Let Till R.I.P.

Sessions’ abysmal civil rights record makes it hard to take new probe seriously.

Despite all the buzz concerning the Justice Department’s decision to reopen the case of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy kidnapped, tortured and shot by racists in Mississippi in 1955, there’s no reason to expect much to come of it.

First of all, Till’s murderers have been known for years. The two suspects confessed their guilt in a 1956 Look magazine article after being acquitted by an all-white jury. Having escaped double jeopardy, Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, lived freely until they both died.

Secondly, the new investigation only became known last week but began months ago, according to a report submitted to Congress in March. The lack of fanfare by the typically chest-thumping Trump administration in announcing the new investigation further suggests no dramatic revelations will result from it.

Till’s story is horrific. The Chicago youth was visiting relatives in Money, Miss., when Bryant’s wife, Carolyn, accused the teenager of whistling at her at a grocery store. Bryant and Milam decided to reiterate the power of the white race by abducting Till from his great uncle’s home, beating him, shooting him and using barbed wire to attach a cotton-gin fan to his neck before throwing the body into the Tallahatchie River.

Mamie Elizabeth Till Mobley held an open-casket funeral to bring national attention to her son’s murder. An estimated 50,000 mourners attended, and Jet magazine published graphic photos of Till’s corpse. But in little more than hour, an all-white, all-male jury set Milam and Bryant free.

The Justice Department reopened the Till case in 2004. By that time both Milam, in 1981, and Bryant, 1994, had died. Till’s body was exhumed and an autopsy performed, but a grand jury didn’t return any new charges. If there were other suspects, they are likely dead by now, too.

Still alive is Carolyn Bryant Donham, 83, who lives in North Carolina. Donham was interviewed by historian Timothy Tyson for his book published last year, “The Blood of Emmett Till.” Information in the book reportedly led the Justice Department to launch a new investigation. Donham admits in the book that Till didn’t make the sexual advances she claimed. But the statutes of limitation on perjury and other potential federal crimes in the case ran out decades ago.

Till’s mother died in 2003. He has other relatives who are thankful that yet another attempt at justice is being made, and U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat who represents the district where Till was buried, is glad to see the government following through on his request to investigate anew. But how much confidence can they have in Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whose own civil rights record is checkered?

Sessions’ recent decision to separate young Hispanic children from parents who entered the United States illegally is on par with the racist comments he allegedly made that cost him a federal judgeship in 1986. Not even Howell Heflin, the senior U.S. senator from Session’s home state, Alabama, would vote for him at the time.

The Justice Department may have reopened the Till case, but with Sessions in charge no one should hold their breath expecting the new investigation to become much more than yet another dubious accomplishment President Trump will boast about.

Look at the big Oval Office ceremony Trump held in May to announce his pardon of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson, who in 1913 was convicted of transporting a white woman across state lines for an “immoral purpose,” served 10 months in prison. He died in 1946.

Tyson says his book may have prompted the new Till investigation, but he thinks it is a “completely hypocritical political show … I find it deep irony and appalling hypocrisy that Jeff Beauregard Sessions and Donald Trump would pretend to care about African-American children, about a black boy murdered in 1955.”

Plenty of children alive today could use their care and attention.

If they aren’t merely exploiting Till’s lynching to burnish their images, Trump and Sessions should take a bigger step to ensure equal justice for all in America by initiating a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s criminal justice system, with an emphasis on reducing the world’s largest prison population.

They should start by reading a Sentencing Project report that says 1 in 3 black men born in 2001 can expect to go to prison in their lifetimes. Let’s see the president announce an initiative to keep people out of prison, rather than waiting to pardon them decades after the fact.