Civil Rights era murder case reopened

Although the statute of limitations on federal prosecution that was in place at the time has expired, the state of Mississippi may still be able to prosecute, and it appears there is new evidence to implicate accomplices who are still living and were not tried at the time.

Nearly a half century after Emmett Till's mutilated body was found in a Mississippi river, the U.S. Justice Department on Monday reopened an investigation into the murder of the black teenager whose death helped spark the civil rights movement.

FBI agents and other personnel will be sent to Mississippi to assist local authorities in investigating the 1955 murder, which horrified the country and added fuel to the civil rights movement.

Till, a 14-year old from Chicago, was kidnapped and killed while visiting family in Money, Mississippi in August 1955.

Two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Millam, were charged with Till's killing, but were acquitted by an all-white jury.

The men later described in a magazine interview how they had beaten Till -- who had apparently whistled at Bryant's wife -- shot him, then tied a fan to his neck with barbed wire and pushed his body into the river.

Because they had already been acquitted, the men could not be retried. No others were ever indicted or prosecuted for involvement in the kidnapping or murder.

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The wheels of justice do indeed turn exceeding slow.

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all."
--Retribution, by Friedrich Von Logau