Lawmakers passed a bill Tuesday to reopen more civil rights cold cases under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes bill.
The legislation previously helped investigators revisit more than 126 cases across the country, with one case from Cleveland.
27-year-old Rev. Bruce Klunder was killed on April 7, 1964 after laying down in front of a bulldozer to protest the building of a segregated school on the city’s east side.
Rev. E. Theophilus Caviness who was present on the scene that day, told News 5 that Klunder was behind the machine and the operator did not seem to hear the shouting for him to stop.
Investigators at the time ruled it an accident.
“To see him lying there having been crushed to death with a bulldozer was really more than you could handle at the time,” Caviness said, thinking back to the scene 52 years earlier.
Caviness explained that Blunder was considered a martyr for the desegregation movement in Cleveland.
“I think that lives of people like Bruce Klunder and his dedication and devotion to equal rights and equal access to education was the impetus to making this country a whole lot better,” he explained.
Klunder’s case is one of more than 100 that have been revisited by the law since the initial version of the bill authorized the reopening of such cases.
If President Obama signs the bill into law, the number of eligible cases could expand to crimes before 1980.
