[1] The U.S. Senate passed the legislation on September 24, 2008, by unanimous consent, and President George W. Bush signed the bill into law on October 7.
In the summer of 1955, visiting family in Mississippi, Till was accused of whistling at, or flirting with, a young, married White woman in a grocery store.
[7] The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act was first proposed on February 8,[8] 2007 and was passed by Congress and signed by the president in 2008.
In the Senate, the effort was led by Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri), Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont).
[3] The bill creates increased collaboration between local or state law enforcement, the FBI, and other elements of the Department of Justice.
[11] The U.S. Department of Justice reopened the case of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was fatally shot in Alabama in 1964 by James Fowler, a state police officer.
[3] It aimed to connect the FBI, the Department of Justice, and law enforcement officers to organizations, such as universities or advocacy groups, that had also been investigating cold cases from the Civil Rights era.