The families of Henry Hezekiah Dee, Charles Eddie Moore and Wharlest Jackson have been waiting for justice for far too long &045; and so have southwest Mississippi and the communities those men called home.

While other civil rights cases have gone back to trial and prosecutors have earned convictions, these two murder cases have remained open, with resources limited and many of those who might have information dead.

But with U.S. Attorney Dunn Lampton shining a new light on both cases, justice may be within reach. Local authorities have kept the cases open, trying in recent years to reinvestigate the deaths, but finding few leads.

But the timing may be just right now to find convictions, especially in the Dee and Moore case.

Investigative technology has changed, even just in the five or more years since the cases were reopened locally.

More and more cases have been successful: Ernest Avants, murderer of Natchez’s Ben Chester White, died in prison not long ago. Edgar Ray Killen is in prison in connection with the murders of three civil rights workers in Neshoba County. The climate is right for such trials, and if time is not on our side, then certainly the momentum is.

Communities have changed in the years since those tragic deaths. People who might once have been afraid to come forward with information may be longing to find justice, too. We urge anyone who might have more information to come forward now. Time is running out.

There is a national push on to help solve these crimes: U.S. senators including Trent Lott and Thad Cochran have signed on to co-sponsor a bill that would create a special civil rights cold cases investigative division in the U.S. Justice Department. Appropriations chairman Cochran has said he will support $5 million going into that division if it is created.

Imagine, with the resources that money and a network of investigators, what could come of the effort. We have seen law enforcement agencies work together in anti-terror investigations; these crimes, while decades old, are no different.

One life taken so tragically is worth that work. These are three men who cannot have died in vain; their families, and their hometowns, deserve more.

Justice has been delayed for far too long; it cannot be denied now.