Mississippi jury refuses to indict for civil rights era murder (Suzanne Goldenberg)

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A Mississippi grand jury refused to issue an indictment for the killing of Emmett Till, the teenager whose murder 50 years ago galvanised the civil rights movement.

Suzanne Goldenberg -- Guardian/UK

Feb. 28, 2007 -- WASHINGTON -- A last hope of justice over one of the most painful episodes in the racial history of the United States was apparently lost Tuesday when a Mississippi grand jury refused to issue an indictment for the killing of Emmett Till, the teenager whose murder 50 years ago galvanised the civil rights movement.

Fifty-two years after Till's kidnap and murder, and two years after his remains were exhumed from his grave by federal investigators, a jury declined to issue charges against one of the few people left alive and implicated in his death.

The prosecution had sought manslaughter charges against Carolyn Bryant, now 73, the widow of one of the two white men who confessed to Till's killing after their earlier acquittal by an all-white jury.

Till, aged 14, who lived in Chicago, had been visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi in August 1955, and allegedly whistled at Ms Bryant in a grocery store. He was later abducted by a group of men -- and some some say Ms Bryant -- and his mutilated body was dredged out of the Tallahatchie river three days later.

The decision yesterday frustrates a plan to resolve scores of suspected murders of African Americans in the south in the civil rights era. In Washington yesterday, the FBI announced a partnership with the civil rights group NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Centre, and the National Urban League, to try to bring closure to cases before the last witnesses of that era die.