Klux Klan by incredible litigation. We have Doug 

Jones, who led the prosecution of the 16th Street church burnings. 

We have the prosecution of Doug Jones and the work that he did 

in these cases. We have another incredible person, Sykes, who was 

close to Emmett Till. All of this converging together. 

And the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives on this 12th day of June, 2007, where we are making history 

by correcting the incredible activity that went on during this unbelievable period of time in which tragedy and the hopes of people 

came together as in no other period in our history. We are all in 

14

the same room, and I want everyone to know that this is very moving for me. 

Because when we examine this period of time, Martin Luther 

King, the Civil Rights movement, the pathos, the disorganization 

that went from the lowest farmer in Mississippi up through the 

President of the United States, all were involved in this incredible, 

finally successful, attempt to drive legal segregation out of the history and experience of this country. 

And it is still with us. We still have a problem. There are people 

that are right now very much afraid of what role they might be 

called to play in this because some of these lingering fears still 

exist. 

So I have never been more proud of being a Member of the House 

Judiciary Committee than I am this morning; and I again congratulate the two Subcommittee Chairmen, the Ranking Members 

and the Members of the Committee. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

I would now recognize the distinguished Ranking minority Member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, the gentleman from South Carolina—North Carolina, excuse 

me. I should never get my Carolinas mixed up—Mr. Coble, for his 

opening statement. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Chairman, I will hold you harmless for that 

grievous error. 

Mr. NADLER. I appreciate that. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Chairman, I am actually standing in for the distinguished gentleman, Mr. Forbes from Virginia, who was unavailable to be here. He asked if I would present his statement, which 

I am pleased to do. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I have to attend a Coast Guard hearing at 

11:00, so when I depart I don’t want you to think it is because of 

lack of interest. Because as you, the distinguished gentleman from 

Arizona and our distinguished gentleman from Michigan have accurately stated, this is a very, very significant hearing today. 

I appreciate you and Chairman Scott holding the hearing of H.R. 

923, the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007. As 

my colleague, Ranking Member Franks noted, the murder of Emmett Till in 1955 was both brutal and unconscionable. Even more 

troubling is that the justice system failed Emmett and his family 

in prosecuting his killers. 

As we meet here today, James Ford Seale, I am told, is on trial 

in Federal District Court in Jackson, Mississippi, for the 1964 kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Charlie Eddie Moore and Henry 

Hezekiah Kee. Seale and a group of fellow Klansmen abducted Mr. 

Moore and Mr. Dee, drove them to the Homochitto National Forest 

and severely beat them with sticks. They were then wrapped in a 

plastic tarp—you may have mentioned this, Mr. Franks, in your 

statement—with duct tape over their mouths and hands and driven 

a hundred miles distance away where they were eventually 

dumped into the Mississippi River while still alive. Seale was arrested in 1964, but the charges were subsequently dismissed. 

Although 40 years have passed since these horrific murders, it is 

my hope that justice will be served for the families and friends of 

15

these young men. This case is but one of the unsolved Civil Rights 

Era murders that the FBI and the Department of Justice are investigating or assisting with local investigations. 

I join my colleagues, Mr. Chairman, in strong support of this bill 

to provide additional tools and resources for those Civil Rights Era 

cases; and I again welcome our witnesses and thank you for joining 

us today. 

Before I yield back, I yield to the distinguished gentleman from 

Texas, Mr. Gohmert. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, and I thank my friend, Mr. Coble. 

I have got to go to another hearing in another matter, but I did 

want to say I do think this is a worthy bill, and I would welcome 

the opportunity to co-sponsor it. 

A crime against anyone in this country is a crime against all of 

us. As the Chairman of the full Committee knows, I supported the 

hate-crimes bill. I hate to see us giving precedence to one group 

over another, because truly a crime against any one of us in this 

country is a crime against all of us; and I am glad that this bill 

is being brought forward. These things need to be addressed. 

I yield back my time. 

Mr. COBLE. I reclaim and yield back. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

I would now recognize the distinguished Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott, for his opening statement. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I would like to thank 

you for convening this panel. 

I would like to extend a very special welcome to Ms. Myrlie 

Evers-Williams and Ms. Rita Schwerner Bender, who have traveled 

long distances to be with us today. 

It is interesting that this day has special significance because, although it wasn’t intended, it was exactly 44 years ago today that 

Byron De La Beckwith assassinated the field director of the Mississippi NAACP, Medgar Evers, outside of his home in Jackson, 

Mississippi. After her husband’s death, Ms. Evers courageously devoted her life to his memory and dreams, keeping those dreams 

alive and bringing his killer to justice. Her tireless efforts, including strong support of the NAACP, eventually paid off when her 

husband’s killer was brought to trial for a third time in 1994 and 

finally found guilty of the murder more than 30 years after the 

crime. Ms. Williams, welcome. 

Likewise, it took Ms. Schwerner Bender 41 years to get some 

semblance of justice for her husband. On June 21, 2005, Edgar Ray 

Killen was finally convicted of manslaughter for the deaths of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney in 1964. 

The Committee also welcomes you, Ms. Bender. 

These cases are only two of dozens of murders that would have 

never been acknowledged, investigated or prosecuted without the 

courageous commitment to justice by a few individuals that have 

been named by the Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Conyers. Indeed, we do not even know how many people were murdered during the 1950’s and 1960’s because many families did not dare report that their loved ones had been murdered for fear of retaliation. 

The FBI has identified more than 100 cold cases that should be 

16

further investigated; and, if possible, charges should be brought 

against those accused killers. 

I support the adoption of H.R. 923 because it will assist the investigation and prosecution of unsolved Civil Rights crimes by authorizing funds to the Department of Justice, the FBI and, where 

appropriate, State and local law enforcement agencies. It will also 

require the Attorney General to establish positions within the Department of Justice and FBI where a specific person will be accountable for ensuring that these cases are investigated. DOJ will 

report to the Congress annually on the progress that has been 

made to solving these cases. The first report will be due 6 months 

after the bill becomes law. 

The FBI and the Department of Justice have already made a 

start at investigating these cases when it kicked off its cold cases 

campaign last February. However, as this hearing will soon demonstrate, there is an urgent need for the Federal Government to 

provide additional resources to both the Department of Justice and 

the FBI. H.R. 923 will accomplish this. 

I urge my colleagues to support this important piece of legislation and yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. CHABOT. Mr. Chairman, before the gentleman yields back, 

can I have a yield for just a moment? 

Mr. NADLER. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio. 

Mr. CHABOT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I will be very 

brief. 

I didn’t have an opening statement, but I was thinking as Mr. 

Conyers was giving his opening statement, as somebody who was 

born in 1953 and so when this was going on. I was, basically, still 

a kid. Many of us have studied many of the great leaders in the 

Civil Rights movement and those that were so directly affected. 

But some of us have lived it. And Mr. Conyers and John Lewis and 

some others, Fred Shuttlesworth, who isn’t a Member of Congress 

but is a leader in my district in Cincinnati, it has been an inspiration the time that I have had an opportunity to listen to Mr. Conyers, for example, on issues related to Civil Rights that we deal 

with in this Committee. 

As I say, we studied it, we have learned about it, but a gentleman like Mr. Conyers really lived it; and it is always inspiring 

to be in the same room to hear stories that he has told and to have 

been one of those Members of Congress that had the great honor 

to go to Rosa Parks funeral in Detroit. A woman who was obviously 

was not only one of the early leaders in the movement, even though 

at the time I don’t think she was going to be a leader in the movement, but who actually worked in Mr. Conyers’ office, Rosa Parks 

did, which a lot of people don’t know. So I just want to tell Mr. 

Conyers what an honor it is to have been able to actually listen to 

one of the early leaders in the movement on an everyday basis in 

this institution, and I yield back. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman. 

In the interest of proceeding to our witness and mindful of our 

busy schedules, I would ask that other Members submit their 

statements for the record. Without objection, all Members will have 

5 legislative days to submit opening statements for inclusion in the 

record. 

17

Without objection, the Chair will be authorized to declare a recess of the hearing. 

As we ask questions of our witnesses, the Chair will recognize 

Members in the order of their Subcommittees, I should say—alternating between majority and minority, providing that the Member 

is present when his or her turn arrives. Members who are not 

present when their turn begins will be recognized after the other 

Members have had the opportunity to ask their questions. The 

Chair reserves the right to accommodate Members who arrive late 

or are only able to be with us for a short time. 

Our first witness will be Grace Chung Becker, Deputy Assistant 

Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Your written statement will be made part of the record in 

its entirety. I would ask that you now summarize your testimony 

in 5 minutes or less. To help you stay within the time, there is a 

timing light at your table. When 1 minutes remains, the light will 

switch from green to yellow and then red when the 5 minutes are 

up. 

Thank you, and you may proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF GRACE CHUNG BECKER, DEPUTY ASSISTANT 

ATTORNEY GENERAL, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF 

JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, DC 

Ms. BECKER. Thank you very much. Good morning, Chairmen 

Nadler and Scott, Ranking Members Franks and Forbes, and Congressman Coble, who is standing in for Congressman Forbes, and 

all the Members of the Subcommittee. 

It is an honor and a privilege to testify this morning about the 

work we are doing at the Department of Justice regarding Civil 

Rights Era murders. These horrific crimes constitute some of the 

greatest blemishes upon our history, and I commend the Subcommittees for their efforts to support our activities in this area. 

The Department strongly supports the important legislative 

goals of H.R. 923. This is a very exciting time for us at the Civil 

Rights Division. Civil rights is one of the top priorities of the Department. 

Last year, the FBI began its cold case initiative to identify and 

investigate Civil Rights Era murders. On February 27, 2007, the 

Department announced the next phase of this initiative, the FBI’s 

partnership with the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center 

and the National Urban League. 

The Civil Rights Division has also been taking an active role in 

prosecuting cold cases. In January of this year, a Federal Grand 

Jury in Mississippi indicted James Seale, an alleged former member of the Ku Klux Klan, on two counts of kidnapping and one 

count of conspiracy. These charges stem from Mr. Seale’s alleged 

participation in the 1964 murders of two young men, one of whom 

was a Civil Rights worker. Trial is currently under way; and, like 

every defendant, Mr. Seale is presumed innocent until proven 

guilty. 

Being able to bring even a single historical prosecution in Federal Court is extraordinary and very exciting. Federal prosecutors 

must overcome constitutional challenges, jurisdictional hurdles, as 

well as practical limitations. For example, the ex post facto clause 

18

of the Constitution prohibits retroactive application of criminal 

Civil Rights statutes enacted after the time of the incident. H.R. 

923 applies to crimes occurring before December 31, 1969. However, two of the most important Federal statutes for prosecuting racially motivated homicides were not enacted until 1968. Therefore, 

the ex post facto clause bars use of these statutes when the incident occurred prior to 1968. 

In addition, the 5-year statute of limitations for Civil Rights 

crimes during this era expired quite some time ago. Nevertheless, 

the division is committed to bringing these cases where we can. 

We have creatively used noncivil rights statutes in prosecuting 

some capital offenses. For example, in 2003, the division successfully prosecuted Ernest Avants, a Mississippi Klansman, for the 

1966 murder of Ben Chester White, an African American man. 

There was Federal jurisdiction because Mr. Avants shot Mr. White 

multiple times inside a national forest before throwing his body off 

a bridge. Mr. Avants participated in the racially motivated killing 

in an attempt to lure Martin Luther King to the area so he could 

attack him as well. 

Mr. Avants had been acquitted of State murder charges in 1967. 

We were able to obtain Federal jurisdiction because the murder occurred on Federal land, a national forest, which falls within special 

maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States; and because the Federal murder statute was enacted in 1948, the prosecution was not barred by the ex post facto clause. Similarly, capital offenses have no statute of limitations so that we were able to 

overcome that hurdle as well. 

In addition to the constitutional and jurisdictional challenges, 

there are also substantial evidential hurdles to prosecuting 40-

year-old cases. Witnesses and, as Congressman Franks described, 

potential criminal defendants have passed away. Memories have 

faded, and sometimes evidence is simply lost. Because of the long 

passage of time, many of the victims’ families, friends and the Nation will never be able to see justice served inside of a courtroom. 

But even in cases where there is no Federal jurisdiction, the Federal Government can still play an important role. 

For example, the FBI recently worked with Mississippi authorities, as was mentioned in some of the opening statements, to investigate the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old African American teenager who was kidnapped and killed in rural Mississippi. 

Although there was no Federal jurisdiction, the FBI reported the 

results of its extensive investigation to the District Attorney for 

Greenville, Mississippi. Earlier this year, the matter was presented 

to a State grand jury, which declined to indict anyone. 

In conclusion, the Department is committed to pursuing Civil 

Rights Era cases whenever possible and welcomes the opportunity 

to work with the Committee on H.R. 923. 

Thank you very much. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Becker follows:]

19

PREPARED STATEMENT OF GRACE CHUNG BECKER


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Mr. NADLER. I begin by recognizing myself for 5 minutes. 

Ms. Becker, how many Civil Rights Era cases have the Department of Justice brought to date? 

Ms. BECKER. We have investigated a number of matters and 

have two recent prosecutions, the Avants prosecution in 2003 and 

the Seale prosecution that is under way as we speak. 

Mr. NADLER. So just two? 

Ms. BECKER. Two most recent prosecutions, yes. 

We also have investigated a number of matters—the FBI in conjunction with the Civil Rights Division over the last several years. 

Even though there was no Federal jurisdiction, we were providing 

assistance perhaps to the States or, in the case of Emmett Till, 

handing over our report to the State when we found there was no 

Federal jurisdiction. 

Mr. NADLER. And will this bill assist you in bringing more cases? 

Ms. BECKER. It certainly will, Mr. Chairman; and let me explain 

how. 

The bill is a very important bill because, of course, these cases 

are just so important. Even if there is a slight chance that we can 

bring these cases, it is important for us to investigate and prosecute these cases wherever we can to ensure that no stone is left 

unturned; and if we can prosecute some of these horrendous crimes 

that occurred 40 or 50 years ago we should certainly do so. If Congress were to approve the resources in H.R. 923, that will facilitate 

the ability of both the FBI and the Civil Rights Division to effectively investigate and prosecute these matters. The FBI, as Chairman Scott mentioned, has already identified over 100 potential 

Civil Rights era cases that could benefit from investigation and 

prosecution. 

Mr. NADLER. And these 100 cases you think are, to coin a phrase, 

bringable despite the ex post facto and constitutional problems and 

may help the bill bring its resources. 

Ms. BECKER. I think the bill will do a number of things in addition to the resources. I think it also brings a lot of national attention and emphasizes the importance of these types of cases for the 

general public. 

I think, in addition, it also provides some grant-making authority 

so that I believe that it would enable the Federal Government to 

share some of these resources with the States, which it has not 

been able to do before. So that if the FBI or the Civil Rights Division is assisting in an investigation and determines it doesn’t have 

Federal jurisdiction, perhaps the State can bring a prosecution 

with some additional resources as well. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you very much. 

I yield back, and I recognize the gentleman from Arizona. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you, Ms. 

Becker, for joining us here today. 

It occurs to me it is probably difficult to identify all of the cases 

that you would like to pursue. Are you working in conjunction with 

Civil Rights organizations or media? How do you identify the cases 

that you think have the best opportunity to be pursued? 

Ms. BECKER. The FBI reached out to its various field offices 

around the country and has worked with various Civil Rights 

groups, the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NaVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
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tional Urban League, just to mention a few. And I know Mr. 

Cohen, who is on the second panel, is one of our partners in this 

endeavor; and the Southern Poverty Law Center has been very 

helpful in providing a number of cases from the Civil Rights era. 

It is unclear today what the state of the current evidence is in all 

of those cases, whether or not there are still viable leads in these 

cold cases. So that is something that the FBI is in the process of 

assessing. 

Mr. FRANKS. Once you identify a case, and I can imagine many, 

but what is your greatest logistical challenge? Is it physical evidence? Is it the lack of witnesses? Is it just the age? Is it statute? 

What is your biggest logistical challenge? 

Ms. BECKER. I think it is a combination of all of those things. 

First and foremost, from the Federal perspective, our jurisdiction 

is limited. We have those constitutional and statutory hurdles that 

I mentioned. The States are in a little bit of a better position, because many of them do not have the same statute of limitations 

problems that we have for murder, which, of course, was a crime 

during that time period, and there is no ex post facto concern 

there. 

The evidentiary hurdles cannot be underestimated as well. Some 

of the defendants that we would like to prosecute have passed 

away. There are also witness issues and evidentiary issues. Some 

of these cases were investigated perhaps 40 or 50 years ago, and 

it is unclear what the status of that evidence is at this point. 

Mr. FRANKS. It sounds like you, many times, pursue murder 

charges because they are the only ones that you can pursue; and 

a lot of the other egregious tragedies that took place have to be 

glossed over in a sense because there is a statue of limitations that 

makes it impossible, is that correct? 

Ms. BECKER. That is correct. Capital offenses have no statute of 

limitations. But the statute of limitations issue gets a little bit 

complicated because there were some offenses where death resulted 

earlier on that did not have unlimited statute of limitations at the 

time the crime was committed. So it is very fact specific. It is a 

case-by-case basis. That is why it is so important that we analyze 

these cases thoroughly on an individual basis. 

Mr. FRANKS. Ms. Becker, if you were writing an amendment for 

this Committee to put in some of our Civil Rights laws or other 

laws that are not developed as they should be in order to pursue 

justice in these cases, are there some things that Congress can do 

to make it easier for you? Whether it is getting rid of some of the—

and I know sometimes you are dealing with State law, but if we 

could do anything in the pursuit of justice in these egregious cases, 

what would we do from this Committee’s standpoint? 

Ms. BECKER. I think H.R. 923 is a step in that direction, Congressman; and I think that would be very helpful to the Administration. 

Mr. FRANKS. And can you just for the Committee’s sake one more 

time give us a sense of how 923 empowers the Department to pursue these cases? 

Ms. BECKER. I think if Congress were to approve the resources 

in 923, it would enable us to provide greater attention to the investigation and prosecution of these cases wherever is possible. I think 

26

it also enables us to create partnerships with the State and local 

governments with a lot of these cold cases, even in cases where the 

Federal Government does not have jurisdiction and is not able to 

bring it. I think those are two very important ways that it does so. 

I think it is also very important for the American public to understand that these cases are still important and that we have not 

forgotten about them; and even though we call them ‘‘cold’’ cases, 

we are looking for burning embers wherever we can find them. 

Mr. FRANKS. Well, let me just encourage you to continue to do 

what you do for these ofttimes forgotten children of God. It is a 

noble thing that you do. Thank you. 

Ms. BECKER. Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. 

I now recognize the distinguished Chairman of the Subcommittee 

on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you; and thank you, Ms. Becker, for your testimony. 

Is the amount authorized in H.R. 923 sufficient for you to do all 

that you have available to do? 

Ms. BECKER. Congressman Scott, I believe that the amount, if 

Congress were to approve it, would be put to very good use; and 

I think that that amount would be sufficient, at least from what 

we can tell at this point. It is hard to say because there is a 10-

year life to this statute, but I think at this point it seems like a 

good start. 

Mr. SCOTT. In following up from the questions from the gentleman from Arizona, do you have any recommended amendments 

to this bill? 

Ms. BECKER. I have not seen the latest version of the bill, so I 

may have some additional comments when I do, but I believe the 

goals of the bill and I think that the bill is a very positive step in 

the right direction. 

Mr. SCOTT. Now you mentioned statute of limitations. Do any 

States have a statute of limitation on murder? 

Ms. BECKER. I am not aware of any at the current time, but I 

would want——

Mr. SCOTT. Are there any other crimes that have either no statute of limitations or statute of limitations that haven’t expired yet 

for other crimes other than murder, or do most of them expire after 

about 5 or 10 years? 

Ms. BECKER. Murder is the quintessential example of a case that 

does not have the statute of limitations. 

Mr. SCOTT. So we are limited just to murder cases pretty much? 

Ms. BECKER. I believe that is correct. 

Well, if I can make one correction, It is not just murder cases, 

but in cases—capital offenses. So, for example, in the Seale case we 

are charging kidnapping resulting in death, which is a capital offense, so there is no statute of limitations under Federal law. 

Mr. SCOTT. Some of these have been tried and acquitted in trials 

that I think weren’t fair. Are we going over those, too, to see if 

there is any opportunity for the Federal Government to retry them 

in a forum that would be fair? 

Ms. BECKER. I think that would depend upon which forum the 

defendant was tried in, if the defendant was tried in the State 

27

court and acquitted and the Federal Government could take a fresh 

look at it and could see if there is a potential Federal prosecution 

there. However, because of the double jeopardy clause, once they 

have been acquitted once in the State court, then the State can not 

bring a subsequent prosecution. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is there statute of limitations on the Civil Rights 

murder statutes in the Federal system? 

Ms. BECKER. The statutes that we normally prosecute under—

the Civil Rights statutes we would normally use, there is a statute 

of limitations issue there. So what we have tried to do is work creatively using non-Civil Rights tall capital offenses that do not carry 

a statute of limitations, such as murder on Federal land or kidnapping resulting in death. 

Mr. SCOTT. But if they have been tried in State court, would that 

not be double jeopardy if it is essentially the same charge. 

Ms. BECKER. If it is with the Federal Government, it is a separate sovereign, so there wouldn’t be a double jeopardy problem 

there. 

Mr. SCOTT. Could you say a bit about the nature of your, I think 

you said, formal partnership with the NAACP, Urban League and 

Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Ms. BECKER. Yes. This is the FBI’s partnership with the individual Civil Rights organizations asking for any cases that they 

may be aware of in the Civil Rights era or any leads that they may 

have with respect to these cases. 

Mr. SCOTT. That is asking for information. Is there an ongoing 

partnership? 

Ms. BECKER. I think it is intended to be an ongoing dialogue. As 

time goes on, individual field offices may reach out to the individual offices there. 

Mr. NADLER. Gentleman yields back. 

I now recognize the gentleman from North Carolina. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Becker, good to have 

you with us. 

Ms. Becker, you indicated the Department of Justice had brought 

to trial two cases for the Civil Rights era. Over what period of time 

does that cover? 

Ms. BECKER. Avants was in 2003, and Seale was this year, Congressman. But I should say that the Civil Rights Division has also 

been very active in other prosecutions as well. In the 16th Street 

bombing case, the Department of Justice was involved in the investigation of that matter before it was tried by the State. 

Mr. COBLE. How many attorneys are there in the Civil Rights Division? Are any of those attorneys exclusively assigned to Civil 

Rights Era cases? 

Ms. BECKER. We have currently approximately 50 prosecutors in 

the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division, which would be 

the section that would responsible for potentially prosecuting these 

crimes; and we are able to use all of those resources to prosecute 

Civil Rights Era crimes. 

We have, obviously, some attorneys who are very experienced in 

this area and have worked on a number of these cases, and they 

provide subject matter expertise, but at this point that is not 100 

percent of their portfolio. 

28

Mr. COBLE. Ms. Becker, once a case is set for trial, do the attorneys in your division participate in the actual trial? 

Ms. BECKER. Definitely. We work hand in hand with the U.S. attorney’s offices around the country. So, oftentimes, the trial team 

will consist of a trial attorney in the Criminal Section of the Civil 

Rights Division and perhaps an AUSA in the local U.S. Attorneys 

office or sometimes even the U.S. Attorney himself. 

Mr. COBLE. I think you have previously answered this question, 

but, as I understand, you do work closely with Civil Rights organizations, the media, State and local authorities, do you not? 

Ms. BECKER. That is correct. 

Mr. COBLE. In your testimony, Ms. Becker, you stated that the 

Department has concerns with creating a new unresolved Civil 

Rights crime investigative office. Elaborate on that, if you will. 

Ms. BECKER. I think that has been resolved in the latest version 

of the bill, but the concern at the time was creating an additional 

layer of—additional office when one may not be necessary. 

The bill currently has a 10-year sunset. So, initially, the FBI will 

probably be doing some initial legwork to see which of these cases 

are ripe for a potential investigation. And if it seems like these investigations are ongoing, a prosecutor from our office will become 

involved and participate actively within the investigation as legal 

questions arise, if witnesses have counsel, if there are special investigative techniques that need to be pursued, and also to guide 

the investigation to ensure that we can meet the jurisdictional hurdles, finding out whether or not this occurred on Federal land or 

finding out whether or not interstate commerce is affected. 

Those are questions that perhaps an agent may not think of 

without the assistance of a Federal prosecutor, and so we will work 

hand in hand with them. And then at a certain point, if it looks 

likes a prosecutable offense, we will then work with the U.S. attorney’s office to bring an indictment and prepare for trial. 

Mr. COBLE. I can appreciate the obstacles that you face, the ex 

post facto concerns, the statute of limitations, the passage of time, 

witnesses deceased or unavailable, the passage of time-dimming 

memories, all sorts of obstacles that you confront. I commend you 

all for going ahead. 

Mr. Chairman, I think this is a good bill, and I am fully supportive. I thank you and Mr. Scott and Mr. Forbes and Mr. Franks 

for having conducted this hearing; and I thank you again, Ms. 

Becker, for having been with us and yield back. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. The distinguished Chairman of the 

Committee, the gentleman from Michigan. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you, Chairman Scott, as well. 

Ms. Becker, you come here from what may be considered by 

many to be the most significant part of the Department of Justice, 

the Civil Rights Division; and within it is the Criminal Section, 

Special Litigation Section, Housing, Education, Employment, Voting, Appellate, Disability Rights, Coordination and Research. This 

division was created by President Lyndon Baines Johnson when we 

passed the Civil Rights law of 1964, a historic moment that not 

only created a kind of excitement and movement and, in some 

places, unfortunately, violence. 

29

So you, as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal 

Section, have enormous responsibilities; and the Judiciary Committee, by having jurisdiction over the Department of Justice, has 

a huge responsibility. One of the things that we are pledged to do 

is to help make you as effective as possible, and we wanted to just 

chat with you about that. Because, as you know, the Department 

of Justice has come under scathing investigation and criticism over 

the last several months. 

I see so many subjects in here. Are you able to comment on the 

number of lawyers and assistants and resources that you have 

here, give us some kind of idea of how you stacked up to get results? 

Look at these different sections of the Civil Rights Division. 

America would be a different place if we could produce improvement in voting, in employment, in housing, in education, disability 

rights and, of course, the work that you are doing in the Criminal 

Section. Can you give us an idea of how things are going? 

Ms. BECKER. I can tell you, Congressman, that the Civil Rights 

Division is vigorously enforcing all Federal Civil Rights laws. We 

are—for example, in the criminal division our section has been very 

vigorously enforcing all areas that are within our jurisdiction. So, 

for example, almost half the cases we brought last year were in the 

color of law area. Those are traditional law enforcement misconduct 

cases that we brought. 

We have also brought significant numbers of hate crimes and 

human trafficking crimes, as well as the Civil Rights Era murders. 

Mr. CONYERS. Well, I am glad that you used the term ‘‘vigorously’’ because I haven’t used it. I mean, I just had Reverend Al 

Sharpton come in from New York about police abuse in two cases; 

and we are working on them. We are getting complaints in the voting section. I was in Ohio when I met the angriest group of people 

I had seen after the election day problems that they had there. 

This goes on and on. 

We have got a lot more to talk about, but, as you know, this 

Committee will be working in a larger scope. I just wanted to bring 

that to your attention and mention, also, Mr. Chairman, that John 

Lewis just sent us a message. He is in New York speaking at the 

memorial service of David Halberstam; and, as the author of this 

bill, he wanted us to all know why he is not here. Because I saw 

him yesterday and told him you were coming, and I was stunned 

to find out that he asked us to make it clear about his inability to 

be with both of you today. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and return the time. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank you. 

Gentleman from California? 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I might say the evidence is that America is a very different place 

today than it was when these tragic events occurred. We have benefited much from the Federal pieces of legislation, the various Civil 

Rights acts that have passed and been implemented and enforced 

by Administrations, Democrat and Republican, over the last 40 

years, but yet there is still a stain that remains on our national 

history, and that is these unsolved cases coming out of the Civil 

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tion. We already have, as you suggested, some potential defendants 

who have died——

Ms. BECKER. That is correct. 

Mr. LUNGREN [continuing]. Witnesses who are no longer here, 

trials which took place which raise the issue of double jeopardy. If 

we are ever going to do as much as we possibly can, we need to 

do it now in the next 10 years. Time runs out. History doesn’t 

stand still for us. So I appreciate what you are doing, and I appreciate the Administration support for this legislation. 

Just to make clear on the record, in the last Congress when we 

had legislation presented in the Senate by Senator Talent, the Justice Department was concerned about some parts of it and said in 

a letter that the Constitution bars the law then being considered, 

S. 2679, from retroactively conferring Federal jurisdiction to prosecute such Civil Rights crimes. 

Two of the most important Federal statutes for prosecuting racially motivated homicides, 18 U.S.C. 245 and 42 U.S.C. 3631, were 

not enacted until 1968. Moreover, from crimes committed prior to 

December 31st, 1969, virtually all Federal criminal Civil Rights 

statutes carried a 5-year statute of limitations, even where death 

resulted. 

So I think it is important to note that the current bill and the 

manager’s amendment does not seek to establish or expand Federal 

jurisdiction to prosecute Civil Rights crimes in a major way, it authorizes significant funding to establish a continued effort for the 

next 10 years. 

So I think it is important for members of the public to understand it is not an easy thing to follow these cases and to prosecute 

these cases because of the various things you mentioned in your 

testimony. But, nonetheless, we are going to do the best we can. 

You have bipartisan support of this Committee and I suspect on 

the floor of the House and the Senate for this. This ought to be 

something that transcends any type of partisanship. In some cases, 

we are going to be disappointed, because we will run up against 

double jeopardy and we are going to run up against the difficulty 

of witnesses and finding evidence, but the fact that we might fail 

in some circumstances is not an excuse for not trying. It ought not 

to be viewed as a failure on the part of any of us to do what we 

can do now. 

We are in a very different place than we were when the trials 

of some of the suspects or defendants in these cases took place and 

within an hour or 2 hours a single-color jury found somehow that 

people were not to be held responsible for their actions. 

When you look about the case of the young man for whom this 

bill is mentioned, it is inconceivable that grown men think that 

somehow they became better men by brutally killing a 14-year-old 

boy. I mean, that is hopefully how far we have come from a country 

in which certain segments of our society would believe that that 

was not only justifiable but it was affirming of them as human 

beings to do that to another human being. 

So I thank the authors of this bill, I thank the Chairmen of the 

two Subcommittees for getting together to have this hearing and to 

move this bill, and I thank you for what you and your colleagues 

are doing at the Administration. And I thank our witnesses coming 

31

up on the next panel who have lived this experience in ways that 

most of us will never live it. We have to stand in awe of their courage and persistence in seeking justice and in making this a better 

place. 

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. NADLER. Yield back? 

Mr. LUNGREN. Yes. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you, gentleman. 

I now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am a first-year person on this Subcommittee. It is the first time 

I have had the opportunity to have somebody from the Justice Department before us who either didn’t have to be sworn in or not 

want to be sworn in. It is a nice occasion to have you before us and 

also to see this Committee in such a bipartisan fashion and agreeing on the subject matter. 

It is not nice to see—I went through this book during the testimony. I was listening, but this Southern Poverty Law Center has 

put together this book. It is a history, really, for what us old 

enough to recall about the Civil Rights era and the horrific deaths 

and the conditions and the challenges and the heroics of people. It 

is hard to fathom, as Congressman Lungren said, adult people committing these crimes or having these thoughts, but they did, and 

they need to be brought to justice, if possible. 

Are there any files of the FBI that are not available to you, 

tapes, undercover tapes or anything like that, that you would need 

access to? 

Ms. BECKER. I am not aware of any problems along that regard, 

Congressman. I think the FBI and the Civil Rights Division work 

very closely together, and we have had very a good relationship in 

terms of accessing evidence. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Do you know of any files at all that 

are not available to you? The FBI seemed to have a wide surveillance system during that time. 

Ms. BECKER. I would have to defer to the FBI on what files they 

have. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Have you inquired? I would hate to 

defer to the FBI, to be honest. Do you have any reason to believe 

that there are files not available to your division. 

Ms. BECKER. I have no reason to believe that. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Have you made inquiries? 

Ms. BECKER. I have not. We do make inquires on a case-by-case 

basis as we investigate and prosecute these cases hand in hand 

with the FBI, and that has been an issue that has not come to my 

attention at all. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Dr. King’s assassination is the last—

of course, it is not the last death, it is the last in this book, hid 

the records of the investigative Committee in the late ’70’s are 

sealed until the year 2028. Have you made any efforts or do you 

believe any of the material therein would help you in looking into 

the people that might have been conspirators or aiders and abettors to that death. 

Ms. BECKER. I could tell you the Civil Rights Division looked into 

allegations in the late ’90’s regarding Martin Luther King, Jr., and 

32

issued a report regarding those allegations which ultimately proved 

not to be credible. Now there may be additional allegations out 

there, but I can tell you there were two in particular that we specifically looked at in the Civil Rights Division. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Do you know if there is information 

in those files that might be helpful to you? 

Ms. BECKER. I believe that our attorneys that worked on the 

MLK investigation at the time had access to all the information 

that they needed to do the scope of their investigation. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. I appreciate your work and your interest here and the Members of the Committee in this bipartisan 

fashion. When you look at this you have to think about the horrors 

of slavery. I read about the passage—and, of course, last weekend 

was the middle passage ceremony in Charleston, South Carolina, 

and other places in the country. The way people were brought to 

this country for 250 years in slavery and Jim Crow laws and the 

signs Jim Crow must go. And yet some people in Arkansas and you 

can see the faces of Little Rock Central High School and at Oxford 

people that were resistant to change. What happened under crimes 

against humanity, of slavery and Jim Crow laws is inexcusable. It 

was allowed by this Nation, unfortunately. 

And I believe and I have got a bill and I would hope that some 

my Republican colleagues might take the lead and join us in passing an apology for this Nation. Right now, we have 102 Democratic 

cosponsors and one Republican. This should be bipartisan, as it 

was in the States of Virginia, Delaware, North Carolina and Alabama, where apologies and regrets have been expressed. I would 

hope my Republican colleagues, who I know understand that and 

thought about it and obviously, by hearing the questions today, 

have concerns, as we all do, would join us to have a bipartisan and 

not a partisan apology for slavery by this Congress. 

Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. Does the gentleman yield back? 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Yes, sir. 

Mr. NADLER. I now recognize the gentleman from Alabama. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ms. Becker. 

I want to reserve most of my substantive comments for the second panel. Two close friends of mine are on that panel, and I will 

have a chance to greet them in—not too long, but I wanted to acknowledge two individuals and make a substantive comment while 

you are here. 

First of all, I want to recognize Alexander Acosta, who is the current U.S. Attorney in Miami, who used to be your boss, I suppose, 

as chief for the Civil Rights Division. He has been a 20-year friend 

of mine. We were at Harvard undergrad and Harvard Law School 

together. Mr. Acosta is now the U.S. Attorney in Miami. He was 

the individual who revived a lot of the cold case prosecution investigations within the Department of Justice. So I don’t want the 

hearing to pass without acknowledging him. 

Second of all, as an Alabamian, I don’t want the hearing to pass 

without acknowledging William Joseph Baxley. Bill Baxley was attorney general of my State during the 1970’s; and, to follow up on 

Mr. Lungren’s comment, Alabama was a very different place in the 

1970’s than it is today. Mr. Baxley made the very difficult political 

33

decision to prosecute a man who was linked to the 16th Street 

bombing, and that was a very unpopular choice and possibly prevented him from ever being Governor of my State. He now practices law in the State of Alabama. He has been an outstanding public servant but never got a chance to sit in the Governor’s office in 

part because of his political courage. I want to make sure that he 

and people like him were acknowledged today. 

One of the inspiring things about this panel, these cases would 

have gone away but for individual prosecutors many times at the 

State level but sometimes the Federal level who were willing to revive them and who believe that, frankly, the South is a better place 

than it once was. 

I want to turn to one substantive area and pick up where the 

Chairman of the Committee left off. You talked about the agenda 

of the Justice Department now, and you mentioned a variety of 

cases. You mentioned the hate crime prosecutions. You mentioned 

a number of prosecutions that have been brought by your Department. 

The one thing that was missing from that litany, if I heard you 

correctly, was a reference to voter suppression cases. You are obviously aware of the phenomenon of voter suppression. Those are official but organized activities, rather than individuals who were 

trying to keep someone from exercising their right to vote. It can 

be done through a variety of tactics: misinforming people about 

their eligibility or having loud bullhorns on Election Day outside 

Black and Latino precincts announcing to people that if you have 

unsatisfied judgments that you can’t vote, if you have outstanding 

debts or if you have warrants that you can’t vote. There were a variety of voter suppression tactics that have been launched around 

the country, and I was curious how many prosecutions to your 

knowledge has your Department brought in voter suppression 

cases? 

Ms. BECKER. I don’t have those numbers available to me right 

now, Congressman. I came here to speak about H.R. 923. 

Mr. DAVIS. Do you know of a single one? 

Ms. BECKER. I don’t have those numbers here. 

Mr. DAVIS. I mention it because I fully recognize you are here to 

talk about a very good, bipartisan bill; and I will say more with the 

next panel. But I think Mr. Conyers and the Chairman were correct to raise these issues, because we don’t get to hear from the 

Civil Rights Division a lot. It is fairly limited scope testimony; and, 

from your earlier testimony about the kinds of cases you have 

brought, I assume you do have some broad familiarity of what the 

Department is doing. 

So I would frame it this way. I hope that you will gather that 

data and if for whatever reason the answer is none and zero I 

would hope that this Department, the current leadership, would 

correct that. 

Individuals trying to prevent people from exercising the right to 

vote is as fundamental a violation of our Constitution and legal 

structure as any other kind of crime; and, frankly, I think part of 

reason you don’t remember any cases like that is there haven’t 

been very many, if any, and that ought to be a priority. I know of 

34

at least one instance this year this Committee has passed a bill to 

address those issues. 

I yield back my time, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank you gentlemen. 

I recognize the gentleman from Minnesota. 

Mr. ELLISON. Thank you, Ms. Chung Becker, for your testimony 

today. 

I just have a brief statement. I want to say I thank the Chair 

of this whole Committee for bringing forth this bill and also this 

hearing. I think there are some people who might say this happened a long time ago, let’s get on with it, but I think that ignores 

the generational trauma that hate crimes like this inject an entire 

community with fear. The fact is the terror that Civil Rights workers and others faced when we were trying to bring our country into 

democracy was so prevailing and the nature of the murders was so 

spectacular that it injected a paralyzing fear into the entire community. I don’t know if we have yet to really recover from it. 

I want to agree that America is a different place than it used to 

be 40 years ago, but it is not enough of a different place for me, 

particularly when we think about some of the civil and human 

rights violations we see still committed. Some of them I think are 

sanctioned by Government and law. 

So I want to say to the Chair that I think this is a very important hearing, and I hope that the resources that this bill can provide will motivate the Department of Justice to be vigorous in its 

approach. 

I don’t think two cases is very many compared to the number of 

cases that there are. I don’t know why there is only two. There 

may be a good explanation. You mentioned things like statute of 

limitations, ex post facto and all that stuff, but I know—as a person who has practiced law for 16 years, I know that where there 

is a will there is a way. 

I just want to say hats off to all the State prosecutors and some 

Federal, as Congressman Davis mentioned, but I hope the resources provided in the bill do get to the Justice Department and 

enliven and help the Civil Rights Division to prosecute some of 

these cold cases. 

Mr. NADLER. Does the gentleman yield back? 

Mr. ELLISON. Yes. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank you, gentleman. 

Ms. Chung Becker, our Members may have additional questions 

after this hearing. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. NADLER. I recognize the gentlelady from Texas. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank the Chairman, and I thank the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for being here. 

I think this bill’s underlying premise is that we have no choice, 

frankly. If this country is to ask its citizens to believe it is a country of laws governed by a Constitution that includes the right to 

due process, then we have denied any number of family members, 

in essence, due process or the right to have closure to the cases 

that have been so heinous. 

I note it has been indicated that your initial testimony regarding 

H.R. 923 mentioned something about resources and the possibility 

35

that you would have some issues of witnesses or evidence generating or whether or not it would duplicate the Civil Rights Division. I think that this is so unique, these cases are cases of mutilation, they are cases of heinous murder, and I applaud some of the 

deep South Department of Justice officials and also State and local 

officials who had the courage to recognize that an unsolved case is 

an injustice. It is an injustice for the families. It is certainly an injustice for the deceased person who, as a member of this society, 

under a Constitution that promised in its early premise the Bill of 

Rights and the Founding Fathers’ statement of we are all created 

equal, knowing that the lives of many individuals were lost in a 

time that they were not considered equal. In fact, they were brutalized for their viewpoints but also for the thoughts people had about 

them. 

So my question again, if I can—if it has been asked and answered, but I want it again for the record, will the Justice Department accept the fact that this is necessary and that to either ask 

for resources or believe resources to such a section could provide 

a vital relief to those who still mourn and those who still feel, undermined if you will, because of the lack of solving of these crimes? 

Ms. BECKER. The Department believes that this bill is a very important bill, H.R. 923. We wholeheartedly support the legislative 

goals that are behind this bill. We have been working with Congress as the bill has progressed through various iterations. I think 

we have had a very good and productive bipartisan working relationship on this matter, and we look forward to continuing that relationship as we go forward. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. So, based upon the structure of the bill, the 

Justice Department is supporting crafting, carving, establishing an 

Unresolved Crime Section separate and apart from the Civil Rights 

Division. 

Ms. BECKER. Congresswoman, I am not sure—there have been 

various versions of the bill. I am not sure if that version is currently in this bill or was in an earlier bill. But I believe that issue 

has been resolved. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Well, when you say you believe it has been resolved, resolved in what manner? 

Ms. BECKER. I believe there has been a bipartisan agreement as 

to the structure of who the designee will be in the Civil Rights Division, who the designee will be at the FBI. So I think all those 

issues about—whether we call it a section or office or a working 

group, I think all those technical issues may have been ironed out. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Well, do you come with a knowledge of whether or not the Justice Department would welcome a free-standing 

section, regardless of what you think has been worked out, versus 

a section that is embraced under the Criminal Division and the 

Civil Rights Division? 

Ms. BECKER. The Department doesn’t believe a separate section 

is necessary. However, we are committed to bringing these cases 

wherever we can and have been working very closely with staff on 

both sides to come up with a framework that I think everybody has 

found acceptable. 

36

Ms. JACKSON LEE. The Justice Department in the passing of this 

bill would advocate for the full funding so that those assigned to 

this area would in fact be able to vigorously pursue these cases? 

Ms. BECKER. If Congress were to approve the funds, certainly 

that would facilitate the FBI and Civil Rights Division’s ability to 

review the over 100 matters that have been identified, too, as potential Civil Rights Era murders and to investigate—fully investigate and prosecute wherever appropriate. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I just close by simply saying that if you would 

take a message back, as this bill progresses, compromise is certainly something that all of us are willing to consider. I, frankly, 

believe in an established free-standing section for a time certain so 

that full concentration could be part of it might be the better approach. 

Obviously, we are in the legislative process as we speak, but I 

would also just ask that you take back the message that we are 

sharply either understaffed or underfocused of the Civil Rights Division, because this period of time has the lowest prosecution of 

Civil Rights cases it might be in the history of the existence of the 

Civil Rights Division, and that raises enormous concerns for all of 

us who believe in the prosecution of cases so that people’s rights 

can be vindicated. And I hope that you would convey that message. 

Ms. BECKER. I will certainly convey that message, Congresswoman, and I will also review our statistics as well to see what we 

can provide for you in order to clarify any of those numbers. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I would be happy to receive them. 

I thank the gentlelady, and I yield back. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentlelady, and I yield to the gentleman 

from Iowa. 

Mr. KING. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I appreciate this hearing, and I appreciate your testimony. 

Just some broader questions to put this into a context for myself 

and hopefully for this panel. 

The title of the bill says that it is Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes, 

so that implies these are race-based crimes, and I presume they 

are, and I support this legislation and encourage prosecution investigation into these crimes. But I would ask, is there a sunset in 

this bill? 

Ms. BECKER. That is correct. There is a 10-year sunset in the bill. 

Mr. KING. That clarifies that it is envisioned that we will solve 

these cases at some point or the perpetrators will—the biological 

solution will come to the perpetrators at some point, and it won’t 

be necessary to have this legislation that goes on and perpetuates 

itself. That is the main point I wanted to emphasize. And, also, 

that even though it is titled Civil Rights, these kind of race-based 

crimes can work in either direction. 

Is there a crime that—most of this is White on Black crime, I 

presume? Are there any incidents of it going the other way that are 

part of the investigation as well? 

Ms. BECKER. I am not aware of any currently, but I have not reviewed the 100 plus cases that have been brought to our attention. 

But my inclination is that the vast majority, if not all of them, are 

African American victims. 

37

Mr. KING. They are the victims, and that is what makes the tragedy, and it was done within a political context, too. Is there anything in the language that would preclude an investigation that 

might be the other direction from race. 

Ms. BECKER. Let me just pull up the bill——

Mr. KING. It has to be difficult to analyze that in front of this 

panel at this time. I would just pose that question; and, if you 

would prefer, I would be happy to receive an answer to that after 

the hearing sometime. 

Ms. BECKER. If I can just comment, H.R. 923 doesn’t create new 

substantive legal provisions in terms of new crimes that we can 

bring. So we can look at cases that occurred prior to December 

31st, 1969, for any Civil Rights violations that may have occurred 

prior to that time. 

Mr. KING. That is my answer. I thank you very much, Ms. Becker; and I would yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you, gentleman. 

Ms. Chung Becker, our Members may have additional questions——

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Mr. Chairman, may I ask one question. 

Mr. NADLER. I yield the gentleman 1 minute. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The question the gentleman from Iowa asked was a good question. There are these not just White on Black crimes. Some of these 

crimes are White on White people who are helping Black people, 

is that correct? 

Ms. BECKER. That is correct. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. So we can rest assured that some of 

the victims are not all Black victims. There are White victims, too. 

They are just people of goodwill who were trying to see that the 

law was changed to be what it should have been in the first place, 

that if we didn’t have laws that permitted slavery, that permitted 

Jim Crow, that permitted and reinforced segregation, that these 

people wouldn’t have to do their mission and their job to help make 

the law the way it should have been. 

Ms. BECKER. I appreciate the clarification. That is exactly right. 

If you look at even some of the cases brought in 1960’s like the 

Mississippi Burning case, for instance, you do see that some of the 

victims were either African Americans or persons of all colors helping African Americans. 

Mr. COHEN OF TENNESSEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank 

you, Ms. Becker. 

Mr. NADLER. Ms. Chung Becker, our Members may have additional questions after this hearing. We have had some difficulty 

getting responses to our questions in general from the Justice Department and timely responses when we get them at all. Will you 

promise to provide a written response to our written questions, 

should there be any, within 30 days of the receipt of the questions. 

Ms. BECKER. I will do my best. 

Mr. NADLER. I would now like to introduce the second panel, if 

the second panel will come forward. 

The first witness is Ms. Myrlie Evers-Williams. Myrlie Evers is 

the founder of the Medgar Evers Institute and Chairman Emeritus 

38

of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. 

She was one of the pioneers of the Civil Rights movement, along 

with her husband Medgar Evers, whose assassination in 1963 finally saw justice through Ms. Evers-Williams tireless efforts after 

30 years. 

Ms. Evers-Williams holds a sociology degree from Panama College. She was the first African American woman appointed to serve 

as commissioner on the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, and 

was chairman of the NAACP from 1995 to 1998. 

A second witness is Mr. Douglas Jones, who, as U.S. Attorney for 

the Northern District of Alabama, brought the prosecution of the 

16th Street Baptist Church bombing case, one of the most notorious cases of the 1960’s. 

Our third witness is Mr. Richard Cohen, who is the president 

and chief executive officer of the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Our next witness is Rita Bender, who is one of the most courageous Civil Rights workers who went to Mississippi to register voters in 1964. She continues to fight for justice today. Her husband, 

Michael Schwerner, was killed, along with Andrew Goodman and 

James Chaney. They were murdered because they stood up for justice and the rule of law in Mississippi in 1964. 

Our final witness is Mr. Alvin Sykes, President of the Emmett 

Till Justice Campaign. 

I am pleased to welcome all of you, and at this point I am 

pleased to recognize for a brief statement Mr. Davis of Alabama. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me have the honor of, first of all, greeting again Ms. Bender, 

Ms. Williams. We have met previously, and it is good to see you 

ladies again. 

I have the honor of saying a little bit more by way of introduction. Two close of friends of mine are here today. Doug Jones for 

the Northern District of Alabama, who was an exemplary criminal 

defense lawyer and exemplary United States attorney—and, as the 

Chairman pointed out, the 16th Street prosecution, the prosecution 

of two individuals who committed a crime that at that time was 37 

and 39 years old respectively. Very few people thought a conviction 

could be obtained on 37-year-old or 39-year-old evidence. This 

United States attorney was skilled enough to win convictions before predominantly White juries in both those instances, and I am 

glad to see him here and thank him. 

My first boss in the professional world—I was an intern in 1992 

at the Southern Poverty Law Center—Richard Cohen, the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center, has a litany of outstanding constitutional cases to his pedigree, one of which I want 

to note before the Committee. 

The very first time that a civil judgment was recovered against 

the Ku Klux Klan happened based on a case in Mobile, Alabama. 

Because of Richard Cohen’s appellate advocacy and his skill, that 

verdict and judgment was secured, eventually satisfied. I thank 

him for his outstanding leadership and for his leadership in starting the new Civil Rights center in Montgomery, Alabama. I was 

honored to be the keynote speaker on that occasion several years 

ago. Ms. Bender, I believe I met you there. 

39

So, Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me to recognize my 

friends who are here. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank you, gentleman. 

Again, I am pleased to welcome the witnesses. As a reminder, 

each of your written statements will be made a part of record in 

its entirety. 

I would ask that you now summarize your testimony in 5 minutes or less. To help you stay within that time there is a timing 

light at the table. When 1 minute remains, the light will switch 

green to yellow and then red when the 5 minutes are up. 

Mr. NADLER. We will begin by recognizing Ms. Myrlie Evers-Williams. 

TESTIMONY OF MYRLIE EVERS-WILLIAMS, BEND, OR 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. Good afternoon, honorable Chairmen and 

Members of the Subcommittees. 

Mr. NADLER. Could you turn on your mike, please. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. All right. 

Once again, thank you, honorable Chairmen and Members of the 

Subcommittees, for the opportunity to testify in support of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, H.R. 923. 

My name is Myrlie Evers-Williams. I am president of MEW Associates, Inc., founder of the Medgar Evers Institute, chairman emeritus of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored 

People, and most widely known as the widow of Civil Rights leader 

Medgar Wiley Evers. 

Medgar Evers was the first NAACP field secretary in the State 

of Mississippi, his native home. He was the major, unofficial investigator in the murder of Emmett Till. He disguised himself as 

sharecropper. He frequently changed the cars and trucks that he 

drove to gather information that was sent beyond Mississippi’s 

‘‘cotton curtain’’ to media sources elsewhere. He met with and assisted relatives of Emmett Till, including Ms. Mamie Till-Mobley. 

Medgar’s involvement in this case was reported in depth, particularly in the Johnson publications of Ebony and Jet magazines. 

How appropriate for me to be here today remembering Emmett 

Till and the many others, known and unknown, who were permanently disposed of through hate, fear and racism. Medgar Ever’s 

assassination was the first, the first of the modern Civil Rights era 

to receive international coverage. Our family received telegrams, 

letters and cards from around the world expressing horror, disgust, 

shame and just plain condolences, with also a small number of hate 

letters that expressed joy at his assassination. These letters and 

Medgar’s personal papers now reside at the Mississippi Department of Archives of History in Jackson, Mississippi. 

Today is June 12, 2007. It marks the 44th anniversary of 

Medgar’s assassination, which was June the 12, 1963. 

On the night of June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the Nation on Civil Rights issues. Shortly after midnight 

June the 12, Medgar was shot in the back with a high-powered 

rifle as he got out of his car returning home from a long, exhaustive day of demanding activity. He had been the voice for justice 

and equality in Mississippi. Many of those years, he was alone, 

with little support, mostly because of fear of retaliation that paraVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
40

lyzed others from active and open participation in societal change. 

There was a time when there was little media coverage, when Civil 

Rights was not the ‘‘in’’ thing to be involved in. 

Medgar was the spokesperson, the caregiver for the downtrodden 

in Mississippi. His bravery put him as number one on the Klan’s 

hit list. Death was his daily companion, and we knew it. Medgar’s 

awareness did not begin with his NAACP position. He served in 

the Army during World War II in Normandy. He returned home, 

was honorably discharged and enrolled at Alcorn High School and 

Alcorn A&M College. He graduated with a degree in business administration. 

While employed with the Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company, he applied for admission to the University of Mississippi Law 

School, becoming the first African American to do so, long before 

he assisted James Meredith in entering Ole Miss. 

Believing a solid education was important for all citizens, he filed 

a suit in the name of our first son, Darrell Kenyatta Evers vs. the 

State of Mississippi. The result: The legal battle was won, and the 

schools were desegregated, providing the promise of an equal education for all. 

The successful voter registration drives, the economic boycotts, 

removal of barriers to parks, libraries, entertainment centers, 

transportation, hiring of police officers, equalization of teachers’ 

salaries and many other gains came as a result of Medgar’s dedication to equal opportunity. This was a man who wanted no glory for 

himself but who knew that his country could be a better place for 

all of its citizens. 

There are numerous other accounts of his determination and the 

growing number of activists who joined in the pursuit of the American Dream in spite of the price to be paid. However, shortly after 

Medgar’s assassination, change, though small, became evident. 

School crossing guards were hired. A few policemen were hired 

with the restrictions to only enforce the law within their neighborhoods. Libraries and recreational facilities were open to all. 

Perhaps public attitude spoke louder than ever. After the first 

memorial service in Jackson, Mississippi, thousands marched from 

the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street to downtown Farrish Street 

in Jackson, chanting, ‘‘After Medgar, no More Fear.’’ details and 

photos appear in Life Magazine, June, 1963. Fear, one of the 

strongest hold-backs on freedom, was at last being erased. 

As we look at the passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil 

Rights Crime Act, let us not forget that family members of the persons murdered are also victims. They are human beings who must 

survive the loss of their loved ones and all that that entailed. The 

emotional hell that can never completely disappear; the nightmare 

of the bloody crime scene; the sounds of terror; the firebombs; the 

sound of gunfire; missing that person’s love, care and guidance; the 

loss of financial support and so much more. 

Yet there are those who say that Civil Rights cold cases should 

remain lost in our history. No one benefits. The men are old and 

will soon die, so why bother? Besides, it costs the public too much 

to finance such projects. But murder is murder. They were young 

murderers who happened to grow old. Life was something denied 

those whose lives were so brutally taken. 

41

I set forth on a mission to see that justice would prevail in 

Medgar’s case, based on a promise I made to him shortly before his 

death. 

The first trial was another first. No White had been tried for the 

murder of a Black in Mississippi. The first and second trials both 

ended in a hung jury. The messages sent to the public was that 

‘‘old southern justice’’ remained intact. 

I was on the witness stand testifying when Governor Ross 

Barnett entered the courtroom, paused, looked at me and proceeded to walk to the defendant, shook his hand, gave a ‘‘good old 

boy’’ slap on his back and sat with him throughout my testimony. 

The message had been sent to the jury: Do not convict this man. 

Now, I ask you, Members of the Committee, may I have your 

permission just to finish this? It will take just a second. Thank you. 

After the first trial, the accused assassin was given a parade 

with support banners along the highway from Jackson to his home 

in the Delta. During the next election, the district attorney ran for 

governor and the assassin ran for lieutenant governor. I think that 

was quite a ticket. 

Years passed. I returned to Mississippi on a regular basis, always questioning people in various parts of the territory for any information that may have heard discussed relevant to the Evers 

case. Most people claimed that I was insane. ‘‘Keep trying, never 

give up’’ became my motto. 

Then entered Jerry Mitchell, a reporter with the Clarion Ledger 

newspaper. He provided me with the hope that some new information had been uncovered, and one miracle after another took place. 

Missing witnesses were found and were willing to testify; numerous boxes of evidence were found; the murder weapon was found; 

my personal State-stamped transcript of the first trial was handdelivered to the District Attorney; FBI cooperated; and a few politicians voiced support that the time had come to right the wrongs 

of our society. 

The conviction of the murderer came on February 5th, 1994, almost 30 years to the day of the first trial. Reporters from around 

the world were there to broadcast the guilty verdict. Our American 

justice system became stronger. 

The Medgar Evers case and third trial became a road map for 

all of the others that have followed. The legal issues: speedy trial, 

court approval to have a previous transcript read in court, and 

other legal matters were settled in this case. 

Since Medgar’s case, 29 cases have been reexamined with 29 different arrests and 22 convictions, with one trial still ongoing in 

Mississippi. 

One noted Civil Rights leader said at the Arlington Cemetery 

service for Medgar, that Medgar believed in this country, now it remains to be seen if his country believes in him. 

The passage of a bill named in honor of Emmett Till would send 

a message that the country indeed does believe in Medgar and others like him and in the cause of justice. It is a message that is particularly important to send to the young people of today and generations yet to come. 

Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank you. 

42

[The prepared statement of Ms. Evers-Williams follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MYRLIE B. EVERS-WILLIAMS

Thank you, Honorable Chairmen and Members of the Subcommittees, for the opportunity to testify in support of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act 

(HR 923). 

My name is Myrlie Evers-Williams. I am President of MEW Associates, Inc., 

Founder of the Medgar Evers Institute, Chairman of the National Association for 

the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and most widely known as the widow 

of civil rights leader, Medgar Wiley Evers. 

Medgar Evers was the first NAACP Field Secretary in the State of Mississippi—

his native home. He was the major, unofficial investigator in the murder of Emmett 

Till. He disguised himself as a sharecropper. He frequently changed the cars and 

trucks that he drove to gather information that was sent beyond Mississippi’s ‘‘cotton curtain’’ to media sources elsewhere. He met with and assisted relatives of Emmett Till, including Mrs. Mamie Till-Mobley. Medgar’s involvement in this case was 

reported in depth, particularly in the Johnson publications of Ebony and Jet magazines. 

How appropriate for me to be here today remembering Emmett Till and the many 

others, known and unknown, who were permanently disposed of through hate, fear, 

and racism. Medgar Evers’ assassination was the first, the first of the modern civil 

rights era to receive international coverage. Our family received telegrams, letters, 

and cards from around the world expressing horror, disgust, shame and just plain 

condolences, also a small number of hate letters that expressed joy in his assassination. These letters and Medgar’s personal papers now reside at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in Jackson, Mississippi. 

Today is June 12, 2007. It marks the 44th Anniversary of Medgar’s assassination 

(June 12, 1963). 

On the night of June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation 

on Civil Rights issues. Shortly after midnight, June 12, 1963, Medgar was shot in 

the back with a high-powered rifle as he got out of his car, returning home from 

a long exhaustive day of demanding activity. He had been the voice for justice and 

equality in Mississippi. Many of those years, he was alone with little support, mostly because of fear of retaliation that paralyzed others from active and open participation in societal change. That was a time when there was little media coverage, 

when civil rights was not the ‘‘in’’ thing to be involved in. 

Medgar was the spokesperson, the care giver for the downtrodden in Mississippi. 

His bravery put him as number 1 on the Klan’s hit list. Death was his daily companion, and we knew it. Medgar’s awareness did not begin with his NAACP position. He served in the army during World War II in Normandy. He returned home, 

was honorably discharged and enrolled at Alcorn High School and Alcorn A&M College. He graduated with a Degree in Business Administration. 

While employed by Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Co., he applied for admission 

to the University of Mississippi Law School, becoming the first African-American to 

do so, long before he assisted James Meredith in entering Ole Miss. 

Believing that a solid education was important for all citizens, he filed a suit in 

the name of our first son—Darrell Kenyatta Evers vs. the State of Mississippi. The 

result: The legal battle was won, and the schools were desegregated, providing the 

promise of an equal education for all. 

The successful voter registration drives, the economic boycotts, removal of barriers 

to parks, libraries, entertainment centers, transportation, hiring of police officers, 

equalization of teachers’ salaries and many other gains came as a result of Medgar’s 

dedication to equal opportunity. 

This was a man who wanted no glory for himself but who knew that his country 

could be a better place for all its citizens. 

There are numerous other accounts of his determination and the growing number 

of activists who joined in pursuit of the American Dream in spite of the price to 

be paid. However, shortly after Medgar’s assassination, change, though small, became evident. School crossing guards were hired. A few policemen were hired with 

restrictions to only enforce the law within their neighborhoods. Libraries and recreational facilities were open to all. 

Perhaps public attitudes spoke louder than ever. After the first memorial service 

in Jackson, Mississippi, thousands marched from the Masonic Temple on Lynch 

Street to downtown Farrish Street, chanting ‘‘After Medgar, no more fear.’’ (Details 

and photos in Life, June 1963). Fear, one of the strongest hold-backs on freedom, 

was at last being erased. 

43

As we look to the passage of Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act 

(HR923), let us not forget that family members of the persons murdered are also 

victims. They are human beings who must survive the loss of their loved ones—and 

all that that entailed . . . the emotional Hell that never completely disappears; the 

nightmare of the bloody crime scene; the sounds of terror; the firebombs; the sound 

of gunfire; missing that person’s love, care and guidance; the loss of financial support and so much more. 

Yet there are those who say that civil rights ‘‘cold cases’’ should remain lost in 

our history—‘‘no one benefits—the men are old and will soon die, so why bother? 

Besides it costs the public too much to finance such projects.’’ But, murder is murder. They were young murderers who grew old. Life was something denied those 

whose lives were so brutally taken. 

I set forth on a mission to see that justice would prevail in Medgar’s case, based 

on a promise I made to him shortly before his death. 

The first trial was another first. No White had been tried for the murder of a 

Black in Mississippi. The first and second trials both ended with a hung jury. The 

messages sent to the public were that ‘‘old Southern justice’’ remained intact. I was 

on the witness stand testifying when Governor Ross Barnett entered the courtroom, 

paused, looked at me and proceeded to walk to the defendant, shook his hand, gave 

a ‘‘good ole boy’’ slap on his back and sat with him throughout my testimony. The 

message had been sent to the jury: ‘‘do not convict this man.’’

After the first trial, the accused assassin was given a parade with support banners along the highway from Jackson to his home in the Delta. During the next 

election, the District Attorney ran for Governor and the assassin ran for Lt. Governor. What a ticket! 

Years passed. I returned to Mississippi on a regular basis, always questioning 

people in various parts of the territory on any information that may have heard discussed relevant to the Evers case. Most people claimed that I was insane. ‘‘Keep trying, never give up’’ became my motto. 

Then entered Jerry Mitchell, a reporter with the Clarion Ledger newspaper. He 

provided me with hope that some new information had been uncovered. 

One miracle after another took place. Missing witnesses were found and were 

willing to testify; numerous boxes of evidence found; murder weapon found; my personal State-stamped transcript of the first trial was hand-delivered to the District 

Attorney; FBI cooperation; and a few politicians voiced their support that the time 

had come to right the wrongs of our society. 

The conviction of the murderer came on February 5, 1994, almost 30 years to the 

day of the first trial. Reporters from around the world were there to broadcast the 

guilty verdict. Our American Justice System became stronger. 

The Medgar Evers case and third trial became a roadmap for all of the others 

that have followed. The legal issues: speedy trial, court approval to have a previous 

transcript read in court, and other legal matters were settled in this case. 

Since Medgar’s case, 29 cases have been reexamined with 29 different arrests and 

22 convictions, with one trial still ongoing in Mississippi. 

One noted civil rights leader said at the Arlington Cemetery service: ‘‘Medgar believed in his country, now it remains to be seen if his country believes in him.’’

The passage of a bill named in honor of Emmett Till would send the message that 

the country indeed does believe in Medgar and in the cause of justice. It is a message that is particularly important to send to the young people of today and to generations to come.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Jones. 

TESTIMONY OF G. DOUGLAS JONES, ESQUIRE,

BIRMINGHAM, AL 

Mr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. I am honored to be here today to testify in favor of this 

hearing. 

On a personal note, it is especially a privilege for me to be back 

on the Hill as a former Senate Judiciary staffer to Senator Howell 

Heflin, who was my mentor and largely responsible for my career. 

Mr. Chairman, I want to talk just briefly about some of the 

practicalities of these cases. You will hear from others about what 

they mean; and, obviously, these cases mean so much to so many 

44

people. It is just hard to imagine until you have lived it or even 

prosecuted it. 

I am reminded of another victim’s mother, the mother of Carole 

Robertson, one of the children who died in the church bombing. 

Her mother, Alpha Robertson, testified in the case. When I asked 

her what she was doing, she heard the bomb and it sounded like 

the whole world was shaking. 

And in fact, that was the thing we adopted because the whole 

world did shake at the sound of that bomb in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. But there are some very practical points that I want 

to bring out today. The difficulties in overcoming these cases are 

obvious. Witnesses die. Defendants die. Witness’ memories fade. 

Legal challenges. Evidentiary challenges. But there is even some 

more beyond that. One of the points I would like to make for this 

bill is to ensure that there is language in this bill that there is 

some openness in sharing of information. 

The Congressman from Tennessee asked a question a few minutes ago about missing files. I believe there are missing files. In a 

case that is pending in Alabama right now, the Jimmy Lee Jackson 

case, I received a call from a reporter in Anniston, Alabama the 

other day who had been told repeatedly and repeatedly that FBI 

files didn’t exist, the old summaries didn’t exist. They had not been 

turned over to the local DA. That case is pending. They had not 

been turned over to the local defense. But yet, lo and behold, a file 

appeared from some archive in Missouri with all the interviews in 

the Jimmy Lee Jackson case. 

There are difficulties. There are things in those files that quite 

frankly, and I am being brutally honest about this, there are probably things in those files that the Department of Justice and the 

FBI just really don’t want the public to see. It was not a pretty picture in the 1950’s, in the 1960’s. One of the critical components of 

our case against Tommy Blanton was a tape recording made without a warrant in 1964 in his home. And it was the seminal conversation in which Tommy Blanton, and his then-wife Jean talked 

about the bombing. You have a transcript in what I provided to you 

today. Before we did the motion to suppress I got a call from our 

local FBI agent-in-charge. And she was just a messenger because 

she was all in favor, as was the FBI. Everyone was in favor of 

these questions—all of these prosecutions, but the devil is in the 

details. And they were worried about going forward with the motion to suppress because they were afraid that the tape, couldn’t 

get it into evidence and it would, in fact, embarrass the FBI. 

Well, through some pretty good lawyering, not on my part, but 

I got a great staff, we did get the tape into evidence, we did not 

embarrass the FBI. But I think some of those attitudes are still 

prevalent. And my point is that there are a lot of files. And those 

files have to be open to all prosecutors within the Department of 

Justice and in state with State investigators and State prosecutors 

if that is where these cases end up being prosecuted. The second 

aspect is funding. 

And I appreciate the fact that there is funding for this bill. It 

takes a lot to prosecute these cases. It takes a lot of money to investigate these cases. And I hope this bill not only will allow for 

the Department of Justice to use that funding to investigate and 

45

prosecute cases, but I also hope it will allow the Department to redirect some of those resources. Because as a practical matter most 

of these cases are going to be prosecuted if at all in state court. I 

think the jurisdictional and constitutional challenges with resurrecting these for Federal jurisdiction is going to be very, very difficult. My district attorney in Jefferson County, Alabama or the 

Alabama attorney general would not have the opportunity to fund 

these cases and to do them properly. 

The third thing, and the third and fourth are actually together. 

I also think that we have to manage expectations. These cases are 

very difficult. They mean so much to the victims. They mean so 

much to the communities. But they are, at the end, very, very 

tough cases. And no one should get their hopes up that all of these 

100 cases the Department is looking at now will ultimately end up 

in a prosecution. They have to be done the right way, they have 

to be done zealously, but also fairly, because the defendants also 

have rights as well. 

And I hope as part of that, my last point is that as we proceed 

with these, that we as a society, not just through this bill, but we 

as a society will also examine other ways. For those cases, that 

can’t be prosecuted there has to be some form of reconciliation. We 

are a country of compassion. And in working with victims and others hopefully there can be some form of reconciliation. 

Mr. Chairman, I applaud the Committee, I applaud my friend, 

Congressman Lewis and Senator Dodd, over on the Senate for 

doing this. If we are to be serious about the war on terror, we have 

to acknowledge that it began long before September 11, 2001. And 

this bill and the funding it provides will help alleviate the problems. And as I said, following the cases of Tommy Blanton and 

Bobby Frank Cherry, justice delayed will not have to be justice denied. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Jones follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF G. DOUGLAS JONES

On September 15, 1963, four young African-American girls, Denise McNair, Addie 

Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carol Robertson, died from a bomb blast that 

ripped into the ladies lounge of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. 

The shockwave created by this senseless tragedy was felt around the world and 

proved to be a pivotal point in the struggle for civil rights in this country. On May 

1, 2001, a jury in Birmingham convicted Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. of murder for 

his role in the bombing. A year later, on May 22, 2002, another Birmingham jury 

convicted Bobby Frank Cherry, the last surviving suspect in the crime. During the 

decades between these historic events, Alabama experienced a phenomenal shifting 

of attitudes which made the prosecutions possible. Yet, the passage of time also created numerous legal obstacles. Some of the strategies used in this overcoming these 

obstacles were particular to this unique case. Most, however, were the tools and 

techniques we as trial lawyers use throughout our careers. 

Much can be written and said about the case of State of Alabama v. Thomas 

Edwin Blanton, Jr. and the case of State of Alabama v. Bobby Frank Cherry. What 

follows is only a brief answer to a couple of frequently asked questions and a summary of how the cases came together for trial. 

‘‘WHY WAS THE CASE RE-OPENED AFTER SO MANY YEARS?’’

In the spring of 1974, I had the privilege of spending the better part of an afternoon with the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. It was the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education decision and 

Justice Douglas was the Law Day Speaker for the University of Alabama School of 

Law. Although an undergraduate at the time, Justice Douglas and I were in the 

same college fraternity and I had arranged for the Court’s senior justice to come 

46

by my fraternity house for a reception following her activities at the law school. Aspiring to head to law school following graduation, I asked him what advice he would 

give a law student. He asked me what I wanted to do with my law degree and I 

replied that I wanted to be a trial lawyer. His advice, ‘‘go to court as often as you 

can. Learn to be a trial lawyer by observing trial lawyers.’’

Three years later I took Justice Douglas’ advice to somewhat of an extreme. As 

a second year law student at Cumberland School of Law, I decided I could get more 

out of watching one of the state’s most historic trials than attending some of my 

classes. As much as I felt I could get away with that week in November, 1997, I 

skipped classes to hang out in the balcony of Judge Wallace Gibson’s courtroom in 

the Jefferson County Courthouse to watch then Attorney General Bill Baxley prosecute Robert Chambliss for the September, 1963 boming of the 16th Street Baptist 

Church and the murder of Denise McNair. It was clear from the testimony that 

Chambliss did not act alone. But as I gave my undivided attention to Baxley’s powerful closing argument, I never in my wildest imagination dreamed that one day 

this case and my legal career would come full circle, giving me the opportunity, 

some 24 years later to prosecute the two remaining suspects for a crime that many 

say changed the course of history. It has been, to say the least, a remarkable journey. 

In a world where two years is a long time to get your case on the trial docket, 

this case was facing trial almost forty years after the crime. The FBI had done an 

extensive investigation following the bombing, but the case was closed without any 

prosecutions in 1968. By all indications, the case was closed by FBI Director J. 

Edgar Hoover without consulting the attorneys at the Justice Department. Despite 

Hoover’s posthumous reputation, it appears Hoover was genuinely concerned about 

the ability to obtain a conviction. Although he was probably right, any decision 

about a prosecution should have been made by a prosecutor, not an investigator. 

In 1971, newly elected Attorney General Bill Baxley re-opened the case and made 

it one of, if the not the highest, priorities of his office. Most, but not all, materials 

were given to Baxley for the 1977 prosecution of Robert ‘‘Dynamite Bob’’ Chambliss, 

who was convicted of the first degree murder of Denise McNair. It was clear from 

the evidence, however, that Chambliss did not act alone. Unfortunately, when 

Baxley left office in 1978, the investigation was once again shelved, with only some 

sporadic review over the next 20 years. But by 1996, a couple things occurred that 

breathed new life into what otherwise appeared to be a dead issue. 

First, the newly installed special agent in charge of the Birmingham FBI office 

began to reach out to the African-American community to mend fences that had broken down over the highly publicized corruption investigation into Birmingham City 

Hall. One of the concerns being expressed by black leaders was why the 16th Street 

church bombing case had not been re-examined. At about the same time, the conviction of Byron de la Beckwith for the 1963 murder of civil rights activist Medgar 

Evers proved that a prosecution of these forgotten cases can be successful with a 

new generation of southern jurors. The time seemed right for another look at the 

church bombing case that had remained an open wound for Birmingham. 

‘‘HOW AND WHERE DO YOU BEGIN WITH A CASE THAT OLD’’

All of the old investigative files remained at the Birmingham office of the FBI. 

Special Agent Bill Fleming was assigned the task of compiling the file and beginning the painstaking task of review. He was joined by Birmingham Police Detective 

Ben Herren, who was assigned to work the case full time. Ben would later retire 

and finish the case as an FBI Reasearch Analyst. Slowly and methodically the 

agents began the painstaking process of sifting through thousands of pages of interviews of witnesses and informants. 

Once the files had been reviewed and the agents felt that they had a handle on 

the facts, it was time to begin interviewing witnesses. Old witnesses from the earlier 

investigation, who were still alive, as well as recent acquaintances and family members of Chambliss, Cherry, Blanton and others were identified for questioning. But 

before the FBI would take to the streets, and thereby expose the fact that the case 

was being re-examined, what proved to be a critical decision was made concerning 

the first interview to be conducted. 

By all indication, Bobby Frank Cherry was a cocky Klan member in the 60’s 

whose name kept coming up whenever there was trouble. He had been interviewed 

a dozen times or more in the 60’s, each time denying any involvement in the crime, 

but each time giving the impression that he wanted to brag about his involvement. 

Cherry was a talker and if there was anyone who might say something to crack the 

case it was likely him. Interviewing him first was what turned out to be the first 

of many strategic moves that paid off. 

47

In the summer of 1997, Ben Herren and Bob Eddy, who had been Baxley’s investigator in the 70’s, interviewed Cherry in Texas for about two hours. Although now 

almost 70 years old, Cherry was as cocky and defiant as ever. His two hour interview provided some helpful information, but it was his post interview press conference that really jump started the case. Although nothing had been publicized 

about the case being re-opened, Cherry decided to call a press conference to proclaim 

his innocence and to denounce the agents for continuing to hound him. When he 

did, the phones at the FBI began ringing: Cherry’s granddaughter called to say she 

had overheard her grandfather admit to blowing up the church and that everyone 

in the family knew the story; a co-worker from his Texas carpet cleaning days called 

to say Cherry had admitted his involvement to him back in the early 80’s; and a 

man who was a friend of Cherry’s oldest son and only 11 years old at the time of 

the bombing called to say that in the days before the bombing he had been at the 

Cherry house and overheard Cherry and three other men talking about a bomb and 

the 16th Street Baptist Church. The Cherry interview provided the breaks that 

were needed to move the investigation forward; to hopefully bring closure to the 

case that had been so intensely investigated by the FBI and continued by Baxley. 

‘‘FEDERAL V. STATE’’

Shortly after the Cherry interview and press conference I was sworn in as United 

States Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama September 8, 1997. What I 

found with this file was that while the new witnesses had sparked some hope, there 

was very little else that was encouraging. There was no forensic evidence from the 

scene, no DNA and no residue of explosive material. There were no eyewitnesses, 

or at least none that had come forward. There were no co-conspirators who had decided to get this off their chest before they pass from this life into the next. Over 

the years many potential witnesses, and suspects, had died and many others were 

elderly and frail. What we did have was a series of circumstances, including many 

of the prior statements of Blanton and Cherry, that clearly pointed to the guilt of 

these two men. 

We assembled a team to begin the next phase of the investigation that would include having witnesses appear before a federal grand jury. Robert Posey, a former 

state Assistant District Attorney and a 10 year veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s office, 

was assigned to assist. Jeff Wallace, one of the most seasoned prosecutors in the 

Jefferson County DA’s office came on board. Following the Blanton trial, Assistant 

U. S. Attorney Don Cochran, who had also been a former state assistant DA, was 

added to assist in the Cherry trial. It was essential that we have both state and 

federal prosecutors looking at this case because there was no way to tell which 

forum would be chosen should we seek indictments. 

Initially, all investigation was conducted out of the U.S. Attorney’s office and the 

federal grand jury. Grand Jury subpoenas from a federal grand jury had a much 

larger reach for the many witnesses from out of state. There were also more resources out of the Department of Justice that we could draw on for witness expenses. 

Federal jurisdiction, however, hung by a thread. The statute of limitations for all 

civil rights violations had long since ran. However, under 18 U.S.C. 841, et. seq, as 

it was written in 1963, there was no statute of limitation when a death resulted 

from the offense of interstate transportation of explosives. The problem for us was 

that with no forensic evidence we did not know exactly what explosives were used, 

much less where they came from. Fleming and Herren chased leads all over the 

country, particularly about dynamite coming out of Atlanta and Kentucky, but to 

no avail. In the end, there was no proof of any interstate transportation of explosives leaving a state murder charge in Jefferson County as our only option. 

In May of 2000, with the express approval of both U.S. Attorney General Janet 

Reno and Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, we began presenting our case to 

a state grand jury. Three days later the Grand Jury indicted Tommy Blanton and 

Bobby Frank Cherry for the murder of the four young girls who died in the bomb 

blast of the 16th Street Baptist Church. 

‘‘SURVIVING THE MOTION TO DISMISS’’

Defense lawyers for both defendants filed motions to dismiss the indictments, citing the age of the case and the loss of witnesses as evidence that their clients would 

be denied a fair trial if forced to defend themselves on a 38 year old murder charge. 

The law in Alabama, however, is difficult for a defendant to be successful in this 

type of motion. The defendant must show not just a delay, but an intentional delay 

designed to gain a tactical advantage and that the delay caused actual substantial 

prejudice to the conduct of his defense. Defendants failed on both counts. In fact, 

48

I believe that the State was more prejudiced by the delay than the defendants. For 

instance, a witness visiting from Detroit identified Tommy Blanton’s car as the car 

parked behind the church at 2:00 a.m. on the morning of the bombing. Robert 

Chambliss and two other unidentified white men were in the car. This witness testified against Chambliss, but died in 1985, thereby losing forever critical testimony. 

‘‘SURVIVING THE MOTION TO SUPPRESS THE KITCHEN TAPE’’

In piecing together the chronology of events leading up to the bombing on Sunday 

morning, there were a series of meetings at the Modern Sign Shop, a local gathering 

spot for the Klan and anti-integration crowd, and at the Cahaba River Bridge, 

where Chambliss and Blanton were recruiting others to form a new Klan klavern. 

Blanton and his girlfriend, Jean, told agents that Blanton broke his date with Jean 

on Friday night before the bombing to make signs at the sign shop. Cherry, after 

initially stating he was at home that Friday night, admitted that he was also at 

the sign shop and that Blanton and Chambliss were both there. The significance of 

these interviews, given in the early stages of the investigation in 1963, was not realized until January, 2000, when Ben Herren was reviewing tape recordings prior to 

releasing them to the defense. 

The bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church was the first in the civil rights 

era that had resulted in deaths. The tragedy energized the FBI to find the murders 

and the to prevent further violence. While scores of agents hit the streets interviewing witnesses and working informants, FBI Director Hoover and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally approved the use of wiretaps and electronic 

‘‘bugs’’ on the telephones and at the homes of numerous suspects. 

While reviewing one of those tapes, made by a ‘‘bug’’ under the kitchen sink in 

Blanton’s apartment, Ben Herren made a remarkable discovery. 

It was June of 1964. Tommy Blanton had married Jean and, in the presence of 

an unknown third person, they were discussing the Friday night broken date and 

their FBI interviews. Captured on tape was the following conversation, which 

proved to be the critical piece of evidence in this case:

JEAN: Well, you never bothered to tell me what you went to the river for 

Tommy.

TOMMY: What did you tell them I did?

JEAN: You didn’t even.

TOMMY: What did you tell them I did at the river? What did they ask you 

I did at the river?

JEAN: They asked me what you went for and I told them I didn’t know.

TOMMY: They were interested in that meeting that I went to. They knew I 

went to the meeting.

JEAN: What meeting?

TOMMY: To the Big One.

JEAN: What Big One?

TOMMY: The meeting where we planned the bomb.

JEAN: Tommy, what meeting are you talking about now?

TOMMY: We had that meeting to make the bomb.

JEAN: I know that.

TOMMY: I think I’ll wear this sh—I’m going to wear this shirt.

JEAN: It’s what you were doing that Friday night when you stood me up.

TOMMY: (UI) Oh, we were making the bomb.

JEAN: Modern Sign Company.

TOMMY: Yeah

Naturally, Blanton’s defense team filed a Motion to Suppress, claiming a violation 

of the Forth Amendment. The microphone had, in fact, been placed in the Blanton 

apartment under orders from FBI headquarters, but without any court order or judicial review. What our research indicated, however, was that exceptions to the ‘‘exclusionary rule’’ provided a window of opportunity for the admission of this critical 

evidence. 

To begin with, in 1963, there were no provisions for court approved electronic surveillance as there are now. A search warrant was not available because the items 

to be seized, conversations, could not be particularly described in an affidavit. The 

executive branch of government could, however, utilize electronic surveillance for 

national security purposes. Although one could question how a local KKK member 

49

could involve national security, we cleared that hurdle by reminding the court of the 

climate of the time: the deaths cause by the blast and the unrest in the community, 

concerns over Communist influence on both sides of the civil rights struggle, the 

common practice of federalizing national guard troops to keep order and the assassination of President Kennedy that occurred just 2 months after the bombing. Moreover, determining what was or was not national security was exclusively an executive branch function. The evidentiary problem for us was that the law at the time 

only permitted electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes. Use as evidence in 

a trial was prohibited. 

The law involving the use of electronic surveillance has been altered considerably 

since 1963. In 1968 Congress passed a wiretapping and electronic surveillance law 

which requires all law enforcement, state or federal, to get court approval before 

such investigative tools can be used in criminal investigations and trials. The statute also provides for the exclusion of evidence if a court order is not obtained or 

the law not followed. See 18 U.S.C. 2510, et. seq. The exclusionary rule for ‘‘bugs’’ 

that exists by statute is important when considering the exclusionary rule developed 

by caselaw. Over the years, the Supreme Court has chipped away at the once rigid, 

absolute rule of exclusion of any illegally seized evidence. Today there are exceptions for, among other things, good faith and inevitable discovery. Today’s Supreme 

Court has held on more than one occasion that the exclusionary rule is not one of 

punishment of the offending officer in a particular case, but one of deterrence for 

future cases and that the value of the truth seeking process must be weighed 

against the value of deterrence. In this case, when there exists an legislative statute 

that completely governs the use of electronic ‘‘bugs’’ there is no deterrent value to 

excluding evidence based on conduct that occurred long before the statute went into 

effect. When weighed against the truth seeking process, as was obvious by the content of the tape, it seemed clear that the suppression motion should be denied. 

Judge Garrett agreed and our jury was able to hear an admission out of Blanton’s 

own mouth. 

Interestingly, on appeal, Attorney General Pryor and his staff developed an even 

stronger argument. Overlooked in our efforts during the suppression hearing was 

a document from the FBI that indicated that the microphone had been placed ‘‘without trespass.’’ At trial, Ralph Butler, the FBI tech who installed the mike testified 

that when the wall was torn out from the apartment that the FBI rented next to 

Blanton, they discovered a small hole in Blanton’s wall. The microphone was then 

place on the inside of the wall, not intruding into the Blanton residence. The evidence is critical to a review of the law that existed at the time in that a ‘‘bug’’ placed 

without any trespass was admissible under the 1928 case of Olmstaed vs. United 

States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928). The appeal was argued before the Alabama Court of 

Criminal Appeals on May 20, 2003. 

‘‘SELECTING THE JURY: THE USE OF JURY CONSULTANTS’’

Jury selection is always critical, but in these cases there seemed to be so many 

more issues that permeated the case that could influence a juror: the age of the defendants, the age of the case, the historical significance of the case, the racial overtones, the life experiences of each juror living in the South, then and now. To assist 

in jury selection, we brought in two highly regarded consulting firms who were experts in the process. Andy Sheldon, of Sheldon & Associates in Atlanta, had assisted 

the prosecution in two other high profile civil rights cases in Mississippi, including 

the Medgar Evers murder case. Steve Patterson and Norma Silverstein, with Vinson 

& Dimitri of Los Angeles, had assisted in a number of high profile and juror sensitive cases, such as the McVeigh case and former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards. Together they were a powerful and insightful team. 

The first step was to conduct a focus group where pieces of the case were presented to a panel of randomly chosen citizens. There were two separate groups, 

moderated by Andy and Norma, in more of a discussion fashion than a mock trial. 

They also discussed three separate cases, our bombing case, the Eric Rudolph case, 

and the O.J. case, in order to mask who was staffing the presentation. Various 

themes were tested, as were the strengths and weaknesses of key pieces of evidence. 

Through a one-way glass prosecutors and agents were also able to observe the dynamics between the various age, gender and ethnic origins of the participants. 

The second stage of the process was a community attitude survey, built on questions developed from the focus groups. This was an extensive telephone survey that 

went into great detail regarding potential jurors’ opinions of the case, the impact 

of media coverage, race relations, and general themes. The results were broken 

down by age, gender, race and address. What we learned was that by in large the 

participants had heard of the case through the media, but had not formed a hard 

50

opinion about guilt or innocence; that neither the age of the case nor the age of the 

defendants were a concern if the evidence existed and that some of our strongest 

evidence was the inconsistent, and what we believed to be lies, statements of the 

defendants about their whereabouts that weekend. We were also encouraged that 

the attitudes on race and race relations clearly proved that Alabama has, in fact, 

come a long way from where we were as a state in the 1960’s. 

Judge James Garrett had already indicated that he would allow the use of a juror 

questionnaire when jury selection began. After dissecting the results of the focus 

groups and the survey, and after receiving input from the defense, a questionnaire 

consisting of 100 questions was proposed. The questionnaire dealt with just about 

everything from the routine questions about the jurors’ backgrounds and knowledge 

of the witnesses, to more detailed information covering the books they read, the television shows they watch, the radio programs they listen to, their knowledge about 

the case and their opinions on race relations. 

Because questions arose concerning Cherry’s competency, the two cases were severed so that while Blanton proceeded to trial, Cherry was undergoing mental evaluations. Prior to the Blanton trial our consultants argued for a ‘‘mock trial’’ to test 

the various themes and defenses. I resisted for fear that in this age of commercialization of high profile cases we could not control the confidentiality of our evidence, which could jeopardize our venue in Birmingham. For the Blanton trial we 

waded into the jury selection process armed with a great deal of information, but 

no true test of our case. However, because the evidence in the two cases was considerably different, and even though Blanton had been convicted, the decision was 

made to test the Cherry evidence in a mock trial. Don Cochran, who had not participated in the Blanton case and was thus probably not as easily recognized by the 

participants, prosecuted the State’s case. Assistant U.S. Attorney, Mike Rasmussen, 

presented the case for the defense. Both did an excellent job of presenting what 

turned out to be a pretty accurate rendition of the upcoming trial. The results of 

the mock trial were nothing short of dramatic. What we thought was a relatively 

thin case against Cherry turned out to be surprisingly compelling. 

Trial lawyers have to be sensitive to the jurors and the jury selection process in 

order to be successful. What is hard to admit, however, is that we don’t know everything about everyone on a jury panel. The use of consultants, with a fresh, but experienced, perspective can make all the difference. 

‘‘CAPTURING THE JURY’S FOCUS: SETTING OUT A THEME IN BLACK AND WHITE’’

The themes of both trials took jurors on a journey back through history. It was 

a history that some of the jurors had lived, while others had only learned about it 

in school. Using black and white video footage and photographs, jurors were walked 

through the black and white world of 1960’s Birmingham. The black and white images were a constant, albeit subtle, reminder throughout the trial of a once segregated Birmingham. 

The journey started in 1957, when Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth attempted to enroll 

his children in the all-white Phillips High School. He was met by an angry mob of 

white men, about ten of whom proceeded to attack Rev. Shuttlesworth and his wife 

in front of the school. The scene was captured on 8mm file and is standard footage 

in most civil rights documentaries. Seeing that such attempt to integrate the Birmingham City Schools would not work, a lawsuit, based on the 1954 Brown v. 

Board of Education decision, was filed in federal court. That case and its ultimate 

outcome would set the stage for many events to follow. But the footage of the mob 

beating Rev. Shuttlesworth also had additional importance in the Cherry case. 

To the courtroom spectator, Bobby Frank Cherry appeared to be anybody’s grandfather: a 71 year old man more comfortable wearing overalls in the garden than 

wearing a suit sitting in a courtroom. But witnesses identified Cherry in the thick 

of the mob attacking Rev. Shuttlesworth, even using what appeared to be brass 

knuckles. Thus, from opening arguments jurors were shown what Bobby Frank 

Cherry was like as a 33 year old man in 1963: a member of the KKK, who resorted 

to violence to stop integration. 

Jurors also learned, through photographs and testimony, that 1963 and the 

months leading up to the bombing were pivotal times for the City of Birmingham. 

That spring the famous ‘‘children’s marches’’ were organized by Dr. King and others 

to integrate the public facilities of downtown Birmingham. The Sixteenth Street 

Baptist Church had already become a focal point for the civil rights movement in 

Birmingham, but now it was even more prominent with the marchers gathering in 

the sanctuary before facing Bull Connor’s forces just outside. When a settlement 

was reached to begin the process of integrating Birmingham, Cherry and Blanton 

saw the first real cracks in their segregated way of life. 

51

As the civil rights movement gathered steam with the August, 1963 ‘‘March on 

Washington,’’ the case to integrate Birmingham Schools was coming to a close. Six 

years after the case began, the final orders were issued that forced Birmingham to 

accept African-American students. On September 10, 1963, just five days before the 

bombing, two young men enrolled at Graymont Elementary School and for the first 

time, Birmingham had an integrated school system. Blanton and Cherry saw their 

segregated way of life erode even further. It was, I believe, no coincidence that five 

days after the schools were finally integrated a bomb was placed under the steps 

of a prominent player in the civil rights movement, the 16th Street Baptist Church, 

on a Sunday morning where other prominent players in the movement, the youth, 

were preparing for the first of the planned monthly youth worship services. 

THE CASE AGAINST BLANTON AND CHERRY

The evidence introduced in the Blanton trial and the Cherry trial obviously had 

many similarities. Testimony from the victims’ families and from those on the scene 

was essentially the same in both trials, but the evidence that pointed to the guilt 

of each defendant was considerably different. 

The Blanton jury heard evidence of the defendant’s hatred for blacks and his 

membership in the Klan. Tapes were played of conversations between Blanton and 

an informant in which Blanton joked about ‘‘bombing my next church.’’ There was 

testimony by James Lay who identified Blanton and Chambliss has the men he saw 

standing on the side of the church at one o’clock in the morning two weeks prior 

to the bombing. The man identified as Blanton was holding some type of satchel 

and standing next to the steps where the bomb was eventually placed. Agents who 

had interviewed Blanton following the bombing testified about Blanton’s inconsistent statements concerning his whereabouts the weekend of the bombing. Finally, 

the jury heard Blanton himself, on tape, admitting to being part of meetings where 

the bomb was planned and made. 

With Cherry, the witnesses who came forward all gave compelling testimony 

about Cherry’s admissions to them. In addition, an ex-wife who had also called the 

FBI when she read about the case in Montana, testified about Cherry’s admissions 

to her. Like Blanton, Cherry also gave many conflicting statements about his whereabouts the night before the bombing. His latest version of where he had been on 

Saturday night was that he was home early because his wife was dying with cancer 

and he always watched live studio wrestling at 10 p.m. We introduced medical 

records proving that Mrs. Cherry was not diagnosed with cancer until 1965, two 

years after the bombing, and that there was no Saturday night wrestling on TV at 

the time. Most significantly, Cherry admitted to being at the Modern Sign Shop 

with Blanton and Chambliss on the Friday night before the bombing, the same Friday night and location where Blanton said ‘‘we’’ had planned and made the bomb 

In both trials, we concluded the prosecution’s case on an emotional high note. People sometimes forget that there were actually five little girls in the ladies lounge 

that morning. Our last witness was Sarah Collins Rudolph , the sister of Addie Mae. 

She testified about walking to church that morning with her sisters and going into 

the basement and the ladies lounge with Addie. As she went to wash her hands she 

turned around and saw Addie tying the sash of Denise’s new dress. The explosion 

then trapped her beneath rubble, unable to move and unable to see because of injuries to her eyes. I asked her what happened after the explosion? ‘‘I called out for 

my sister.’’ What did you say? ‘‘I called out Addie, Addie, Addie,’’ her words echoing 

in a silent courtroom much as they would have 38 years earlier. ‘‘Did she answer 

you back?’’ I asked. ‘‘No.’’she said softly. Did you ever see her alive again? ‘‘No’’ she 

said, wiping back the tears. With that, the State of Alabama rested. 

It took the jury only 2 and one-half hours to find Tommy Blanton guilty on four 

counts of first degree murder. It took the Cherry jury about six hours to reach the 

same result. Both were immediately sentenced to life in prison and were whisked 

out of the courtroom by Sheriff’s deputies. 

‘‘THE AFTERMATH’’

It is impossible to express the emotion felt by the prosecution team and the satisfaction gained from being a part of these cases. I have said many times that I wish 

every lawyer, at least once in their career, could work on a case that meant so much 

to so many. There are many things that can come from such a case, but only two 

I would like to highlight here. 

First, I am always asked about threats or hate mail that we received throughout 

the course of this investigation. I guess it is assumed that even today the hatred 

of the past remains with us. I am sure it does in some quarters. But the fact is 

that we received absolutely nothing in the way of the hate mail or threats. None. 

52

That is not to say there was not some criticism of the prosecution, but that is always expected in any high profile case. It seems to me though, that the complete 

lack of anonymous threats or hate mail speaks volumes about where we as a state 

have come since 1963. 

Finally, as lawyers we have to remember that we are a service profession. Our 

job is to seek justice for our clients no matter what the obstacles or delay. Justice 

delayed does not have to mean justice denied. The odds are that you will never see 

a case that has such an impact on so many, but every case does have an impact 

on the client we represent, whether it is injured child, the defrauded consumer or 

the family of a victim. Each of these clients deserve as much attention and effort 

as Carol, Denise, Addie and Cynthia.

Mr. NADLER. I thank the witness. Mr. Cohen. 

TESTIMONY OF J. RICHARD COHEN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER, 

MONTGOMERY, AL 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Chairman, Chairman 

Conyers, Chairman Scott, thank you very much for the opportunity 

to appear before you today. And Congressman Davis, thank you for 

those very, very kind remarks. In 1989, we built the Civil Rights 

Memorial to honor the martyrs of the Civil Rights movement. Since 

that time, Congressman Lewis has led an annual pilgrimage to the 

Memorial on the occasion on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday. 

Many Members of this body have joined him, including Congressman Jackson Lee and Congressman Ellison. When we built the Memorial we had just finished litigating a case against the United 

Klans of America, a Klan group that blew up the 16th Street Baptist Church killing Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley. And also a group that had murdered 

Viola Liuzzo, a Civil Rights activist from Detroit who was involved 

in the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march. At the time the 

Memorial was dedicated, most of the cases chronicled on it had not 

been brought to justice. Today, many of the cases still cry out for 

justice. For this reason the Memorial serves as a reminder, not just 

of the sacrifices of the Civil Rights era, but of its injustices. 

If we as a Nation are going to address these injustices before 

they become permanent scars on our history, it is essential for Congress to pass the bill before it now. In doing the research for the 

Civil Rights Memorial we focused on the period 1954 to 1968, and 

looked for cases where victims had been murdered because they 

were active in the Civil Rights movement, they had been killed by 

organized hate groups in an effort to intimidate African-Americans 

and other Civil Rights activists or those whose deaths like Emmett 

Till, helped to galvanize the movement. 

We named 40 persons who fit this criteria, including Medgar 

Evers and Michael Schwerner. I am humbled to be on this panel 

today with their widows. But we know that there were many, many 

other victims besides those chronicled on the Memorial. During our 

research, we discovered the names of approximately 75 other people who died under circumstances suggesting that they too were 

victims of racial violence during the Civil Rights era. And as thorough as we tried to be in our research, I have no doubt that we 

missed many of the cases. Many of the killings we researched were 

never fully investigated by authorities. Our files, for example, include the case of Thomas Brewer, a prominent Black physician and 

NAACP activist in Georgia who was killed by a White department 

53

store owner in 1956. No one was indicted for the crime. It was an 

era when African-Americans and their allies were beaten, bombed 

and shot with impunity. 

Herbert Lee of Liberty, Mississippi, for example, was shot in the 

head by a White State legislator in broad daylight in Liberty, Mississippi, in 1961. Nothing was ever done about it. Although we 

never anticipated it really, the dedication of the Memorial sparked 

renewed interest in the Civil Rights era slayings. And since that 

time, a number of people have been brought to justice in connection 

with the murders from that era. My friend, Doug Jones, is responsible for a number of those convictions. But I think we all know 

that much more remains to be done. And in many of the cases on 

the Memorial, no one was ever brought to justice. 

As I indicated before, there were many, many victims of racial 

violence during the Civil Rights era whose names are not on the 

Memorial. We sent our list of 75 suspicious cases to the Justice Department. And as I understand it, now they have a list of over 100 

cases. They have indicated that many of these cases had never 

been investigated before. We applaud the FBI and the Justice Department for their interest in resolving these cases and we wish 

that these cases had always been a high priority. Passage of the 

Emmett Till Act will keep them on the front burner. 

In closing, I would like to note that I had a chance to meet 

Mamie Till, Emmett Till’s mother, before she died. She spoke at 

the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial and visited us a number of times. She was a very eloquent woman and a woman of great 

courage who forced the country to face the ugly reality of its racial 

violence in the hopes that we would do something about it. Passing 

an Act named for her son would be a fitting tribute to her courage 

and a measure that is long overdue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Cohen follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF J. RICHARD COHEN

Thank you, Messrs. Chairmen and Members of the Subcommittees, for the opportunity to be here today to testify in support of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil 

Rights Crime Act (HR 923). 

My name is Richard Cohen. I’m the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center 

(SPLC), a civil rights organization founded in 1971 and located in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1989, we built the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, the birthplace 

of the modern civil rights movement, to honor the lives and memories of those who 

were slain during the movement from 1954 to 1968. Inscribed on the Memorial are 

the names of 40 martyrs, including Emmett Till; however, we know from our research that many more people lost their lives to racial violence during that era. At 

the time the Memorial was dedicated, the killers in most of the cases chronicled on 

the Memorial had not been prosecuted or convicted, and today, there are many cases 

that still cry out for justice. For these reasons, the Memorial serves as a reminder, 

not only of the sacrifices made during the civil rights era, but also of its terrible 

injustices. 

The dedication of the Memorial sparked renewed interest in the civil rights era 

cases from a number of courageous prosecutors. But there has never been the kind 

of institutionalized effort that is needed to address the historic injustices that occurred during that era—an era when the criminal justice system in much of our 

country was corrupted by racial bigotry and the lives of the African American citizens of our democracy were not protected. If we are to address the injustices of the 

civil rights era before they become permanent scars on our nation’s history, the passage of legislation mandating a sustained, well-coordinated and well-funded effort 

to investigate and prosecute racially motivated slayings from the civil rights era is 

essential. 

54

We decided to build the Civil Rights Memorial after litigating a case against the 

United Klans of America, the group responsible for some of the most horrific violence during the civil rights era. In 1981, members of the United Klans, angry over 

a jury’s failure to return a verdict against a black defendant accused of killing a 

white police officer, decided to lynch a black man to show that the Klan was still 

alive and well in Alabama. Their victim was Michael Donald, a college student who 

had the misfortune of being on a public street while Klansmen drove by looking for 

potential victims. They abducted Michael, beat him mercilessly, cut his throat, and 

hung him from a tree for the world to see their ‘‘handiwork.’’ The local leader of 

the Klan described the scene as ‘‘a pretty sight.’’

Ignoring the fact that Michael Donald had led an exemplary life, local law enforcement officials initially attributed the killing to the illegal drug trade. But 

spurred on by local activists and the persistence of Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas 

Figures, federal prosecutors eventually broke the case. One Klansman pled guilty 

to the killing in federal court and was sentenced to a long prison term. Another 

Klansman was found guilty of capital murder in state court and was later executed. 

We followed the case closely and were convinced that other parties should be held 

responsible. In 1984, we filed a civil action on behalf of Michael’s mother, Beulah 

Mae Donald, against the United Klans itself as well as a number of additional Klan 

members. At the trial in 1987, we proved that the plan to lynch a random black 

victim was hatched at a meeting of the United Klans. We also established that 

United Klans had a long history of carrying out its goals by violent means. We presented evidence: (1) that its members had blown up Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street 

Baptist Church in 1963, killing four young black girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise 

McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley; (2) that the group had murdered 

civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo during the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965; 

and, (3) that its members had beaten the Freedom Riders in Montgomery in 1961. 

(Congressman John Lewis was among those beaten at the bus terminal.) An allwhite jury in Mobile returned a verdict for $7 million in our favor against all the 

defendants, including the United Klans. As a result of the verdict, the United Klans 

disbanded and was forced to deed its headquarters to Mrs. Donald. 

After the Donald verdict, my colleague Morris Dees was invited to speak to an 

NAACP convention in Mobile. At the close of his remarks, Morris said that he hoped 

that Michael Donald’s name would be remembered along with the names of Dr. 

Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Emmett Till and the other martyrs of the 

civil rights movement. After the speech, young people came up to Morris and said 

that they knew of Dr. King, of course, but weren’t familiar with the names of the 

other civil rights martyrs that he had mentioned. On his way home that night, Morris decided that we should build a memorial to the martyrs of the movement so that 

their sacrifices would never be forgotten. 

In preparing to build the Civil Rights Memorial, we researched deaths between 

1954, the year of Brown v. Board of Education, and April 4, 1968, the date of Dr. 

King’s assassination. We looked for victims who fit at least one of three criteria: (1) 

They were murdered because they were active in the civil rights movement; (2) They 

were killed by organized hate groups as acts of terror aimed at intimidating blacks 

and civil rights activists; or, (3) Their deaths, like the death of Emmett Till, helped 

to galvanize the movement by demonstrating the brutality faced by African Americans in the South. 

In some sense, the dates we chose were arbitrary. The civil rights movement 

clearly began before the Supreme Court’s landmark school desegregation decision in 

1954, and it did not end with Dr. King’s death in 1968. We knew that by choosing 

specific dates, we would leave out certain victims, such as Harry Moore, an NAACP 

official who died along with his wife, Harriette, in the Christmas night bombing of 

their home in Mims, Florida, in 1951. But we felt like we should choose a timeframe 

bounded by well-known historic events. 

To identify victims fitting the criteria we selected, we solicited information from 

civil rights activists, authors, and journalists. We combed through newspaper archives and books on the era. We reviewed files and other materials at the Southern 

Regional Council in Atlanta; Tuskegee Institute in Alabama; state archives in Mississippi and Alabama; the U.S. Library of Congress; the Birmingham Public Library’s Southern History collection; the Center for the Study of Southern Culture 

at the University of Mississippi; and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. The Library of Congress research included 

searches through the papers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the 

Congress of Racial Equality and the NAACP. We also filed Freedom of Information 

Act requests to obtain FBI files on individual deaths. The archives of The New York 

Times were particularly useful. A day-by-day search of its pages on microfilm turned 

up many deaths that had not been covered by local newspapers. A wealth of inforVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
55

mation also was found at the Southern Regional Council. This research became the 

basis for our book ‘‘Free at Last: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those 

Who Died in the Struggle.’’ I’m providing copies to the Members of the Subcommittees. 

Our research yielded the names of 40 people who fit the criteria we had established. They ranged in age from 11 to 66. Seven were white, and 33 were black. 

They came from all walks of life—students, farmers, ministers, truck drivers, a 

homemaker and a Nobel laureate. These are the names inscribed on the black granite of the Memorial, which was designed by Maya Lin. 

But there were many, many other victims besides the 40 who are remembered on 

the Memorial. While we were conducting our research, we discovered the names of 

approximately 75 other people who died violently between 1952 and 1968 under circumstances suggesting that they were victims of racial violence. We did not add 

their names to the Memorial because their deaths did not fit the criteria we had 

established for inclusion on the Memorial or because we simply did not know 

enough about their deaths. Many of these killings were never fully investigated in 

the first place, and in some cases, law enforcement officials were involved in the 

killings or subsequent cover-ups. And precisely because the killings of African Americans were often covered up or never seriously investigated, we have no doubt that 

many slayings were not recorded in the sources we checked. 

The dedication of the Memorial in 1989 was a memorable event. Family members 

representing 39 of the 40 martyrs attended and celebrated the lives and contributions of their loved ones. Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, spoke eloquently 

at the dedication of her loss, her hopes, and the joy she felt over the fact that many 

of the forgotten martyrs of the movement were finally getting the recognition that 

they deserved. But the dedication was tinged with sadness, not simply because 

those remembered on the Memorial had lost their lives, but because most of the 

family members in attendance still awaited justice for the killing of their loved one. 

The reason justice had not been served was the callous indifference, and often the 

criminal collusion, of many white law enforcement officials in the segregated South. 

There simply was no justice for blacks during the civil rights era. The whole criminal justice system—from the police, to the prosecutors, to the juries, and to the 

judges—was perverted by racial bigotry. Blacks were routinely beaten, bombed and 

shot with impunity. Sometimes, the killers picked their victims on a whim. Sometimes, they targeted them for their activism. In some cases, prominent white citizens were involved. Herbert Lee of Liberty, Mississippi, for example, was shot in 

the head by a state legislator in broad daylight in 1961—and nothing was done. 

The victims also included Mack Charles Parker of Poplarville, Mississippi, an 

Army veteran who was accused of raping a white woman. In 1959, three days before 

his trial, a lynch mob dragged him from his jail cell, beat him, shot him in the 

heart, and threw his body in the Pearl River. The mob of eight white men included 

the jailer, a former deputy sheriff, and a preacher. Though most people in town 

knew who did it, no one was ever arrested. Finally, persistent FBI agents developed 

hard evidence against members of the lynch mob. The county prosecutor, who had 

earlier vowed to not prosecute the crime, refused to present it to a grand jury. U.S. 

Attorney General William Rogers called the action a ‘‘travesty of justice’’ and ordered the Justice Department to build a federal civil rights case. But a federal 

grand jury refused to indict, and the mob went free. No one was ever punished. 

In many cases, such as the murder of Emmett Till, suspects were brought to trial 

only to be set free by sympathetic white juries. 

There have been sporadic efforts over the years to solve some of the crimes that 

were ignored at the time by law enforcement officials. In some cases, prosecutors 

have performed heroically in bringing killers to justice. But the effort has depended, 

in large part, on the priorities and judgments of individual prosecutors. 

The most prominent figure to pursue prosecutions of civil rights era slayings between 1968 and the dedication of the Memorial was Alabama Attorney General Bill 

Baxley. Shortly after he took office in 1971, Mr. Baxley began investigating the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing—one of the most heinous crimes of the era. 

He doggedly pursued the case, even though the FBI refused to share its voluminous 

evidence with him. The FBI had investigated the crime extensively at the time it 

occurred in 1963 and had focused its attention on four local Klansmen with long 

histories of violence. Despite possessing secret tape recordings that implicated the 

suspects, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had closed the case in 1968 without bringing 

charges. 

Mr. Baxley wrote in The New York Times on May 3, 2001, that what he initially 

attributed to ‘‘innocent bureaucratic shuffling’’ was later revealed to be a ‘‘charade.’’ 

The FBI finally released evidence to him, but only after a reporter from the Los Angeles Times, with whom Mr. Baxley had shared his frustration, threatened to expose 

56

the FBI’s obstruction. The combination of the evidence Mr. Baxley developed on his 

own and the FBI’s evidence was enough to convict Robert ‘‘Dynamite Bob’’ 

Chambliss of first-degree murder in 1977. But Mr. Baxley still lacked enough evidence to bring charges against two other suspects that the FBI had originally identified—Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry. 

The case remained closed until U.S. Attorney Doug Jones reopened it in the mid1990s. Mr. Jones discovered that there was significant evidence that the FBI had 

not shared with Mr. Baxley during the Chambliss prosecution. This evidence included recordings made by a listening device placed near Blanton’s kitchen sink as 

well as tapes secretly recorded by Klan informant Mitchell Burns during drinking 

binges with Cherry and Blanton. Armed with this evidence, Mr. Jones convicted 

Blanton in 2001 and Cherry in 2002. 

In the mid-1970s, Mr. Baxley also tried, unsuccessfully, to prosecute three Klansmen for the 1957 murder of Willie Edwards Jr., a 25-year-old black truck driver who 

was forced at gunpoint to jump off a bridge into the Alabama River in Montgomery. 

The indictments of three Klansmen in that case were quashed twice by an Alabama 

judge who ruled that no cause of death had been specified. 

Notwithstanding Mr. Baxley’s success, prior to the dedication of the Memorial, 

there was little interest in reopening other cases. There was an assumption that 

most of the murder cases described on it were ‘‘cold’’ and that nothing could be done. 

In many cases, the assumption had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. There also was 

a lack of political will to see that justice was done. 

Fortunately, the dedication of the Memorial and the publication of our book ‘‘Free 

at Last: A History of the Civil Rights Movement and Those Who Died in the Struggle,’’ which was released in conjunction with the dedication, sparked renewed interest in these cases. Investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell of The Clarion-Ledger in 

Jackson, Mississippi, whose reporting is often credited with spurring prosecutors to 

reopen cases from the era, has said the book became a ‘‘road map’’ for his investigations, which began with an examination of the 1963 assassination of NAACP field 

secretary Medgar Evers. During the October 2005 dedication of the new visitors center for the Civil Rights Memorial, Mr. Mitchell said, ‘‘The Memorial stands as a reminder their killers walked free, even though everyone knew they were guilty. . . . 

After its dedication in 1989, it transformed into an instrument of justice.’’

Since that time, thanks in part to the hard work of dedicated journalists like 

Jerry Mitchell, authorities in two Southern states (Alabama and Mississippi) have 

convicted 10 people in connection with 11 murders from the civil rights era. Six of 

those convictions were for 10 deaths chronicled on the Memorial. (There also have 

been convictions in connection with racial slayings from the 1960s in Indiana and 

Pennsylvania.) In addition, James Ford Seale is currently on trial in Mississippi for 

the slaying of two of the martyrs on the Memorial—Charles Eddie Moore and Henry 

Hezekiah Dee. And former Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler has recently been indicted and is awaiting trial in the death of another Memorial martyr—Jimmie Lee Jackson, the Alabama college student whose death sparked the 

Selma-to-Montgomery march led by Congressman Lewis and others. 

But the hard truth is that much more remains to be done. 

In 13 of the 40 deaths noted on the Civil Rights Memorial, no one has ever been 

brought to trial. In 10 of the 40 deaths, defendants were either acquitted by allwhite juries or served only token prison sentences. And, of course, there were many 

more killings than those remembered on the Memorial. Our files include the case 

of Thomas Brewer, a prominent physician killed in Georgia in 1956. He was a local 

NAACP activist who was shot seven times in a department store by a white politician. No indictment was ever brought. There was Sam O’Quinn from Centreville, 

Mississippi, who was shot in the back shortly after joining the NAACP in 1959. He 

had been criticized often by whites in his hometown as being ‘‘uppity.’’ There was 

Sylvester Maxwell, whose body was found castrated and mutilated in Canton, Mississippi, in 1963. NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers saw it as a probable lynching; no arrests were made. There was 15-year-old Larry Bolden, shot in the chest 

by a white Chattanooga policeman responding to a call about teenagers making too 

much noise in 1958. 

In February of this year, after reading a story in The New York Times about the 

FBI’s ‘‘cold case’’ initiative, launched in 2006, we forwarded a copy of our book ‘‘Free 

at Last’’ (the story of the 40 martyrs) and our files on the 75 other cases to the FBI. 

The article said the FBI had compiled a list of 51 victims in 39 cases, most of which 

had never been investigated by the FBI; we don’t know the extent to which our list 

and theirs overlap. After we forwarded our list, I was asked to appear at a press 

conference with Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and FBI Director Robert 

Mueller. I was honored to be included. The press conference was held on Feb. 27—

57

ironically, the same day that a grand jury in Mississippi declined to issue any new 

indictments in the Till case. 

We applaud the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s interest in resolving the civil 

rights-era cases. We wish that this had always been a high priority. To ensure that 

it continues to be so, Congress should mandate that these efforts be coordinated and 

focused, while providing adequate funding and establishing clear reporting requirements. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act would accomplish this 

goal. 

It is appropriate, of course, to name the act for Emmett Till. His slaying in 1955 

and his mother’s decision to have an open casket at his funeral stirred the nation’s 

conscience and galvanized thousands of committed Americans to join the march for 

equality. Unfortunately, many others were killed during that march, and many of 

the killers, like those of Emmett himself, were never successfully prosecuted. 

We should not underestimate the difficulties that the passage of time has created 

in pursuing the civil rights era cases. But we should not let those difficulties—the 

product of our country’s neglect and failure—be an excuse for not doing what we 

can now. Some of the cases that are today considered ‘‘cold’’ may turn out to have 

some burning embers, and we should leave no stone unturned in our efforts to resolve them. 

During her speech at the dedication of the Civil Rights Memorial, Emmett’s mother said, ‘‘When my eyes were a fountain of tears, the realization came that Emmett’s 

death was not a personal experience for me to hug to myself and weep, but it was 

a worldwide awakening that would change the course of history.’’ The fact that no 

one was ever punished for Emmett’s death would not have surprised or deterred 

her. Instead, it would have only strengthened her commitment to justice for the 

other victims of the racial terrorism that plagued our country for so long. 

It should strengthen our resolve as well.

Mr. NADLER. I thank you. Ms. Bender. 

TESTIMONY OF RITA L. BENDER, ESQUIRE,

SKELLENGER BENDER, SEATTLE, WA 

Ms. BENDER. I would like to thank the Members of the Committee and the Chairs, and of course, Congressman Conyers, who 

was very helpful, I must tell you all who are too young to know 

it, in the years, in those terrible and glorious years of the Civil 

Rights movement. I am appearing before you today to support the 

passage by the Congress of H.R. 923. This important legislation 

provides an opportunity to confront our common legacy of racism, 

a confrontation long overdue. Since the end of reconstruction millions of African-Americans have been denied the right to vote, access to adequate schooling, to economic opportunity and to the full 

participation and the benefits of United States citizenship. This denial was systematically enforced by a complex of laws and by custom and practice, all of which perpetuated political and economic 

disenfranchisement. 

Violence was employed as a tool to maintain the status quo. In 

the State of Mississippi alone there were at least 581 lynchings. In 

January 1964, my husband, Michael Schwerner, and I went to Meridian Mississippi, just two of many Civil Rights workers who were 

committed to assist local people in their efforts to break the cruel 

tyranny of the Jim Crow system. We came of age at a time of great 

hope in America with the conviction that our country could change, 

that with the effort of many people, we would see the emergence 

of the society which had been promised in which the badges and 

indicia of slavery would forever be relegated to the brutal past. 

On June 21, 1964 while visiting an African-American church in 

Philadelphia, Mississippi, whose members had been severely beaten because of their commitment to voter registration efforts, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
58

dered. The murders were a group of 18 men who included the deputy sheriff, local police and others, all members of the Ku Klux 

Klan. Two members of the State patrol abandoned the conspiracy 

at the last moment but did nothing to prevent the killings that 

they knew were to occur that evening. The State of Mississippi did 

not bring murder charges until 2005. By then, many of the conspirators were dead. 

Of the eight surviving participants, only one was indicted. Edgar 

Ray Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter and 

is now serving a 60-year sentence. But throughout the south, there 

were hundreds of other murders, some of people who played active 

roles if the Civil Rights movement. There were also many victims 

who were simply available, killed to send the message that Black 

people had no worth and that those who opposed the stifling status 

quo could be eliminated without consequence. For decades the 

crimes of the Civil Rights era went unacknowledged. People lived 

their lives in the towns and cities where the crimes occurred often 

engaging in the small exchanges of life with the perpetrators. For 

some the continued interaction with persons who they knew had 

committed heinous acts must have been a constant source of intimidation even if nothing was said directly. For others knowledge 

of the crime and the failure of communal action to impose consequences on the actors was the denial of the seriousness of the 

event, a diminishment of civil society. 

The Civil Rights prosecutions, albeit very late, are an acknowledgement by our Nation that crimes were committed not just 

against the victims, but crimes that tore the very fabric of our social order. The belated acknowledgement by the State represents 

an important effort to confront the reality of the communal dysfunction. With such confrontation comes the possibility of healing. 

So criminal trials serve both to impose punishment upon the perpetrators for their individual wrongdoing, but also to acknowledge 

societal responsibility for the racism which permitted and even encouraged the violence to flourish. 

The testimony which is placed before the public, both those in 

the local community who sit through the trial, and those who may 

come to know about it through the media, serves to confront the 

questions of how such violence can have occurred. Indeed, in the 

Killen trial, some of the testimony was shocking in its revelation. 

One witness was a former mayor of Philadelphia who served in the 

1990’s. He was called as a character witness for Preacher Killen, 

who he assured the jury was a fine man and a good Christian. 

Asked by the prosecution if he would maintain his support for 

Killen if he knew Killen was a member of the Klan, a fact which 

the defense had already acknowledged, the mayor responded that 

he would, since he knew that the Klan had done good things, such 

as deliver food baskets to widows. 

Many people in the courtroom registered shock at this testimony. 

It was important for the community and the Nation to hear. It was 

an opportunity for confronting truth. The truth being the extent to 

which a significant portion of the White society had continued to 

deny reality and to cloak itself in a fantasy in which the wrongdoers were the Civil Rights workers who had disrupted the expectations and traditions of Jim Crow and not the society which had 

59

spawned the violence. Acknowledging these crimes and imposing 

appropriate punishment is an important societal obligation. Permitting the opportunity for communal acceptance of responsibility 

is a necessary part of restoration of civil society. If we allow the 

opportunity to pass without attempting to bring these cases to trial 

as possible, we lose forever the chance to understand who we are 

as a Nation. 

Let us allow these trials to encourage the public debate about the 

overreaching societal and governmental conduct that both enabled 

these crimes and which continues to cause racial inequality. The 

goal of trials should not be that once over there is no further discussion to be had. The opportunity for exploring how we move forward to bridge the racial divide then would be lost. Understanding 

our history is the necessary step toward ensuring that we move 

ahead as a society which is committed to healing our wounds and 

achieving reconciliation. The trials provide an opening for the process of restorative justice. They are important to the families who 

were so cruelly hurt by the crimes, but equally important for our 

Nation. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Bender follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RITA L. BENDER

I am appearing before you today to support the passage by the Congress of 

HB.923. This important legislation provides an opportunity to confront our common 

legacy of racism, a confrontation long over due. 

Since the end of Reconstruction, millions of African Americans have been denied 

the right to vote, access to adequate schooling, to economic opportunity, and to the 

full participation in the benefits of United States citizenship. This denial was systematically enforced by a complex of laws, and by custom and practice, all of which 

perpetuated political and economic disenfranchisement. 

Violence was employed as a tool to maintain the status quo. In the State of Mississippi alone, there were at least 581 lynchings. 

In January1964, my husband Michael Schwerner and I went to Meridian, Mississippi, just two of many civil rights workers who committed to assist local people 

in their efforts to break the cruel tyranny of the Jim Crow system. We came of age 

at a time of great hope in America-with the conviction that our country could 

change, that with the effort of many people, we would see the emergence of the society which had been promised, in which the badges and indicia of slavery would forever be relegated to the brutal past. 

On June 21, 1964, while visiting an African American Church in Philadelphia, 

Mississippi, whose members had been severely beaten because of the their commitment to voter registration efforts, Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew 

Goodman were murdered. The murderers were a group of 18 men who included the 

deputy sheriff, local police, and others-all members of the Ku Klux Klan. Two members of the State Patrol abandoned the conspiracy at the last moment, but did nothing to prevent the killings they knew were to occur that evening, 

The State of Mississippi did not bring murder charges until 2005. By then, many 

of the conspirators were dead. Of the eight surviving participants, only one was indicted. Edgar Ray Killen was found guilty of three counts of manslaughter, and is 

now serving a 60 year sentence. 

But throughout the South there were hundreds of other murders, some of people 

who played active roles in the Civil Rights Movement. There were also many victims 

who were simply available, killed to send the message that Black people had no 

worth, that those who opposed the stifling status quo could be eliminated without 

consequence. 

For decades, the crimes of the civil rights era went unacknowledged. People lived 

out their lives in the towns and cities where the crimes occurred, often engaging 

in the small exchanges of life with the perpetrators. For some, that continual interaction with persons who they knew had committed heinous acts must have been a 

constant source of intimidation, even if nothing was said directly. For others, knowledge of the crime and the failure of communal action to impose consequences on the 

actors was the denial of the seriousness of the event, a diminishment of civil society. 

60

A criminal trial is a public event through which a community attempts to confront 

a wrong, by determining guilt, by seeking to acknowledge responsibility, and by imposing a penalty commensurate with the wrong doing. But can such prosecutions 

be meaningful so long after the crimes were committed? 

These civil rights prosecutions are an acknowledgement by our nation that crimes 

were committed, not just against the victims, but crimes that tore the very fabric 

of our social order. The belated acknowledgement by the state represents an important effort to confront the reality of the communal dysfunction. With such confrontation comes the possibility of healing. 

So, criminal trials serve both to impose punishment upon the perpetrators for 

their individual wrongdoing, but also to acknowledge societal responsibility for the 

racism which permitted, and even encouraged the violence to flourish. 

The testimony which is placed before the public, both those in the local community who sit through the trial, and those who may come to know about it through 

the media, serves to confront the questions of how such violence can have occurred. 

Indeed, in the Killen trial, some of the testimony was shocking in its revelation. 

One witness was a former mayor of Philadelphia, who served in the 1990’s. He 

was called as a character witness for Preacher Killen, who he assured the jury was 

a fine man and a good Christian. Asked by the prosecution if he would maintain 

his support for Killen if he knew Killen was a member of the Klan, a fact which 

the defense had acknowledged, the mayor responded that he would, since he knew 

that the Klan had done good things, such as deliver food baskets to widows. 

Many people in the courtroom registered shock at this testimony. It was important for the community to hear. It was an opportunity for confronting truth-the 

truth being the extent to which a significant portion of the white society had continued to deny reality, and to cloak itself in a fantasy in which the wrong doers were 

the civil rights workers who had disrupted the expectations and traditions of Jim 

Crow, and not the society which had spawned the violence. 

These trials are publicized, receiving media attention around the country and the 

world. However, my experience was that some of the significant events in the Killen 

trial were rather private. The trial provided a catalyst for people to acknowledge 

the fear, anger, and pain they had carried for so long. 

I met an African American woman who waited on line each day to get into the 

courtroom. She had grown up in a neighboring county. She told me that as a child 

her parents had warned her never to go to Philadelphia, it was too dangerous. She 

had become a lawyer; since the trial courts are located in Philadelphia, she often 

came to town. She always found herself thinking of her parents’ warnings. One 

morning during the trial, as she had arrived early, she went across the street to 

the coffee shop. She was about to enter when two elderly African American women 

came down the street. One of them took her by the arm and gently said, ‘‘You don’t 

want to go in there dear. The restaurants are just for white folks.’’ Of course, she 

went in and ordered her coffee, but she told me that the experience reminded her 

that many people have yet to get over their sense that they constantly live in danger. For this woman, sitting through the trial and hearing the verdict was her opportunity to bear witness in the face of her community’s fear. 

Still, people who were unwilling to speak out over the years seemed to be struggling yet to understand what had happened in their community, not just on the 

night of the murders, but in the times since. I was struck with the depth of the 

wounds which had been imposed on this society, many of them certainly self-inflicted. The trial apparently permitted some to face truths about individual and collective culpability for the silence and the acquiescence which had allowed such 

crimes to occur repeatedly over so many years. 

I met a State Patrol Officer, one of many guarding the courthouse during the 

trial, who asked to speak with me in private. He was a white man in his late 50’s. 

With tears in his eyes, he told me that he had been in law enforcement since he 

was very young. He spoke of the bad men he had served with, who were now gone 

from the ranks. He said that the younger officers could not believe him when he 

told of how bad they had been. Why did he want to tell me this? Why was he crying? 

Perhaps because he had lived too long with the burden of knowing that evil had 

gone unpunished. I do think that he was attempting to acknowledge his part in collective responsibility. His recognition was his small, personal step towards the restoration of civil society. 

For others, there continued to be a need to deny. An elderly woman approached 

me every morning as I entered, to ask if I had had a pleasant evening, and if everyone was treating me with kindness. She then said to me, each morning, ‘‘You see, 

we are good people here, and we would never have allowed this terrible thing to 

happen had we known it was going on.’’ Despite the tableau of each day’s testimony 

which she heard, she was not capable of facing the underlying issue of community 

61

responsibility for all that had occurred. Her denial and avoidance of responsibility 

was palpable. The trials of these cases are painful for many different reasons. 

Acknowledging these crimes and imposing appropriate punishment, is an important societal obligation. Permitting the opportunity for communal acceptance of responsibility is a necessary part of restoration of civil society. If we allow the opportunity to pass without attempting to bring as many of these cases to trial as possible, we loose forever the chance to understand who we are as a nation. 

Let us allow these trials to encourage the public debate about the overreaching 

societal and governmental conduct that both enabled these crimes and which continues to cause racial inequality. The goal of trials should not be that once over, 

there is no further discussion to be had. The opportunity for exploring how we move 

forward to heal the racial divide would be lost. Understanding our history is the 

necessary step towards ensuring that we move ahead as a society which is committed to healing our wounds, and achieving reconciliation. 

The trials provide an opening for the process of restorative justice. They are important to the families who were so cruelly hurt by the crimes, but equally important for our nation.

Mr. NADLER. I thank you, and I now recognize Mr. Sykes for 5 

minutes. 

TESTIMONY OF ALVIN SYKES, PRESIDENT, EMMETT TILL 

JUSTICE CAMPAIGN INC., KANSAS CITY, MO 

Mr. SYKES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First I would, 

because I was just invited Thursday and was in the middle of the 

James Seale trial in Mississippi, I was not able to prepare a written testimony, so I would like to be able to submit it following. My 

name is Alvin Sykes. I am president of the Immaterial Justice 

Campaign. I am a 38-year veteran of the human rights victim 

rights field. On December 30th of 2002 Don Berger and myself met 

with Mamie Till Mobley in her home and discussed with her both 

the possibility of a Federal-State investigation, as well as an opportunity to turn the poison from Emmett Till’s death into the medicine of justice for many others. 

Following a meeting 4 days later the Immaterial Justice Campaign was formed. Mrs. Mobley was the first chairperson and I was 

designated as the coordinator. Two days later, unfortunately, she 

passed away. Having passed the torch to us, we continue with the 

mission of both missions. One, to get a Federal-State investigation 

into the death of Emmett Till, as well as to pursue potential legislation. First, with the investigation. After the meeting, I contacted 

the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department where I have 

had a 32-year partnership relationship with them and requested 

that there be an investigation into the case. I also knew at the time 

that there was going to be a jurisdictional issue, since they had a 

standing policy that they would not conduct investigations in cases 

that they could not prosecute and that the Civil Rights statutes at 

the time had expired with the 5-year statute of limitations. 

During the course of the investigation, of the request for the investigation and review that was started, we became aware of a 

memorandum that Antonin Scalia, who at the time was assistant 

attorney general for the Office of Legal Affairs at the Justice Department, had made in 1976 due to the request of an investigation 

into the death of President Kennedy. At the time that President 

Kennedy was assassinated there was not a Federal statute in existence that made the killing of the President of the United States by 

a single person a Federal offense. He was asked to do a report and 

62

see whether there was jurisdictional ways to be able to look into 

it. 

He then came up with 28 U.S.C. 533. I won’t go into the detail. 

In a written report it will elaborate. But this allowed for investigations to be done by the Federal Government even though they 

could not prosecute, didn’t have jurisdiction to prosecute the case. 

So we were able to then get them to move forward with their part 

of the investigation but we also understood that when you went 

this route and it wasn’t a Federal statute involved that you could 

not have the use of a Federal grand jury. So we approached the 

district attorney in Mississippi and asked that she become a copartner with this investigation so that the investigation could be 

conducted, and then results turned over to the State for prosecution in their case. 

They, in fact, did go through with that partnership and an investigation was conducted. And you are aware of the results. Following that—I mean, during the course of that period, we became 

aware that there were many, many unsolved Civil Rights era cases 

that did not have the notoriety of immaterial or the three Civil 

Rights workers. That there needed to be a systemic way to go after 

all of these cases. At that time, Senator Jim Talent was my senator 

from Missouri. And in conversation with him, I approached him 

about there being this systemic approach. That was the beginning 

of the Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. 

We feel that this legislation is very much important and that 

they recognize that the majority of these cases that could be prosecuted would be prosecuted on the State level. But we also understood that the State prosecutors did not have the resources to be 

able to go forward and prosecute and investigate these cases. And 

a lot of the witnesses were scattered around the country. 

So we allowed for in our effort to have this joint investigation, 

but we also felt that there was another provision that was not in 

the prosecutorial side of it. And that relates to the part relating to 

the community relations service of the Justice Department. We 

knew that since people were hesitant about cooperating with the 

Justice Department and with law enforcement that there needed to 

be a proactive effort to go out and find people who left the south, 

migrated to the north, such as Detroit and Chicago and get their 

minds opened up to come up with the names of the people who 

were either perpetrators or were victims in these cases. 

So in short, we are looking very much forward to being able for 

this legislation to go forward. I must return back to the courtroom 

in the James Seale case this afternoon. And my last comment I 

would like to make is to the perpetrators who committed these 

deeds and thought that they got away with it long ago. We strongly 

encourage you that once this bill is passed that you contact and retain attorneys, have your attorneys contact the prosecutors and 

start plea bargaining and making it easy on yourself because we 

are coming after all of you that are out there and we want to be 

able to bring you to the bar of justice. And for those that we don’t 

get, we want you to die fearing that you are next. Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank you, sir. I am going to do something a little 

unusual now. Because we have a reporting quorum for the bill and 

because that reporting quorum may not sustain itself, I am going 

63

to recess the joint hearing of the two Subcommittees. I would ask 

the witnesses to remain. I am going to recess the joint hearing of 

the two Subcommittees and then call a meeting immediately of the 

Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties 

for the purpose of recognizing the bill that is before us. And then 

we will return to the hearing of the two Subcommittees. I now declare the hearing of the two Subcommittees in recess. 

[Whereupon, the Subcommittees recessed for purposes of a markup.] 

[Whereupon, the Subcommittees returned from recess.] 

Mr. NADLER. I now declare the joint hearing of the Subcommittee 

on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, and the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security resumed 

from its recess. The Chair will recognize himself for 5 minutes for 

purposes of asking questions. Let me ask Mrs. Evers. Do you think 

this legislation and the actions that will stem from it will help surviving family members to heal. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. I certainly think that this legislation would 

do that because it would speak not only to the family members, the 

survivors, but to the Nation as a whole, that these people’s lives 

were not in vain. And I know we hear that term used all of the 

time. But it is very necessary to know that your loved one was an 

American citizen whose country believed in them. And we have a 

strong justice system to pursue those wrongs and see that they are 

corrected. I truly believe it would give a sense of relief and a deep 

sense of dignity and pride. And as I mentioned, to me it is very important that our younger generations also will be able to study our 

history, to look back and to see that even 30, 40 years later something positive has been done about those ills in our society. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. Let me just ask one more question. 

After, assuming that the Congress passes this bill, as I assume it 

will, can you think of anything more that Congress could be doing 

to help resolve these cases and to promote healing for the family 

members who suffer so greatly? Is there anything else we can be 

doing besides this legislation. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. I’m sure there must be. I don’t have a plan 

at this point. But with the organizations that we have in this country, Civil Rights organizations, the Poverty Law Center and others, 

I would really like to see a coming together of family members, 

legal persons, representatives come together and declare some kind 

of we have arrived at this point. Something that would be positive 

and that would send once again that positive message. There are 

lots of spokespersons out there who would love to express their 

feelings. And I don’t see any action as a negative one that we 

would take, but something positive, something uplifting, perhaps 

even something after the passage of this legislation that would be 

very public and very positive. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you very much. Mr. Jones, would this legislation have been useful to you when you were prosecuting the 16th 

Street bombing case? 

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, I think so. Obviously because it would 

have focused on the efforts. There would already have been something in place, a mechanism in place. My predecessor who was in 

the office who really opened the file had to kind of reinvent the 

64

wheel a little bit to try to look at these cases. You normally, as a 

United States attorney, go back. So we were kind of following the 

lead of the Evers case in Mississippi. But ultimately in our office, 

it was funded by the Justice Department. So we were going back 

to the then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who was very supportive. 

And so we were kind of creating the mold again, I think, for Federal offices. And as it turned out it really is a model I think for 

both cooperation of Federal and State offices. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. And finally, is there anything else you 

think Congress should be doing to help resolve these cases. 

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, I think that as a Congress this bill 

is very important. But I think as individual public servants going 

back to your districts in talking about these cases, in talking about 

the issues that still face people today, as Ms. Bender was talking 

about, I think that that does more than anything other than what 

we are doing with these bills and the prosecutions that could have 

a very dramatic impact. These cases should not be forgotten. And 

Mr. Chairman, if I could, I wanted to clarify one thing I said in 

my opening remark. I don’t want anything I said about the FBI 

files to be misunderstood. I got tremendous support from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, absolutely tremendous support. I believe their hearts were in the right place, their professionalism, the 

two agents who worked the case with the Federal employees, and 

I just didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding. 

Mr. NADLER. I don’t think there will be any misunderstanding 

between the different attitudes of the FBI in 1970 and 25 or 30 

years later. 

Mr. JONES. That’s right. Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you. I yield back to the gentleman from Arizona who is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I believe 

that Ms. Evers and Ms. Bender probably feel these cases in this 

situation as intimately as anyone in this room could possibly imagine. And I don’t know that any of us can truly identify with their 

circumstances to be widows of murdered Civil Rights leaders. And 

I would like to, if I could start with Ms. Evers—Ms. Williams 

and——

Ms. EVERS. Ms. Evers-Williams. 

Mr. FRANKS. Ms. Evers-Williams. Okay, I’ll get it right. And just 

tell us why you think that this is important to the past and to the 

present and the future what has occurred today. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. This hearing specifically. 

Mr. FRANKS. Yes, ma’am. And at least the first stage of the passage of this bill. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. It is important because it sends a message. 

If it goes no further than this Committee, these hearings, it sends 

a message to America as a whole that at least we as a Nation, we 

are entertaining legislation such as this. I do believe that it would 

be watched very carefully throughout this country to see what happens to it. If the legislation is passed and it is what injected, if I 

might put it that way into the community, in terms of its importance, how it relates to today, the past and how it relates to today, 

that it is going to have a positive impact in the communities 

around this country. And it certainly gives us hope for the future 

65

if we have come this far. It would say to me that this country has 

not given up on full justice. And that as Americans we can feel 

proud of it. We don’t have to hide our heads, shrug our shoulders. 

When our leaders speak about justice and equality in America and 

other countries of this world, look at us and point, which they do, 

to the inequities in our society, to the murders that took place here, 

it is more ammunition to stand up and be what we truly say that 

we are. And it gives our young people even more benefit of knowing 

the past and feeling strongly about their future. 

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, Ms. Evers. Thank you very much. Ms. 

Bender, what would be your response? 

Ms. BENDER. Well, I don’t know that it is a response as such. As 

I said in my remarks, and as I have said on numerous occasions, 

these cases are important to be brought to trial because they are 

not only a matter of what happened to people who were killed and 

people’s families, but perhaps in a way that—I can only speak for 

me. I cannot speak for other families. I can say that for me what 

happened to me, when I was 22 years old, has become integrated 

into the fabric of who I am now. All of us have had things happen 

in our lives that we come to understand and they make us the people we are. Having said that, what I think is important for me as 

a member of this society, as a proud citizen of this Nation, is to 

feel that there is a commitment to understanding and to helping 

our children, our grandchildren, understand how we got to where 

we are and what we are going to do about it. 

And there is a lot to be done about it. I believe that Mr. Nadler 

asked Ms. Evers-Williams what she thought was something that 

the Congress can do. I think what the Congress can and must do 

is return to the unfinished business in this country of addressing 

racial inequalities. And if doing that you bring justice. 

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank both of you 

ladies. I think that your husbands would be extremely proud of you 

and grateful for carrying on their legacy and their memory in such 

a noble fashion. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman. I now recognize for 5 minutes the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and 

Homeland Security, Mr. Scott. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. And I thank Ms. Williams and Ms. Bender for your continued activity making sure you bring justice to everyone, and that was branch president for the NAACP back in the 

1970’s. So I am familiar with Ms. Williams’ hard work in that organization over the years. Particularly when you were elected chairman you did a lot to bring the NAACP back together. So thank you 

very much. Let me ask Mr. Cohen, the FBI, you mentioned the 

form of partnerships between the NAACP, Urban League and 

Southern Poverty Law Center, are those organizations participating to the fullest extent appropriate? Is there more that those 

organizations can do to help in this effort? 

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, we have offered to help in any possible way that we can. When the partnership was announced in 

February of this year, I took it as more of a metaphoric thing than 

a literal thing because we had sent the FBI our list of cases. And 

of course, we stand ready to help them in any way that we can. 

I might not have called it a partnership at the time. I saw ourVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00071 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
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selves as applauding their initiative and offering our assistance in 

any way. I think obviously with the law enforcement agency to 

have partnerships with private organizations, there could be problems. But we are supportive of their work. 

Mr. SCOTT. Have there been lines of communication so that you 

can get all of the information you have available that might be 

helpful to them, have you been able to get all of that information 

to them? 

Mr. COHEN. Yes. We have sent them our entire files on all the 

cases that we have. At this point, I do not believe that there has 

been a central spot in Washington where these investigations are 

being coordinated. We had a number of calls. And when we spoke 

to people in Washington, they asked us to refer the callers to persons in various states. We do think it would be helpful to have a 

central repository in Washington, and I hope that the passage of 

this Act will prompt the creation of such a thing. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. Mr. Jones, if you bring the cases at one 

point or another, you are going to have to face a jury. Have we gotten to a point where we can have confidence that the juries will 

be fair? 

Mr. JONES. I believe so, Mr. Chairman. I think the cases we prosecuted in Birmingham are evidence of that. There has been many 

more cases, one of these cases than have been lost. And I certainly 

think in our two cases, we spent a lot of time with the jury, we 

spent a lot of time with questionnaires, we spent a lot of time in 

voir dire talking to the jurors. And what we ended up with were 

jurors that were a cross both gender, racial and age barriers. And 

I certainly think we can find that and I think we can continue to 

find that. 

Mr. SCOTT. During voir dire, how many people were you able to 

strike for cause because of perceived bias. 

Mr. JONES. I don’t recall exactly. But there were a number of 

people. And there were biases on both sides. There were those that 

expressed concern about the prosecutions, that it was maybe being 

done for political reasons. And the judge was pretty liberal with 

our ability to allow strikes for cause. We had a large panel, we had 

plenty to choose from. So he was pretty liberal in allowing strikes 

for cause. On the other side, we also had folks who felt like that 

they could not be fair to the defendants. They had grown up with 

this crime, lived in the communities. And overall, I think it balanced out very, very well. The judge that handled the case was tremendous. 

Mr. SCOTT. What kind of evidence is available. I assume there 

is not much DNA. But what kind of tangible evidence do you have 

available? 

Mr. JONES. In our case, we had virtually none, except for that 

tape-recording which we found. There are a lot of tape-recordings 

out there. 

Mr. SCOTT. Have you been able to get those? Notwithstanding, 

how they were obtained, have you been able to avoid the exclusionary rule? 

Mr. JONES. We did with the one tape. That was the only one that 

we found that we wanted to try to introduce. 

Mr. SCOTT. Do you believe there are others. 

67

Mr. JONES. I would not be surprised. There were just so many 

wiretap tapes, undercover tapes made during the time. It is just 

hard for me to believe that there is not something somewhere that 

is a pretty inculpatory to certain defendants. 

Mr. SCOTT. Could I get one other question in briefly? 

Mr. NADLER. The gentleman is recognized. 

Mr. SCOTT. Can you say a word about the reliability of the testimony. 

Mr. JONES. I felt that in our cases that we had quite reliable testimony. We didn’t have a tremendous number of witnesses. In the 

Blanton case, we had the tape-recording, we had the testimony of 

a man, we actually read the testimony into evidence, who was kind 

of a security guard. We called them defense league people that 

helped guard the church who saw Blanton and Robert Chambliss 

who was convicted in the 1970’s outside the church at 1 in the 

morning. 

In the Cherry case, the Cherry case was a lot different. The 

Cherry case consisted primarily of the tape and the fact that Cherry had lied so many times to the FBI over the course of his career. 

He just couldn’t keep them all straight. And that can be pretty 

damning evidence sometimes. And in addition he made a lot of 

boastful comments that helped convict Byron De La Beckwith in 

Mississippi and it helped convict Bobby Frank Cherry. 

Once he called a press conference after he had been interviewed 

to complain about the FBI, to complain about the harassment and 

declare his innocence, the phone started ringing. His granddaughter called. His ex-wife found us. So there were other people 

who came forward with testimony about what Mr. Cherry said over 

the years. And it was again damning and very reliable evidence. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from California is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Jones, 

I would like to ask you about one of the issues that as got to come 

up right away. Defense attorneys have got to bring up a motion to 

dismiss based on the fact that it is unfair to a defendant because 

witnesses have died. And if you can’t show that the defendant has 

done anything overtly to push off the prosecution, how do you respond? I noted in your written testimony, you talked about the law 

in Alabama being very, very tough on this point where you say the 

defendants must not just show a delay, but an intentional delay designed to gain a tactical advantage and that the delay caused actual substantial prejudice in the conduct of his defense. To your 

knowledge, is that a higher standard in Alabama than is found in 

a lot of other States and is that a higher standard than on the Federal level? 

Mr. JONES. Congressman, I believe it is a fairly standard actually. Remember that the statute of limitations is passed by State 

legislatures and Members of Congress. And in murder cases, there 

is no statute of limitations. So the issue is always going to come 

up in any kind of delayed case. In this case, the defense could not 

show any delay, purposeful delay on the part of the State of Alabama. And this was an unusual case because I was the United 

States attorney, but actually was designated as a special assistant 

68

attorney general for the State. They couldn’t show that. And in 

fact, they really couldn’t show any prejudice from witnesses because there were really no witnesses that really supported their defense. 

Mr. LUNGREN. And you mentioned that after what was his name, 

Cherry had the press conference that all of a sudden the dike broke 

and you got people coming back with information. 

Mr. JONES. Yes, sir. The media has played an important role. 

And I think Ms. Evers-Williams will attest to that as well. The 

media has played an important role in getting the word out about 

these cases, the fact that they are going to be looked at again and 

the fact that there is a serious investigation. And when Mr. Cherry 

had his conference the phone started ringing. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Let me ask you about that because you talked 

about his granddaughter, you talked about co-workers and others, 

former wife, et cetera. Did they come back out of the woodwork, so 

to speak, because they now knew an investigation was going on or 

was this something that sort of psychologically hit them where they 

realized they had to come forward. 

Mr. JONES. I think it was primarily the fact that they realized 

there was an investigation going on. The ex-wife, it was an interesting story with the ex-wife——

Mr. LUNGREN. It usually is. 

Mr. JONES. This one was even more. She was Cherry’s third wife. 

I think three out of five for Mr. Cherry. And she had not been with 

him very long. And, in fact, had lived in Chicago and they were 

moving back to Birmingham and she described him as very abusive 

and made up her mind to leave. And she told me that when she 

drove back to Birmingham in 1974 that he got out of the car and 

slammed the door and she slammed the gas and never looked back. 

And she couldn’t be found. Bill Baxley had tried to find her. We 

tried to find her. My FBI agents had tried to find her. And she saw 

an article that our mutual friend, Ms. Evers and I, mutual friend 

Jerry Mitchell wrote that hit the wire services. And she saw it in 

her hometown newspaper in a little town in Montana and picked 

up the telephone and drove herself about 200 miles because she 

thought Bob had already gone to prison. She didn’t know. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Here’s the amazing thing. During this period of 

time, he felt cocky enough and confident enough to talk to people. 

It was common knowledge in his family, according to your written 

testimony. His granddaughter, what motivated her in this case? 

Mr. JONES. She was estranged from the family, she was young, 

she was 22 or 23 when she came forward I believe, and I think it 

was just a different generation of people who—there are folks out 

there, there are people whose parents or grandparents or others 

who have grown up in a different way and want to make sure that 

justice is served and want to do the right thing. And she came 

twice. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Ms. Evers-Williams, let me ask you this. One of 

the things I find as I talk to young people about the Cold War, 

sometimes I have blank stares when I talk about communism, I 

talk about the Soviet Union, I talk about what we went through 

when we were growing up, the fear of a nuclear attack, those sorts 

of things. And so you have to restore history as you are explaining 

69

to them what it is. I have some concerns about that with respect 

to the Civil Rights movement. 

Do the young people today fully appreciate what you went 

through? What others went through? Ms. Bender, what you had to 

go through? It is a terrible story of hate and racism and death and 

destruction, but it is a magnificent story of courage and persistence 

and there are Blacks and Whites who are heroes as well as those 

who were devils. How do we make that real to young people today? 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. I have taken it upon myself to be a teacher, to be a link between that period of time and today with the 

young people that I encounter. And I do it at quite a few high 

schools and on college campuses. There is a curiosity about that period of time. I think most young people want to hear about it. Then 

they conclude that they could never live like that, how did we do 

it. How did we overcome that period of time. They want honesty 

from you in terms of how did you actually feel. And there have 

been times when I have said, not proudly, but truthfully, that I 

was filled with hatred for a while. They want to know how did you 

overcome it, how did you get to where you are. 

We did not know about those people in those times until we 

talked to you. It is not in our school books. Our teachers don’t talk 

about it. What can we do to have access to that kind of information. Many young people come back, and even those who are in 

graduate school or whatnot and ask what it is I can do. But on the 

other hand there are some young adults who say that helped them 

back then, I don’t want to be bothered with it, it doesn’t relate to 

me. So it becomes a job of taking the past, of relating it to today, 

the present, and helping them work through the future in terms 

of what everyone paid, the prices that they paid. I shared with a 

group once that I have not always felt like an American. 

Born in Mississippi, went through the schools, everything, but 

my sense of being an American that could treasure that did not 

exist. And I was asked well, when did you feel that way, did you 

ever feel that way. Of course I felt that way. And we talked about 

9-11. And I said that was one time when I felt so American. I also 

went back to a time at Medgar’s funeral at Arlington Cemetery 

that I felt American when they played taps and when that American flag was folded and presented to me. There is a sharing of information that is so badly needed to make a bridge from what was 

then to what is today. 

And I believe that with a number of programs that are taking 

place, and I can talk about the center’s tolerance, other organizations that are putting information in schools, and the willingness 

to talk and the willingness for those of us who have been through 

it to be honest with our feelings and say we have come this far, 

things have been cleared for you now, it is your responsibility not 

only to learn more, but to take it to the next step. And that usually 

seems to get dialogue going in all of the places and it is something 

that is extremely positive. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. 

Chairman, for the time. 

Mr. SCOTT. [Presiding.] Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Evers. The 

gentleman from Michigan, Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Conyers. 

70

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you, Chairman Scott. I want you to know 

that this has been the most distinguished panel since I have been 

on the Judiciary Committee. And we have had lots of important 

people. But I’ll tell you why. What else can we all do is being done 

right here now. We have got to replicate this. This can’t be a hearing that is transcribed by the stenographer and put in the archives. 

We have got to bring this out. All of you are on the speaking circuits and go around and so are all of us. You should know as the 

most senior Member of this Committee, this is the most distinguished Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives since 

I have been here. 

We have got an ex-attorney general from California sitting down 

on the end, Lungren. And we have got two former U.S. attorneys. 

We have got distinguished legal activists and city councilpersons, 

lawyers and even good people from Iowa. This is an experience not 

just for you in America. It is a good experience for us because we 

keep getting better and better. I have never heard since 1965 this 

much American history. And in preparing for this I started looking 

at Taylor Branch’s trilogy. Everybody on this Committee and in the 

panel know about it. 

And it started out as a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., but 

the detail was so enormous that it really became a history of the 

Civil Rights movement and each one of you are in it. I can’t—that’s 

why when you take this and what you have done and said here 

today and put them together, it’s something we’ve got to go back 

to, we’ve got to make the case for history. Of course, young people, 

I had no regard for history, most of us didn’t when we were young. 

We were going to make history. We didn’t need to learn history. 

And of course, we know the fallacy of that concept, but by all of 

you being here today has been enormous in recommitting America 

and this Government to what it ought to do. 

Now, let me just point out that there are some missing files 

around here, because the FBI was secretly taping all the while and 

I would never turn to the people who were holding the records of 

the tapes to ask them were there any tapes that you haven’t 

turned in yet. You know what that’s like asking. What we have 

there were also a lot of records that were kept by those who were 

running the White citizens counsels and the police departments, 

and all kinds of state agencies and police organizations that do 

have materials that we have an obligation to continue to search for. 

Now, the reason this is so big, it took two Subcommittees to handle this hearing today. It is not just looking back, it is how we are 

going to move forward. When we were talking to the Deputy Assistant Attorney General earlier, and we started calling off all of the 

jurisdictional powers in the Civil Rights division, remember those? 

Housing, education, employment, hate crimes. Now here is what 

the budget is, this is the budget request. For the Department of 

Justice it is 21.8 billion, but the Civil Rights division with all those 

7 or 8 responsibilities, they get $116 million. 

Now if that doesn’t suggest that we need to look at our priorities 

in the Department of Justice, nothing does. Those are resources. 

We’ve got to put more money in this to really get something to happen. And so I come here today to tell you in the what-else-can-wedo list. We’ve got to have an oversight of the Department of JusVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00076 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
71

tice, because much of it, particularly the Civil Rights division, 

wasn’t even created until Lyndon Johnson came along and the Civil 

Rights movement started. 

So we have got to examine who’s in it, what are they doing and 

look back on their record, not to be partisan or to point fingers, but 

we’ve got to understand what they did, what they didn’t do, where 

they succeeded and there were good chapters in there, but there 

are some things that we’re not proud of, because in the end as 

much personal tragedy was involved, as much unknown, unsolved 

murders and suffering. The Government was involved in holding us 

back, it was the failure on the Government’s part to deal with this 

in a more forthright manner, but the question is not then but now. 

We still have voting rights abuses. We still have violence and intimidation and terror and coercion and fear in America, and we 

want to try to get rid of as much of that as possible. So if I can, 

Mr. Chairman, I would just like to ask of these tremendous witnesses that we pulled together, if you have any words of solace and 

calming that would soothe me and make me feel even better about 

the nature of these hearings. 

Attorney Sykes, what do you say. 

Mr. SYKES. First, I’m not an attorney, I’m a human rights worker, I think it is about seeking a justice seeking atmosphere in this 

country. I think that this hearing is a very part of that. I think 

that now we will be able to close a part of this chapter and be able 

to use it to create justice and give a greater sense of justice in this 

country. 

Mr. CONYERS. Ms. Bender. 

Ms. BENDER. I don’t know that I want to calm you down, sir. 

Mr. CONYERS. Did I mention Morris Dees in my tirade? 

Mr. COHEN. You did, sir. 

Mr. CONYERS. Cohen and Dees at the poverty center have been 

doing great, great work. I know he could have been a witness here 

with you, but both of you have done historic work, I want to remember him. 

Mr. COHEN. He would have been a very eloquent witness, it was 

Mr. Dees’ idea to build the Memorial, he was so concerned that 

people had forgotten the names of the persons who had died, that’s 

why we did it. I wish I could put Ms. Evers or Ms. Bender in a 

bottle and send them to every high school in America so they could 

talk about those days, unfortunately we can’t. We send films to 

schools, free of charge about the Civil Rights era. The one thing we 

try to get across to people is as great as your former Secretary was, 

as great as Dr. King was, that it was a movement kind of the people and we try to tell young people that all of them are historical 

actors and that how history will remember them depends upon 

what they do in their day-to-day lives. I think we need a rebirth 

of that understanding, and the Civil Rights movement, I think, is 

probably the greatest example of that in our history. I’m glad you 

have those books. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. 

Doug Jones. 

Mr. SCOTT. If you could be brief, because we are a little bit over 

time. 

72

Mr. JONES. Let me say, I tell children and kids, lawyers, I wish 

that everyone that I speak to about these cases could have either 

a case or something in their life that they did that means so much 

to so many people and it changes you personally, and what I think 

we do, this panel and what I know you have done for many, many 

years, Mr. Chairman, is to try to throw that little pebble in the 

pond and let it ripple out, and that’s the goal. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. I’m in total agreement, Congressman, with 

my colleague here, I don’t want you to come off of your tirade because your voice and the voice of others, your voices need to be 

heard. There is an understanding, a sense of urgency, commitment 

that’s in your voice. And the more people who speak as you do and 

others to this legislation and to this issue the better off we will be. 

So I guess, in conclusion, I would say that my prayers are for your 

longevity and your strength and a proud voice that will help to motivate others and carry us through and for those of us who are 

here, to be able to support in whatever way we can. 

Mr. CONYERS. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

Mr. King. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First I want to thank 

Chairman Conyers for the compliment, he has not quite gone overboard and declared me an honorary Dr. King, I still await that. I 

appreciate the working relationship that we have here, the sentiment that’s been expressed by all Members of the Committee, the 

testimony of all the witness. 

I want to express first that for me these experiences that you 

have related are just uttered foreign to the environment that I 

grew up in. And so I had to try to watch in on the news and see 

what was happening and try to relate to that as a young man that 

was formulating his ideology, and now I find myself several decades hence having a far better understanding of circumstances that 

were taking place in places like Philadelphia, Mississippi that I 

have been to visit, and certainly compelled to sense what went on 

there. 

I remember the time I think that it framed for me the most was 

on a random trip down along on the east side of the Mississippi 

River, and by happenstance, my wife and I drove through Port Gibson, Mississippi. And as we drove through there, I recall that there 

was a priest from our hometown who had the charge of that parish, 

who I believe is St. Joseph’s parish in Port Gibson, Mississippi. 

And so as a surprise visit we stopped to visit Father Tony Putins, 

he was amazed that we would show up at his door, but he took us 

next door from the rectory into that church which was built in 1848 

by the hands of the family of James Boyd of all people, some of the 

hands, I’m sure there were many others. The woodwork carving 

was done by the Boyd family, I understood, it has what I call igloo 

glass that makes it look like you’re standing in an igloo. 

As we stood there on the floor of that church, he related the week 

before they had buried the newspaper editor who had, in 1967, defied the segregation within that congregation, in that that church 

was built with the ground floor for White families, the balcony for 

Black families, and that the White editor of the newspaper had in 

1967 taken his family, his five children and his wife and they went 

73

up to the balcony to sit with the Black families. At that moment 

about half of the White families in the church walked across the 

street to the other church where those families go to this day and 

have an integrated congregations of about 75 families in that parish. I relate this story because for me to stand there, it brought together the understanding that there were people that believed they 

could build a house to worship the Lord and segregate us. And I 

could not comprehend that coming from my background. 

So as I listen to your testimony today, I comprehend it far better 

than I would have had I not stood in that church and gotten a lesson from Father Tony Putins. As I hear the solid strength ring 

through your testimony here, I think that you have a message that 

transcends the decades and the generations, a message that needs 

to be the bridge as you said, Ms. Evers-Williams, you need to make 

a bridge from what was to what there is today but also into the 

future. 

Perhaps this time would be a good time to ask the question, if 

I could, Ms. Evers-Williams, what’s that look like and how do we 

get there? I will note that we made a tremendous amount of 

progress and my sense is the tension have diminished dramatically, 

but how do we get to where we need to go and how would you define that? 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. If I had the answer to all of that I would 

market it, I tell you. 

If we take it as an individual challenge, one-to-one we can make 

a lot of progress, but it will be much, much slower. One of the 

things I believe we need desperately is to upgrade our educational 

system. It’s just been within the last few months that the State of 

Mississippi passed legislation to have Civil Rights taught in their 

schools and prior to that time there was nothing. But if we build 

bridges as I’ve heard someone say, a brick at a time, a martyr at 

a time and enough of us are doing this, we will eventually have a 

strong bridge to walk over. 

Using, and I mean that in a positive way, using the resources, 

the human resources in a manner in which we can reach out to 

young people through the different organizations that already exist 

to bring dialogue groups together, to bring community groups that 

are working to uplift people in that community, whether it be 

unwed mothers or welfare mothers or whatever to inject into the 

day-to-day living this whole need for societal change and get them 

actively involved in it in some way. I’m sure that there must be 

groups out there that are doing this kind of thing, but perhaps 

there needs to be some research on who is doing what and see 

what we can do to bring them together. It’s a slow process, but we 

have seen progress made and I would just like to say we should 

continue. 

Mr. KING. A 15-second concluding remark I would appreciate the 

opportunity to say as I look at this from the outside however great 

the pain, however great the sacrifice that era of this nation’s history was a glorious time, because we rose above something that 

drug us down and we continue on the trajectory into the future 

built upon this foundation you have articulated. I want to thank 

you all so much for your testimony for being here today and I yield 

back. 

74

Mr. SCOTT: Thank you. 

Mr. Sykes? 

Mr. SYKES. I have a 2:20 flight due, I ask to be excused so I can 

try and make it. 

Mr. SCOTT. Are there any questions just for Mr. Sykes at this 

point? He has a plane, very quickly. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. First of all, can I just proceed. 

Mr. SCOTT. No, he has to leave, if somebody has a question just 

for him. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Sykes, let me thank you for being a 

human rights worker. You had to deal with a lot of families, we 

lost Emmett Till’s wife, should that be a component as well in the 

legislation to embrace and to make sure we have resources for 

those families? 

Mr. SYKES. The 1.5 million in the community relations service is 

part of the outreach that it does, in fact, address interaction with 

the family. What it helps do is have the families and the other witnesses feel comfortable coming forth to and cooperating with the 

Justice Department and the other investigators, so that’s the part 

that does——

Ms. JACKSON LEE. If it specifically——

Mr. SCOTT. The gentleman has a plane. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. If it more specifically states it in the language 

it would be preferable if the families were specifically stated in 

there. 

Mr. SYKES. Yes, it would certainly be included. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Thank you. 

Mr. SCOTT. Without objection, there may be other questions we 

would forward to you in writing if you would kindly respond. We 

appreciate your testimony and hopefully you can make your plane. 

Thank you very much for being with us. 

Mr. SYKES. I need to get back to the trial. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you. 

The gentlelady from Texas, Ms. Jackson Lee is now recognized. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me thank all of the witnesses for what has 

been an enormously powerful experience. Mr. King, let me thank 

you because I think what we saw today is that every one has their 

individual and singular experience in this journey, American journey of Civil Rights. 

It is interesting that the basis of solving the cases were if you 

will on the backs, on the shoulders I think it is better to say of 

family members, some lovingly, some disgruntled, but I think the 

issue of the burden on families that have carried this loss for so 

long, Ms. Myrlie Evers-Williams, finding your American hood at 

the time you were able to sit at the Arlington Cemetery and, in essence, be brought back into the fold, back into America’s true values is an important issue for me. 

I wanted to just cite what I think is an eloquent enunciation, 

families are also victims you said. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. Yes. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. They go through an emotional hell, sounds of 

terror, such as guns and firebombs, the loss of love, the loss of companionship, the loss of care are all vital elements that sometimes 

go unnoticed, or as we rush toward the judgment of the conviction 

75

we have to rely upon families, and to a young 22-year-old who was 

probably part of a living part of one of the more renowned viciously 

and violently renowned, the thought of three young men having to 

either be killed or to have suffocated or however the ultimate, but 

to be dug out in the most horrific set of circumstances does not in 

any way diminish any other violent death, but certainly, if anyone 

had an iota of history, they would remember, as they would remember a Medgar Evers as he knelt on that yard, it is forward embedded in my vision to see that and to see you holding him in your 

arms. 

So I would appreciate it, if I could ask all of the witnesses, to 

just make a comment about the importance of the family in pursuing these cases, particularly to the U.S. Attorney Jones on providing the momentum and the persistence of the case going forward so that you, the appointed or elected person can have an excuse, if you will, as you speak to the media, as you speak to those 

who may not be outright opponents, but are sceptics, how important it is. 

I raise this question because of the necessity of the timeliness, 

we need to move on these unsolved cases. Family members don’t 

live forever and so if we have third cousins or someone that are 

still here, how important that is in being able to bring the conclusion. 

Ms. Bender. 

Ms. BENDER. Well, I think sometimes people use the word ‘‘closure’’ and I find that to be a very, very overused and not particularly helpful word because it implies that you put things in a box 

and put them away. I don’t think that’s what happens. 

For me, the Killen trial was an astounding experience because 

what I was not prepared for was the way in which people in that 

community reacted to the grief and sorrow that they and fear that 

they had lived with for 41 years before the trial, and this was both 

White people and Black people in the community who talked about 

their fear, who talked about their—some of them their unwillingness to acknowledge what had happened. 

I met one man who was in his late 50’s who was a Mississippi 

State patrolmen who asked to speak to me in private. He was a 

White man and he described to me with tears coming down his 

cheeks, he was very tall, good looking man, and there were tears 

rolling down his cheeks as he said to me, I’ve been in law enforcement since I was a very young man in my 20’s and I saw—I knew 

very bad men who were a part of law enforcement in this State, 

and I knew very bad things, they are all gone now, they have retired from the ranks or they have died, and I try to tell the young 

officers what it was like, they can’t understand. 

I don’t know why that man was crying, I think it was partly his 

acknowledgment that he was aware of evil and his effort to talk to 

me about it was I think some little step in his own effort to reach 

for some kind of redemption. I think these trials are terribly important, not just to family, but to all of us. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Cohen, Mr. Jones and Ms. Williams, could 

you quickly answer the importance of family and I agree not for 

closure, but to continue to ensure that we finish the task on the 

criminal justice side. 

76

Mr. COHEN. When we dedicated the Civil Rights Memorial in 

1989, we had hundreds of representatives, of the 39 of the 40 families whose names were on the Memorial. The only ones who were 

not there, Paul Giehardt’s family, a French reporter killed at Ole 

Miss, it was the funeral many families had never had. It was a tremendously important event, just sitting with people and talking at 

the Memorial about what it meant to them was a very, very moving experience. Yet I know that for many people, Miss Till, for example, the fact that there had never been justice in her case was 

a wound that she lived with every day, and I know that there are 

many, many other family members who are in that same position 

now. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES. Yes, I think every prosecutor will tell you the involvement of the victims is extremely important. After all, when you 

really boil it right down, we can talk about the significance and the 

historical significance of these cases, but they are murder cases, 

they are real people that had real victims. And while people can 

wait for the justice system to work, it has to work and we have to 

focus on the individual. We tried our case not as a historical Civil 

Rights case, but as a murder case where four young children were 

killed and it is never too late to go about that. I will tell you the 

victims and families were very supportive. They maintained—you 

have to maintain a good relationship with them. And I relayed a 

personal story, the greatest compliment I ever had was after the 

Cherry trial, the second trial, Ms. Alva Robinson, who I became 

very close to, passed away that summer just within 2 months, her 

son at the Memorial service said, thank you for coming, but thank 

you for what you did, it was because of you, she died with a smile 

on her face. It is all about the families. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Ms. Williams. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. As I was preparing to come to this hearing, 

I spoke to my younger son, who was three at the time when his 

father was assassinated. He said, Mom, how are you feeling about 

this? I said, you know, the fact that I’m testifying has brought so 

many memories back that I thought I had put aside. We continued 

to talk and he said to me I know when I reached a point where 

I could deal with my dad’s death. And I mentioned the time that 

just before the trial that Medgar’s body was exhumed from Arlington, taken to Albany, New York, and they did another examination 

of his body, got the evidence that they wanted. 

This young man insisted on going and being there, he said he 

wanted to take care of his dad. He was told that he would not be 

able to see Medgar’s remains in the casket when was opened. Van’s 

response was you will have to kill me to keep me out of there. I 

said, please, let him see his father’s body whatever remains there. 

It just so happened that when that casket was opened, Medgar’s 

body was in perfect condition except for the tips of his fingers and 

I knew then and there believing as I do in a greater spirit than 

us, that he remained in that condition so his son, who was 3-years 

old at the time, could see his father. 

And Van said to me when he returned home, now I know where 

I came from. And I think that sentence now I know where I came 

from, probably speaks to what we are talking about now of knowVerDate 0ct 09 2002 16:21 Sep 05, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00082 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\CONST\061207\36017.000 HJUD1 PsN: DOUGA
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ing the history, of knowing who we are. Of being able to forgive 

and be willing to go on. As Medgar said to me, Myrlie, hatred is 

bad. Those people that you hate, most of them don’t know it. There 

are those that you hate, they could care less, and the best thing 

for you to do is not hate and rise above that. 

I mention those two things, it is not really answering your question, but they are things that happened in the lives I believe of the 

people of the relatives of the victims that little by little make a 

change in your life and you find positive ways of going on and shed 

contributing. 

For me, my coming here today was a little tougher than I 

thought it was going to be emotionally. But I’m so glad that I can 

say with this 44th anniversary that I was here, that I participated 

in some way in what I hope will be a bill that will pass that will 

say America, you are on your way to a full justice system. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I thank the gentlelady and I thank her for her 

service as the first woman to chair the NAACP board, powerful and 

continue in your power. I yield back. 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. Thank you. 

Mr. SCOTT. I don’t think she was the first woman. 

Gentleman from Alabama. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me do one brief thing 

with my time, first, I want to make sure all of you note the Chairman of the Committee, Mr. Conyers has been here the entire time 

of this hearing. He is not the Chair of the Subcommittee, and the 

fact that he has spent now two and a half hours, 3 hours worth 

of his time, I want you all to appreciate as people who don’t come 

on the Hill everyday how rare it is for someone who is not chairing 

and who wasn’t talking the whole 3 hours of that time, Senate they 

can talk all 3 hours, I want to thank John Conyers for being here. 

Mr. Jones, I would like to share with the panel a story that I 

have told you privately several times, because I think it is illustrative for the reporters who are here and the people left in the audience. I was a television commentator during the first trial which 

I believe was the Blanton trial, I believe. And I dealt with the reporters so I picked up all the scuttlebutt about the trial. There was 

a very strong feeling that you were going to have a hard time getting a conviction. You had a racially mixed but predominantly 

White jury, you had frankly an old, battered, broken White man 

who was sympathetic in terms of his physical appearance. His 

whole appearance appeared to say, leave me alone, I don’t have a 

lot of time left anyway. 

There were a lot of people who wondered if on 40-year old evidence, 40-year old eyewitness statements and statements in general, a lot of people wondered if you had any chance to prevail. 

The day the jury went into deliberations they were sent to lunch 

and a young woman who used to work on my staff but was then 

a lawyer in Birmingham watched them having lunch at the Birmingham Museum of Fine Arts. The Black jurors all sat at one 

table, the White jurors all sat at another table. I remember I 

wasn’t in Congress then, she wasn’t working for me, she called me 

and she said, there is no way that a jury of people who can’t even 

sit together for lunch will come back and do the right thing. So she 

predicted hung jury. 

78

I remember getting a call on my cell phone from the producer of 

the station saying there’s been a verdict, can you help us open up 

the newscast on 5. 

There was gossip that they’ve already come back and said it’s a 

hung jury, a lot of people were expecting after 2 hours that they 

were so locked into their past and their skin color that they 

couldn’t agree. One of the most gratifying things that I have witnessed in my time as an attorney was to have those 12 jurors who 

couldn’t even eat lunch together a few hours earlier to say that the 

justice in this case was so manifest that they had no choice but to 

do the right thing. 

So Ms. Bender, when you talked about the redemptive power of 

these trials, yes, it is redemptive for the families, yes, it is redemptive if you believe in justice, it is also redemptive if you believe in 

the modern south. It’s redemptive if you believe our region and 

people are changing and extricating themselves from the foxholes 

they have lived in for most of their lives. 

So I want to thank Doug Jones one more time and all the witnesses on this panel for their courage and for what you have done 

to help redeem the modern south and I yield back the balance of 

my time. 

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Ellison from Minnesota. 

Mr. ELLISON. Thank you again, Representative Davis, that was 

very important that you mention, that’s actually where my question goes, if the trial was redemptive, because it allowed us to in 

some way face the past in some way, I don’t know if corrective is 

the right word or face it, what about the important of pursuing 

those unresolved cases as the trial itself helped to, in some way, 

rectify the past, does the unresolved nature of the cases that still 

exist continue to exact a price, inflict a wound, leave a scar? And 

what does that look like and what does that mean. 

Ms. Bender? 

Ms. BENDER. I would say, yes. I would say that there are many, 

many, many of these cases that have never been acknowledged, 

never had any particular notoriety. You know, the case that’s going 

on right now, the Seale’s trial involved two men Mr. Dee and Mr. 

Moore whose bodies were found when the rivers were being 

dragged for the Neshoba murder victims, as soon as it was realized 

that they were not any one of those three victims, that case disappeared and it was known very early on who the probable killers 

were. It was just one of the great untried crimes of the south. 

There were two Black kids, 19 years old, their terrible crime was 

they were hitchhiking. 

So yes, it is important that these cases be tried. It is part—if you 

want to frame it in redemptive terms, it is part of national redemption to understand how deep the wounds are. 

Mr. ELLISON. Ms. Bender, it is funny you should point that out, 

Representative Davis and I are from of the same era and we probably would be the same age as your children are. I could tell you 

growing up that both of my parents one from Louisiana and one 

from Georgia there are so many things they just really don’t want 

to talk about and they actually begin to crack a little when they 

start talking about it. 

79

Do you think there is such thing as generation until pain, even 

if you were you weren’t there for the facts or too young to realize 

what was actually happening, is it possible the next generation can 

sort of get—can feel the pain of what happened because they were 

raised by the survivors of the tragedy? Am I making any sense Ms. 

Evers-Williams right now? I have in mind the strong emotion that 

your sons experienced, why he absolutely had to be there at that 

exhumation, what is the next generation dealing with if we don’t, 

in some way, address these unsolved cases? 

Ms. EVERS-WILLIAMS. That’s why I think we have to address 

them. It is bridging that gap, communication has an awful lot to 

do with it and as you mentioned your parents and many others 

choke up. 

I have found in my family and in other families too the more you 

talk about your pain and about what happened, the easier it becomes to overcome it, you can emote one way or the other those 

young people in the family have a chance to see it and to I think 

better understand it. I had an opportunity to talk to a group of college students and many of them cried because they didn’t know. 

They cried because it had happened. They cried because they didn’t 

realize that in a time and place in America these things happened 

and they didn’t know. I’m not sure whether they were crying because it had happened or crying because they didn’t know and they 

felt deprived because they did not know. 

Tears flowed freely with them. And I had an opportunity to see 

some students later after that, a year or so later, and they told me 

how that had changed their life and how they had decided to go 

into another area of expertise rather than what they had thought. 

So you don’t know when you talk—when you remote, when you 

share exactly what good is going to come from it. 

Mr. ELLISON. Mr. Jones. 

Mr. JONES. I would like to follow up on the question Ms. Bender 

addressed, because I agree with her, but I also come about at a little bit different way because we keep talking about trying the 

cases, and it is important to try those cases that can be tried, not 

all of them can be tried. And that’s why I think that this hearing 

today and this bill is so important because during this time the 

criminal justice system of this country let down people like Myrlie 

Evers and families and victims, and truly a whole race of people 

in this country, the system just did not work for those people. And 

there was also the perception and the overwhelming number of 

cases that people didn’t care, the system wasn’t working because 

people did not want it to work, State officials did not properly investigate the crimes and they didn’t. 

So I think the fact that we are here today with this bill and these 

cases are going to be examined in a thorough way, in a probing 

way. Those that can be prosecuted will be. The mere fact we are 

here today will be looked at, also sends that kind of message that 

Ms. Evers-Williams was talking about, it is a very important message to get out there that we just won’t let up, justice really means 

something. 

Mr. ELLISON. Quick point before I yield back, Ms. Bender, Ms. 

Evers-Williams, I can’t ever express how grateful I am to you for 

your courage and commitment, thank you very much. And to Mr. 

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Cohen and Mr. Jones, you know, thank you for carrying the fight 

on, it is just absolutely essential that you do it, untold millions are 

in the debt of all four of you and many more than that. Thank you. 

Mr. SCOTT. I thank all of our witnesses and I mentioned earlier, 

Ms. Williams, as a former branch president of the NAACP, and I 

particularly thank you for your service to that organization. 

Without objection all Members have 5 legislative days to submit 

to the Chair written additional written questions for the witnesses 

which we’ll forward and ask the witnesses to respond as promptly 

as you can so the answers may be part of the record without objection. All Members have 5 legislative days to submit any additional 

materials for inclusion in the record. With that the Chair without 

objection, the hearing is hereby adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 1:38 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN CONYERS, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, AND MEMBER, SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION, CIVIL RIGHTS, AND

CIVIL LIBERTIES

For those who did not live through the this period, it is difficult to understand 

the climate of fear and violence that gripped the nation during the Civil Rights era. 

Simply for acting on their ideals, innocent people were struck down in the prime 

of their lives to deliver a message of racial hate. These murder cases reflect the 

most heinous of the hundreds of crimes committed against Americans during the 

Civil Rights movement. Most shocking by today’s standards, State and local law enforcement colluded with the perpetrators of anti-Civil Rights violence. Attempts at 

justice often proved to be a charade and ended with jury nullification or tampering 

by racist citizens’ councils. 

For the families of the victims and those who lived through it all, the memories 

are still vivid and affect their daily lives. Today, for example, is a significant date, 

as it marks the 44th anniversary of Medgar Evers assassination. His widow joins 

us today to bear witness to the importance of this legislation. Moreover, a major 

trial is currently taking place in Jackson, Mississippi—the trial of James Seale, who 

has been charged with the abduction, beating and drowning of two black teenagers, 

Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, in 1964. 

Since 1989, 29 Civil Rights era ‘‘cold cases’’ have been re-examined, with 22 resulting in convictions:

• In 1994, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith was finally convicted for 

the 1963 hate crime and murder of NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers. 

Two all-white juries had previously deadlocked in the late 60s.

• In 1998, former Klan imperial wizard Sam Bowers was convicted of the 1966 

hate crime and firebombing of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer.

• In 2002, former Klansman Bobby Cherry was convicted of the hate crime and 

first-degree murder during the 1963 firebombing of a Birmingham church—

well-known for the resulting deaths of four Black schoolgirls. His partner in 

crime, Thomas Blanton Jr., was convicted for this same hate crime in 2001. 

We are joined today by Doug Jones, the prosecutor in that case.

For every infamous killing that tore at the South in the 1950s and ’60s, however, 

there were many more that were barely noted, much less investigated. That is why 

I support this bill, the Emmet Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. For the more 

than 100 case identified in February by the FBI, there must be a clear and unambiguous statement from this Congress that the pursuit of justice shall not rest. 

Although many of the most notorious murders took place in Mississippi, racist 

murderers killed victims throughout the south. Examples of some of the unsolved 

cases include:

• the 1968 ‘‘Orangeburg Massacre’’ at South Carolina State University where 

state police shot and killed three student protesters;

• the 1967 shooting death of Carrie Brumfield, whose body was found on a 

rural Louisiana road;

• the 1957 murder of Willie Joe Sanford, whose body was fished out of a creek 

in Hawkinsville, Ga.;

• the 1946 killing of a black couple, including a pregnant woman, who was 

pulled out of a car in Monroe, Ga., and dragged down a wagon trail before 

being shot in front of 200 people.

As one commentator has stated, ‘‘the fact that it has taken more than 40 years 

for justice to be delivered in cases like these speaks volumes about power in society, 

but when we consider that many more who committed horrible atrocities and hate 

crimes during that era may never be brought to justice, never serve time for their 

crimes against other human beings, never be asked to atone for their wrongdoings, 

then we begin to understand the power of race.’’

This legislation is important to closing a grim chapter in our nation’s history; a 

time when domestic terrorists attempted to derail our march toward freedom and 

equality. For that reason, I believe it is important that the perpetrators of these 

crimes be brought to justice, even 40 years late. While justice was delayed for the 

victims of Civil Rights era hate crimes, the fact that we are raising these cold cases 

breathes new life into our justice system. Ultimately, that commitment bodes well 

for our collective future and reconciliation within these communities. 

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