In December the U.S. Senate passed a bill to extend by four years the work of the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board. The nonpartisan group is appointed by the U.S. president and dedicated to investigate and release federal records relating to unsolved, racially-motivated murders from the civil rights era (1940-1979). With bipartisan support, the bill now heads to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The cold cases project has strong ties to Emory College and the Emory History Department. Professor Hank Klibanoff, Associated Faculty in History, is co-chair of the review board. Klibanoff directs the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project (to which multiple History students have contributed) and is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Buried Truths.

CBS News Atlanta recently featured the work of the review board, with a focus on recently-released records about the murder of the grandmother of a resident of Ellenwood, Georgia. Read an excerpt from the CBS News piece below, and find the full article: “Researchers aim to bring truth to light for racially motivated civil rights cold cases.”

“What we are doing is simply trying to, you know, excavate the records and get them released, review them, review them with the FBI, review them with the Department of Justice, review them with the National Archive,” said Emory University Professor Hank Klibanoff, a co-chair for the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board.