Before Barack Obama left Birmingham in 2004, he insisted on visiting the 16th Street Baptist Church where four youths died in a Ku Klux Klan bombing in 1963.
“I walked him over to the church and showed him where the bomb was planted,” said former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones of Birmingham. “That shows he not only has a sense of history, but a sense of justice and what needs to be done for the communities.”
The Obama administration will be the first to implement the newly passed Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act, which creates a cold-cases unit inside the Justice Department to gather information for possible prosecution of unpunished killers from the civil-rights era. Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden were co-sponsors of the bill.
Magnolia Tribune
