Madam Speaker, on April 24th, the Olathe, Kansas, Human Rights Commission will pay tribute to Alvin Sykes, a tireless crusader for civil rights within the Kansas City metropolitan region, who recently persuaded the U.S. Congress to…
Madam Speaker, on April 24th, the Olathe, Kansas, Human Rights Commission will pay tribute to Alvin Sykes, a tireless crusader for civil rights within the Kansas City metropolitan region, who recently persuaded the U.S. Congress to approve, and President Bush to sign, legislation establishing a permanent ``cold case'' unit in the U.S. Department of Justice to review approximately 100 unsolved murders, including the notorious killing of 14 year old Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955. Both as chairman of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign and as a leader of numerous other struggles for human rights and racial justice in the Kansas City area, Alvin Sykes has received much-deserved national attention for his efforts, as is detailed in two articles from USA Today and wolfmanproductions.com, which I am including with this tribute. I join with the Olathe Human Rights Commission in paying tribute to this important leader within the Kansas City community and I know that all members of the U.S. House of Representatives join with me in celebrating this tireless activist for social justice.
[From USA Today]
Perseverance Pays Off for Civil Rights Activist
(By Laura Parker)
Washington.--Alvin Sykes holds none of the standard
credentials to wield influence in the power corridors of this
political city. He is a 51-year-old high school dropout with
no steady job.
Yet senators listen to him. Prosecutors return his calls.
As a self-made civil rights activist, Sykes persuaded the
Justice Department to re-investigate the 1955 slaying of 14-
year-old Emmett Till, and he deserves a fair share of the
credit for the department's recent decision to review as many
as 100 old murders in 14 states.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the
investigation as Congress prepares to vote on a bill that
would set up a permanent cold case unit in the Justice
Department to probe those old crimes.
Last year, Sykes, as chairman of the Emmett Till Justice
Campaign, persuaded his then-home-state senator, Jim Talent,
R-Mo., to introduce the bill. Since then, Sykes and other
civil rights leaders have helped sell it. Although Talent
lost his seat in last fall's election, the bill--which
authorizes $11.5 million to fund the unit--has new sponsors
and has gained momentum in both houses and parties.
``He reflects the spirit of the civil rights movement,
where ordinary people found a way to make a difference,''
says Brenda Jones, spokeswoman for Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.,
whose beating during a protest march through Selma, Ala., in
1965 helped propel the Voting Rights Act through Congress.
Lewis is sponsoring the House version of the Till bill.
Sykes is described by those who know him as tenacious and
informed. ``He's a very pragmatic man,'' says Donald Burger,
a retired Justice Department mediator who met Sykes in the
1970s during battles to desegregate Kansas City, Mo.,
schools.
U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee of Mississippi's northern
district in Oxford had never heard of Sykes when Sykes asked
him in 2004 to reopen the Till case.
The case was legendary. Most of the principals were dead or
old and in poor health. The statute of limitations on
applicable federal laws had expired. Only state charges
related to murder or manslaughter remained possible.
Sykes arrived in Oxford armed with a legal argument that
laid out why the FBI had jurisdiction to proceed with a new
federal probe. ``He was extremely informed and very logically
presented why it should be looked into,'' Greenlee says.
Sykes grew up poor and sickly in Kansas City, the product
of a 14-year-old mother and a father he never knew. ``When I
first met him, he was in his casket,'' Sykes says of his
father. ``I was 27.''
Prone to schoolyard fights, Sykes dropped out of school in
the ninth grade. Although he once dreamed of becoming a
lawyer, he got most of his education from the public library.
To support himself, Sykes found a job managing a local R&B
band, Threatening Weather.
After campaigning to desegregate Kansas City schools, he
helped persuade Missouri legislators to lower the age of
jurors from 21 to 18, thus widening the pool of potential
jurors.
He also persuaded the Justice Department to re-investigate
the mysterious death of a black teenager in Kansas City in
1985.
Although the report was inconclusive, the federal
involvement helped calm local residents, who had been
skeptical of the local police investigation, Burger says.
He adds: ``That would never have happened if it hadn't been
for Alvin.''
Sykes' major achievement involved the 1980 murder of a
local jazz musician named Steve Harvey, who was beaten to
death with a baseball bat. The man charged with the murder
had been acquitted.
Sykes thumbed through library law books and found an
obscure federal statute that essentially said a person
couldn't be deprived of his use of a public facility because
of race. Using contacts he had made at the Justice Department
during the school desegregation struggle, Sykes contacted
Richard Roberts, the attorney in the civil rights division
who was looking into the Harvey case.
``He said, `Send me everything you've got,' '' Sykes says.
In 1983, Roberts won the conviction of Raymond Bledsoe on
federal civil rights violation charges. He is now serving a
life sentence.
``He didn't just call once,'' says Roberts, now a federal
district judge in Washington, D.C. ``Ordinarily, people who
want to know about a case will go to their local U.S.
attorney. I was struck by the fact that Sykes did not rest
with that. He pressed forward with more research on his own.
His questions to me were pointed and showed someone who had
done his homework.''
The murder of young Emmett Till, who was killed in
Mississippi after whistling at a white woman in a store,
galvanized the civil rights movement.
Although Till's killers were known--Roy Bryant and J.W.
Milam were acquitted a month after Till's death and later
confessed in an interview with Look magazine--subsequent
investigations centered on whether the men acted alone. Trial
testimony suggested that Bryant's then-wife might have been
with her husband and brother-in-law when Till was abducted.
Sykes pored over library law books and consulted with his
Justice Department contacts. They steered him to a 1976
opinion by Antonin Scalia, then an assistant attorney general
and now a Supreme Court justice, that gave the federal
government jurisdiction to conduct further investigation into
President Kennedy's assassination. The same opinion was used
to investigate Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder.
``Even if the statute of limitations had run out, it meant
that there could be an investigation for Till,'' Sykes says.
A Mississippi grand jury last month declined to indict
Bryant's ex-wife, Carolyn Bryant Donham.
To Sykes, that doesn't mean the end of the Till case. He
says he made that promise to Till's mother, Mamie Till
Mobley, before she died in 2003.
The FBI has compiled 8,000 pages of notes and interviews.
Now Sykes wants the Justice Department to publish a report of
the investigation.
``I made that pledge to Mrs. Mobley before she died that we
would get the truth out,'' he says.
[From wolfmanproductions.com]
Alvin Sykes: Self-Made Civil Rights Activist
Alvin Sykes holds none of the standard credentials to wield
influence in the power corridors of Washington, D.C. He is
not a lobbyist or an attorney, nor did he graduate from a
prestigious college. In fact, he is a high school dropout.
Yet senators listen to him. Prosecutors return his calls.
As a self-made civil rights activist, Sykes persuaded the
Justice Department to re-investigate the 1955 slaying of 14-
year-old Emmett Till, and he deserves a fair share of the
credit for the department's recent decision to review as many
as 100 old murders in 14 states.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced the
investigation as Congress prepares to vote on a bill that
would set up a permanent cold case unit in the Justice
Department to probe those old crimes.
Last year, Sykes, as chairman of the Emmett Till Justice
Campaign, persuaded his then-home-state senator, Jim Talent,
R-Mo., to introduce the bill. Since then, Sykes and other
civil rights leaders have helped sell it. Although Talent
lost his seat in last fall's election, the bill--which
authorizes $11.5 million to fund the unit--has new sponsors
and has gained momentum in both houses and parties.
``He reflects the spirit of the civil rights movement,
where ordinary people found a way to make a difference,''
says Brenda Jones, spokeswoman for Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga.,
whose beating during a protest march through Selma, Ala., in
1965 helped propel the Voting Rights Act through Congress.
Lewis is sponsoring the House version of the Till bill.
Sykes is described by those who know him as tenacious and
informed. ``He's a very pragmatic man,'' says Donald Burger,
a retired Justice Department mediator who met Sykes in the
1970s during battles to desegregate Kansas City, Mo.,
schools.
U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee of Mississippi's northern
district in Oxford had never heard of Sykes when Sykes asked
him in 2004 to reopen the Till case.
The case was legendary. Most of the principals were dead or
old and in poor health. The statute of limitations on
applicable federal laws had expired. Only state charges
related to murder or manslaughter remained possible.
Sykes arrived in Oxford armed with a legal argument that
laid out why the FBI had jurisdiction to proceed with a new
federal probe. ``He was extremely informed and very logically
presented why it should be looked into,'' Greenlee says.
Sykes grew up poor and sickly in Kansas City, the product
of a 14-year-old mother and a father he never knew. ``When I
first met him, he was in his casket,'' Sykes says of his
father. ``I was 27.''
Prone to schoolyard fights, Sykes dropped out of school in
the ninth grade. Although he once dreamed of becoming a
lawyer, he got most of his education from the public library.
To support himself, Sykes found a job managing a local R&B
band, Threatening Weather.
After campaigning to desegregate Kansas City schools, he
helped persuade Missouri legislators to lower the age of
jurors from 21 to 18, thus widening the pool of potential
jurors. He also persuaded the Justice Department to re-
investigate the mysterious death of a black teenager in
Kansas City in 1985. Although the report was inconclusive,
the federal involvement helped calm local residents, who had
been skeptical of the local police investigation, Burger
says.
He adds: ``That would never have happened if it hadn't been
for Alvin.''
Sykes' major achievement involved the 1980 murder of a
local jazz musician named Steve Harvey, who was beaten to
death with a baseball bat. The man charged with the murder
had been acquitted.
Sykes thumbed through library law books and found an
obscure federal statute that essentially said a person
couldn't be deprived of his use of a public facility because
of race. Using contacts he had made at the Justice Department
during the school desegregation struggle, Sykes contacted
Richard Roberts, the attorney in the civil rights division
who was looking into the Harvey case. ``He said, `Send me
everything you've got,' '' Sykes says. In 1983, Roberts won
the conviction of Raymond Bledsoe on federal civil rights
violation charges. He is now serving a life sentence.
``He didn't just call once,'' says Roberts, now a federal
district judge in Washington, D.C. ``Ordinarily, people who
want to know about a case will go to their local U.S.
attorney. I was struck by the fact that Sykes did not rest
with that. He pressed forward with more research on his own.
His questions to me were pointed and showed someone who had
done his homework.''
The murder of young Emmett Till, who was killed in
Mississippi after whistling at a white woman in a store,
galvanized the civil rights movement.
Although Till's killers were known--Roy Bryant and J.W.
Milam were acquitted a month after Till's death and later
confessed in an interview with Look magazine--subsequent
investigations centered on whether the men acted alone. Trial
testimony suggested that Bryant's then-wife might have been
with her husband and brother-in-law when Till was abducted.
Sykes pored over library law books and consulted with his
Justice Department contacts. They steered him to a 1976
opinion by Antonin Scalia, then an assistant attorney general
and now a Supreme Court justice, that gave the federal
government jurisdiction to conduct further investigation into
President Kennedy's assassination. The same opinion was used
to investigate Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder.
``Even if the statute of limitations had run out, it meant
that there could be an investigation for Till,'' Sykes says.
A Mississippi grand jury last month declined to indict
Bryant's ex-wife, Carolyn Bryant Donham.
To Sykes, that doesn't mean the end of the Till case. He
says he made that promise to Till's mother, Mamie Till
Mobley, before she died in 2003.
The FBI has compiled 8,000 pages of notes and interviews.
Now Sykes wants the Justice Department to publish a report of
the investigation.
``I made that pledge to Mrs. Mobley before she died that we
would get the truth out,'' he says.