Ossoff and Cruz push bill to extend term of the board tasked with investigating unsolved Civil Rights-era murders

By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas on Thursday introduced a bill that aims to give an independent agency more time to investigate unsolved racially-motivated murders from the Civil Rights era.

The bipartisan move would build on a 2018 law, extending the term of the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board to 2027. That would allow the board to reopen cases of Black people murdered between 1940 and 1979 and release relevant documents. According to data collected by Plain Talk History, a community of educators, there were at least 45 murders between 1940 and 1968.

The board was authorized in 2019 by former President Donald Trump to work until 2024. But Trump did not make any nominations. President Joe Biden announced his picks last summer, but they have not yet been confirmed, and the clock is ticking to unearth evidence from more than 40 years ago.

“During the Civil Rights movement, there were far too many unsolved violent race-based crimes committed against African Americans,” Cruz said in a statement. “It’s my hope that by giving the Review Board more time to examine the case files related to these unsolved crimes, we can shed sunlight on these Civil Rights cold cases and finally bring justice to the victims and their families.”

Ossoff echoed Cruz’s comments. “The victims of lynching’s and unsolved civil rights crimes deserve justice. So do their families,” he said.

The idea of the board came from a group of New Jersey high school students who began sending out public information requests to the FBI and the Department of Justice in 2015 to solve unresolved crimes from the era themselves. The group then drafted a bill, which eventually caught the attention of Rep. Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois, who introduced the legislation in the US House of Representatives.

Rush is expected to introduce the House version of Ossoff and Cruz’s bill to extend the board’s term.

“While it is too late to bring back the Black men and women murdered during the Civil Rights era in racist acts of terror, it is not too late to bring answers and closure to families of victims who never saw justice,” Rush said.

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