(June 20, 2007)--The House has passed a bill that would give the Justice Department more than $100 million for new prosecutors, FBI agents and other resources to revisit unsolved murders from the civil rights era.

The bill, which is also moving swiftly through the Senate, would authorize $10 million a year over the next decade to build on the Justice Department's recent successes in reopening racially motivated crimes that had sat cold for decades.

The bill is named in honor of Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago who was beaten and murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman.

His killers were never convicted.

The Senate could clear the bill this week.

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