President Bush is breathing fresh air into an old case that still resonates in the minds of many African-Americans today. He recently signed The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007 into law, which will now allow the FBI to reopen, investigate and prosecute unsolved civil rights crimes that occurred before January 1, 1970, and resulted in the victim’s death, according to wallstreet journal.com. The bill is named after Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was murdered after allegedly whistling at a White woman in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. Despite the fact that the husband and brother-in-law of the woman later admitted beating, shooting and ultimately throwing the young boy into a river, the two men were acquitted by a White jury and no one has ever been convicted in Till’s brutal death.

The bill will also provide $10 million a year over the next ten years to help agencies like the FBI continue to work on these types of cases.