    [House Hearing, 110 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                             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

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                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                     JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan, Chairman
    HOWARD L. BERMAN, California         LAMAR SMITH, Texas
    RICK BOUCHER, Virginia               F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.,
    JERROLD NADLER, New York                 Wisconsin
    ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia            HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
    MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina       ELTON GALLEGLY, California
    ZOE LOFGREN, California              BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia
    SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas            STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
    MAXINE WATERS, California            DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California
    MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts      CHRIS CANNON, Utah
    WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts   RIC KELLER, Florida
    ROBERT WEXLER, Florida               DARRELL ISSA, California
    LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California         MIKE PENCE, Indiana
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee               J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
    HANK JOHNSON, Georgia                STEVE KING, Iowa
    LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois          TOM FEENEY, Florida
    BRAD SHERMAN, California             TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
    TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin             LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
    ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York          JIM JORDAN, Ohio
    ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
    ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama
    DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida
    KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota

                Perry Apelbaum, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
                     Joseph Gibson, Minority Chief Counsel
      Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties

                       JERROLD NADLER, New York, Chairman
    ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama                 TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
    DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida    MIKE PENCE, Indiana
    KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota             DARRELL ISSA, California
    JOHN CONYERS, Jr., Michigan          STEVE KING, Iowa
    ROBERT C. SCOTT, Virginia            JIM JORDAN, Ohio
    MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee

                         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            J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia
    WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts   LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas
    JERROLD NADLER, New York             F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.,
    HANK JOHNSON, Georgia                Wisconsin
    ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York          HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
    SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas            STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
    MARTIN T. MEEHAN, Massachusetts      DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California
    ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama
    TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin

                          Bobby Vassar, Chief Counsel

                        Michael Volkov, Minority Counsel

                                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

                                    APPENDIX

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

                             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:]

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        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
    acquitted. 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 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 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 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.
        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 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:]
                    Prepared Statement of Grace Chung Becker
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        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 National 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 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
    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.
        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.
        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 Rights era. I view this
    legislation as a now-or-never piece of legislation. 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 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 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 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 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 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.
        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.
        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 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.
        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 paralyzed 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.
        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 hand-delivered 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.
        [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.
        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 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 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 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.
        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, 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
    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 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.
        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. 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 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.
        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 all-white 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 information 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 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 mid-1990s. 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 all-white 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--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
    murdered. 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 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.
        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 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 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 co-partner 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 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 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 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 ourselves 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.
        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 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 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.
        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-we-do list. We've got to have an oversight
    of the Department of Justice, 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.
        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 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.
        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 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.
        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
    knowing 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.
        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.
        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. 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.]
                                A P P E N D I X

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                   Material Submitted for the Hearing Record

    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

    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: