The Justice Department has closed the books on the lynching of Emmett Till, whose face — young and unblemished, then swollen and monstrous — has come to symbolize the unpunished killings of Black Americans.

Whatever hope there was for justice was dashed this week when the department pinned the blame on its inability to confirm a book’s explosive 2017 claim that the White woman at the center of the case recanted her story about Till’s actions that fateful day in Money, Mississippi.