Justice Dept. to Aid Probe of Till Case

Mississippi Looking at 1955 Slaying Again

The Justice Department announced yesterday that it will assist the Mississippi attorney general's office in a new investigation of the slaying of Emmett Till, nearly 50 years after the 14-year-old African American was pulled from his bed and beaten to death for whistling at a white woman.

R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, said evidence has emerged that could lead to more arrests in the slaying. The two white half brothers who were acquitted of murder in the slaying have died, but others who allegedly helped kidnap Till in August 1955 are still alive, Acosta said.

"Recent renewed interest in the matter has suggested the potential that others were involved in the murder," a Justice Department statement said. At a news conference, Acosta alluded to revelations made in the documentary film "The Murder of Emmett Till," produced and directed by Stanley Nelson. It aired on PBS last year.

A five-year statute of limitations on federal murder cases that existed at the time has expired, Acosta said. Mississippi officials said federal authorities asked them last winter to consider reopening the case, because suspects could be tried only under Mississippi law. State authorities agreed to lead the investigation.

District Attorney Joyce Chiles, whose office covers the region where the slaying occurred, was traveling and could not be reached for comment. Acosta would not specify how many suspects there are or the evidence against them.

On Chicago's South Side, Till family members and friends gathered at the office of U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D) to celebrate the announcement and note the commitment of Mamie Till Mobley to her son's cause. "Not a day went by when she didn't think about her son," said Till's cousin, Earlene Green.

In Nelson's film, one black man says on-camera that he heard Till screaming as a car drove from his uncle's home, and another says he came upon two men scrubbing Till's blood from the car. Authorities never questioned them, Nelson said.

"I think the central thing to remember about the Emmett Till case is it was never really investigated," he said. "We realized that if anybody had really investigated, who knows what they might have found? We weren't trying in the beginning to reopen the case at all. There were people who were still alive who were afraid to testify at the trial."

Emmett Till's lynching is one of the most infamous in American history. The emotional response helped ignite the modern civil rights movement.

Till, who was from Chicago, was naive about the Jim Crow South when he visited relatives in Money, Miss., in 1955. While shopping in a dime store, he whistled at a white store clerk and possibly touched her hand. One night in late August, he was abducted from his uncle's house, beaten and shot. His corpse was dumped into the Tallahatchie River.

In Chicago, Till's mother insisted on an open-casket funeral, and thousands filed by to see the child's mutilated face. Photographs of the event in Jet and Ebony magazines elicited widespread outrage.

About a month after the funeral, an all-white jury acquitted Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam, after their attorney told jurors that their forefathers would turn in their graves if the men were convicted. The jury deliberated about an hour before setting the two free.

Later, the brothers told a magazine reporter that they had kidnapped Till, driven him to a shack, beaten him unconscious, shot him in the head, wrapped barbed wire around his neck, fastened it to a large metal fan and dropped his corpse into the river. Milam died in 1980, followed by Bryant 10 years later. Till's mother died last year.

Acosta declined to answer questions about why his department is assisting an investigation nearly half a century later. He said he was not aware of anyone who had requested Justice Department help in the years since the slaying took place.

That is contradicted by the documentary Acosta cited at his news conference. The film says Mamie Till Mobley requested an FBI investigation of the case shortly after her son's death. The bureau refused, Nelson said.

In addition, Nelson said, the Library of Congress "has files full of letters from people who were asking the federal government to get involved in the case. We actually talk about it in the film. We have those letters. There are thousands."

Acosta declined to name those who made recent requests to open the case. Nelson said the Justice Department had received about 10,000 postcards sent by individuals who sat through screenings of his documentary.

The NAACP's president and chief executive, Kweisi Mfume, also called on Mississippi to look into the killing. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) called on the department to review the case after seeing evidence gathered by another filmmaker, Keith A. Beauchamp, for a film that has not yet been released.

"I thought about what the motives were," Nelson said, referring to the reopening of an emotionally charged case in an election year. "Why now? But it's still a great thing that the case is being opened."

Staff writer Robert E. Pierre in Chicago contributed to this report.