FBI to exhume body of civil rights figure Emmett Till News
FBI to exhume body of civil rights figure Emmett Till

[JURIST] FBI officials announced Wednesday that the body of Emmett Till [Wikipedia profile] will be exhumed in upcoming weeks to determine the cause of his death and uncover evidence that could lead authorities to accomplices in his 1955 murder [PBS documentary]. In a brutal event that galvanized the country at the outset of the civil rights movement, Till was kidnapped from his uncle’s home in Mississippi and brutally murdered after he whistled at a white woman outside of a grocery store. Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River three days later, and no autopsy was performed. Roy Bryant, the husband of the woman Till purportedly whistled at, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half brother were tried for Till’s murder and acquitted after defense attorneys suggested that the body could not be positively identified. After their acquittal, both men confessed [PBS report] to beating and shooting the 14-year old Chicago native. In 2004 the US Justice Department announced plans to reopen the investigation [press release] into Till's death after new evidence revealed in a documentary film [official website] suggested that Bryant and Milam, now both deceased, had two accomplices. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.