Kweisi Mfume, President & CEO, of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said he was pleased to learn of the U.S. Department of Justice's decision to reopen its investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till.
Mfume said: "Clearly, for those of us who over the years have remained convinced that this murder should be revisited, this is a day of mixed emotions. I am glad the case is being reopened, but it is sad that it has taken so long."
Till, a Chicago teenager was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss. on Aug. 28, 1955, after he had allegedly whistled at a white woman. The 14-year-old's mutilated body was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River. He had been savagely beaten and shot in the head. An all-white male jury acquitted the alleged perpetrators, now deceased, of this heinous crime, but reports suggest that witnesses and other culprits may still be alive.
Mfume wrote last year to Mississippi Attorney General Mike Moore urging him to reopen one of the last remaining unsolved murders of the earlier civil rights era. Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley, who fought tirelessly to see justice done in the killing of her son, died shortly before the NAACP's plea to reopen the case. She worked tirelessly for many years to see justice done in her son's case.
In his letter to Moore, Mfume said, "It is now time to address what remains an ugly mark on the history of Mississippi and the United States."
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