Feds turn up heat to solve cold cases of civil rights days
ATLANTA -- As he treks across the Dixie roads he traveled as a young FBI agent in the mid-1960s, Jim Ingram gets a similar question from many people about his quest to solve murder cases dating back to the civil rights era.
"We say, 'Look, a law has been broken, and we're committed,'" says Mr. Ingram, who came out of retirement at the FBI's request. "Then they say, 'Why are you doing this now?' Ingram answers: "Because it was not carried to its final conclusion 40 years ago."
The US government recently announced that it is reexamining nearly 100 such cold cases –- an effort that's being helped by changing attitudes of law enforcement and the public in the South, even among former supremacists...
But circumstances were different during the civil rights era. "In the 1960s...there were Klan members in law enforcement, and it was a direct pipeline back to the very people they were investigating," says former US Attorney Doug Jones, who brought two Ku Klux Klan members to trial in 2002 for a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Ala. "Today, people are coming forward to assist."
Read entire article at Christian Science Monitor
"We say, 'Look, a law has been broken, and we're committed,'" says Mr. Ingram, who came out of retirement at the FBI's request. "Then they say, 'Why are you doing this now?' Ingram answers: "Because it was not carried to its final conclusion 40 years ago."
The US government recently announced that it is reexamining nearly 100 such cold cases –- an effort that's being helped by changing attitudes of law enforcement and the public in the South, even among former supremacists...
But circumstances were different during the civil rights era. "In the 1960s...there were Klan members in law enforcement, and it was a direct pipeline back to the very people they were investigating," says former US Attorney Doug Jones, who brought two Ku Klux Klan members to trial in 2002 for a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Ala. "Today, people are coming forward to assist."