Three Mississippi congressman voted Wednesday for a bill to establish a new division of federal prosecutors and FBI agents focused strictly on cracking unsolved murders from the civil rights era.

The bill passed the House 422-2. A similar bill is working its way through the Senate.

U.S. Reps. Chip Pickering, R-Miss., and Bennie Thompson and Gene Taylor, both D-Miss., voted for the bill.

Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., was recorded as not voting. Wicker spokesman Kyle Steward said the congressman placed a statement in the Congressional Record saying that he supports the bill.

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.