Alvin Sykes and the hunt for civil rights cold case killers

Did a little hanging this weekend with Alvin Sykes, the improbable civil-rights hero who has been playing a crucial, and often overlooked, role in the effort to bring the perpetrators in racially-motivated killings to justice. Sykes scored his biggest triumph last fall with the passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act. Last Friday's event at the Bruce Watkins Cultural Center was designed to kick off the efforts of the Emmett Till Justice Campaign, which Alvin formed not only to help close the unsolved civil-rights cold cases currently known to exist -- there are 26 by Alvin's count -- but to spread awareness about the Till Bill with the idea of getting people to bring forward new cold cases that had, for obvious reasons, gone unreported at the time.

Alvin Sykes is nothing if not independent. Besides inviting several key Republican allies to the event (that's Jacob Turk, who lost to Dennis Moore in the Kansas 3rd race Emanuel Cleaver in my friggin' House district last year, in the photo above), he showed a videotape message from Sen. Tom Coburn to the assembled guests. Sen. Coburn, as you may recall, was cast as the bad guy last summer when he used his famous legislative hold to keep the Senate from passing the Till Bill. His reason for objecting was that he didn't believe it had an adequate guarantee of funding. Which was not a terrible point to make -- after all, DOJ has long had oversight on civil rights murders and made little progress -- but with the backdrop of Coburn's toxic history with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Coburn predictably became a lightning rod. Then Sykes injected himself in the process, worked closely with Coburn (to the consternation of Congressional Democrats like John Lewis, who sponsored the House version of the Till Bill), and the hold was lifted. And Sykes got a lot of love from Dr. No.

So at Friday's event, there's the Senator himself, on tape, giving Alvin more love. State Sen. David Haley, who had taken over as emcee by that point, didn't even try to hide his wonder that he was being asked to introduce such an abomination. But they rolled tape, and by the time Coburn declared, "Let there be no doubt that Alvin Sykes is response for the Till Bill's passage," he'd won the room over; everyone burst wildly into applause. "He is a wonderful man that I am now proud to call my friend," the senator continued. "Mr. Sykes maintained his optimism through very difficult times."

I first met Alvin in 2001 when I was reporting a story about a new A&E special on Kansas City and the killing of Steven Harvey in 1980. His killer, Raymond Bledsoe, was acquitted, but thanks to Sykes, he was convicted under a never-before-used federal statute that Alvin had stumbled upon. This was a decade before Rodney King. As I wrote at the time,

(Steve's mom) Kathryn Harvey and activist Alvin Sykes were relentless in their campaign to have Bledsoe retried on a federal civil rights charge. In 1983 the U.S. government took the case and, armed with the additional testimony, got Bledsoe sentenced to a life term at the penitentiary in Leavenworth.

I recently learned from Harvey's daughter, Hope, that Bledsoe will be up for a parole hearing as soon as next week. He's now incarcerated at Sandstone federal pen in Minnesota. When Sykes and I got together for dinner at Papa Lew's, he told me he probably wouldn't go to Sandstone but, instead, discuss the Bledsoe case "with my contacts in Washington" at the federal bureau of prisons. I had to laugh -- I'd forgotten that Alvin Sykes operates in a whole 'nother orbit from the rest of us.

Alvin also told me something else that I found immensely sad. Kathryn and Sherman Harvey, who bankrolled him in those early years, are buried in Forest Hill near Steve ... in unmarked graves. Having spent all their money seeking justice for Steve apparently left them with nothing left over for gravestones. Alvin told me he plans to raise money to rectify that.

So where now for civil rights justice? Well, publicity is one arm of the Till Bill campaign, and the filmmaker behind one of the Emmett Till documentaries, Keith Beauchamp, remains on the prowl. He just made a film about another cold case that's airing this week on History (click the postcard for more).

As for Alvin Sykes, he continues to speak widely about the Till case. He wants to travel to South Africa and meet with representatives of that country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which he sees as a model for the upcoming prosecution of these cold cases here. After all, in many cases the killers have already gone to their reward, but that hasn't brought the comfort to the survivors that a truth-and-reconciliation process would.

The work may not have made him wealthy -- he has an assistant now, but still no visible means of support -- and yet, his quarter-century pursuing justice has made him influential and won him friends and a small role in our nation's history. And with his persistent prodding, we may someday close the books on some of America's most shameful crimes.