CHICAGO - Though Mamie Till Mobley never lived to see it, the pressure she exerted over four decades to have her son's 1955 murder reopened has finally borne fruit: The Justice Department (news - web sites) is now looking into the case.
R. Alexander Acosta, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division said Monday officials will reopen the Emmett Till's race-motivated murder following a long campaign by the NAACP, members of Congress and Mobley, who died in Chicago last year at age 81.
"I can see her sitting in the chair with a tissue, and her cheeks rosy red and her eyes full of tears. It would be a happy, relief, burden-lifted type of cry," said Airickca Gordon, 34, a cousin whom Mobley helped raise.
After Till's murder, his mother insisted upon a public viewing and funeral in Chicago for her only child. Pictures of the battered body shocked the world, and the case became an early spark for the civil rights movement.
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