It's about time ....

Some would say it's way past time and there is a small minority who are hoping that the past will stay burried in the past. This week Senators Christopher Dodd (Dem. Conn.) and Jim Talent (Rep. Mo.) are introducing a bill that would set up a new unit withing the Justice Dept. to investigate and hopefully solve old civil rights crimes, lynchings and murders that occured before 1970. However I must say that in most cases it is going to be 'too little .. too late' ,memories are getting dim and a good deal of the witnesses and the perpetrators themselves are long since dead. I'm sure that the distant family of Emmett Till will get some sense of satisfaction from the Gov't. finally stating publically that Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam are guilty of murder. Less than a month after being aquitted Bryant and Milam bragged to reporter William Bradford Huie from 'Look Magazine' (Jan.24, 1956) about how they kiddnapped, beat and shot 14 year old Emmitt then tied his body to a cotton gin fan and threw him into the Tallahatchie river . The federal Government didn't see the need to step in back then, after all, he was only a black child and he did do the unspeakable act of which he was accused ..whistling at a white woman in public. This new unit in the justice Dept. will also be tasked with helping states that are doing their own investigating, such as Mississippi, which has just convicted Ray Edgar Killen of manslaughter in the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in Philidelphia , Mississipppi. Senator Dodd stated, " The people who perpetrated these crimes should never have a day of peace" . This has to be one of the few times that I will admitt to agreeing with a politician. however, it would be even better if the people who perpetrated these crimes had spent the last fifty years living a miserable existance on a chain gang in Mississippi rather than enjoying the smug satisfaction of knowing that they got away with murder .