Editorial: Giving justice a chance

Thursday, June 21, 2007 | 7:19 a.m.

T he House passed a bill Wednesday in honor of Emmitt Till, the 14-year-old from Chicago whose 1955 killing in Mississippi was a pivotal moment in the civil rights era.

A Senate version of the Till bill appears headed for quick passage, as it should be.

The bill directs the Justice Department to set up a special unit to investigate unsolved, racially driven killings during the civil rights era, primarily the 1950s and 1960s.

Included in the bill is funding for the next 10 years: $10 million a year for the Justice Department, $2 million a year in grants for local law enforcement agencies with open cases and $1.5 million to establish coordination among federal and local investigators.

During the civil rights era, brutal crimes against black people, including Till, were common.

What weren't common, however, were convictions. All-white juries repeatedly acquitted white murder suspects. Or there was never any arrest to begin with.

In recent years state and federal prosecutors have met with success in arresting and convicting people who escaped justice decades ago. Edgar Ray Killen, for example, was convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned two years ago for his role in the killings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in the summer of 1964.

That case and others show that despite the passage of time, justice could still be served in many of the killings of that era. Dozens, possibly hundreds, of cases from that era remain unresolved, including Till's.

We hope the House and Senate bills are quickly reconciled and sent to President Bush for his signature. The cases get harder to solve with each day that passes.

We agree with Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and civil rights leader, who said it is a "dark stain" on American history that so many killers - guilty of beatings, shootings, arsons, drownings and lynchings - never faced the justice they deserved.