No Federal Charges in Emmett Till Slaying; State Decision Is Pending
The FBI said Thursday that no federal charges would be filed in the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Emmett Till, a case that helped galvanize the civil rights movement.
The investigation had been reopened and Till’s body was exhumed for autopsy in June. But FBI agent John G. Raucci said in a statement that the five-year statute of limitations on federal civil rights violations expired.
The FBI gave its long-awaited report to a Mississippi district attorney, Joyce L. Chiles, who will decide on any state charges. Chiles did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he could only hope state charges would be brought.
“It’s painfully consistent there was no federal pursuit of the killers 50 years ago and now there is no federal charges against those they did not pursue,” Jackson said. “We can only hope that justice will not continue to sleepwalk through one of the most publicized lynchings in the history of our country.”
Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi in August 1955 when he was beaten and shot, purportedly for whistling at a white woman. His body, weighed down with a cotton-gin fan around his neck, was pulled from the Tallahatchie River a few days later.
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