JACKSON, Miss. - Over the last three years, the FBI scoured faded documents, interviewed aging lawmen and tracked down witnesses from killings that occurred decades ago, many of them involving white police officers who shot black men or teenagers.
Now, the agency is at a dead end in the search for relatives in at least 33 civil rights-era cases, and the FBI needs the public's help. Agents are appealing for relatives of the victims to come forward, the latest challenge in a three-year-old effort to right historical wrongs.
"We have done everything we can to find those families and we've run out of leads," said Cynthia Deitle, unit chief for the FBI's civil rights division. "Whether it's a spouse, child or parent. We've even gone as far as locating cousins who are the next of kin."
In some cases, the FBI is looking for family members to provide any evidence or details about the crimes. In others, agents want to give a status update or simply tell the relatives the FBI's investigation has ended.
Among the cases is Johnny Robinson, a black teen shot by police in 1963 in the aftermath of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala. Another case is the killing of John Earl Reese, a 16-year-old who died in 1955 when two men fired shots on a black cafe in Gregg County, Texas.
The Civil Rights-Era Cold Case Initiative began in 2006 with a solemn charge: Reopen long dormant cases from a period in America's history when blacks and whites were killed in the South's bloody fight to maintain a segregated society.
The unit had 108 cases under investigation, including the infamous Ku Klux Klan slayings of three civil rights workers found buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi in 1964. A part-time Mississippi preacher was convicted of manslaughter in 2005 in the case, and the investigation continues.
The FBI said those identified as suspects in nearly half of the homicides are now dead. Federal officials also have determined about 20 cases were not racially motivated homicides.
