The FBI is ready to close nearly 100 unsolved civil rights-era killings three years after the agency pledged to investigate the cases, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Investigators told the paper few indictments will be issued because of the deaths of prime suspects and the difficulty of gathering decades-old evidence.

Race did not play a role in nearly one-fifth of the 108 cases, according to the paper. In some cases the people died in accidents, non-racially motivated fights or in circumstances family members did not want made public.

FBI Special Agent Cynthia Deitle, head of the effort, told The Post that with the exception of a dozen or so cases that bureau knows who committed the crime. “Some we know; others we know but can’t prove. For every other case, we got it,” Deitle said.

Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez told The Post, “These racially motivated murders are some of the greatest blemishes on our nation’s history,”adding, . . . . If we can solve a number of these cases, that’s fantastic. But if we can bring to closure all of these cases, I think this will be well worth the effort.”

Tthe investigation has helped close information gaps and provide victim’s families with some closure, FBI investigators working on the project said. According to The Post, family members and victims’ rights advocates have long complained about how long it has taken for the federal government to investigate the unsolved crimes.

Last week, Attorney General Eric Holder told black prosecutors in Memphis that the Civil Rights Division is “back and open for business” — a swipe at the Bush administration, which tried to dismantle it. (Read Holder’s speech, delivered near the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, here.)

Then on Monday, civil rights activists emerged from a meeting with Holder in Washington to say he’s expressed a commitment to pursuing ”cold cases” against 1960s-era civil rights offenders that have languished for years.

Alvin Sykes, the driving force behind the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, told reporters that perpetrators “should understand that this attorney general means business.”

The legislation, which was enacted last year, authorized up to $135 million over 10 years for investigations of civil rights-era killings. It also created a permanent cold case unit in the Justice Department. Congress, however, has not yet approved funding, though some money is included in the House and Senate appropriations bills for the DOJ now pending.

For a bit of background on the unsolved crimes bill, and the case of Emmet Till, who was beaten and shot to death in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman, click here.

And some quick stats, as reported by The Chicago Tribune: According to the FBI, there are more than 100 unsolved civil rights killings that occurred before 1969 that are under review. Since 2007, there have been 28 arrests and 22 convictions, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a watchdog group that tracks hate crimes.

Sykes, who spoke on the sidewalk outside the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building on Constitution Avenue, was joined by Haskell Slaughter Young & Rediker’s G. Douglas Jones. As U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Jones successfully re-opened and prosecuted the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963.

Jones emphasized the urgency of putting the law into motion. “Each day that passes, we lose potential defendants,” he said. Evidence falls through the cracks, he said. In some instances, apathetic law enforcers let investigations languish or abandoned them outright, forcing investigators of today to “reinvent the wheel,” Jones said.

Jones downplayed concerns about funding, saying it would come in time, and he and Sykes said they were heartened by Holder’s receptiveness. ”If you are a perpetrator…and you’re still out there, we and the federal government are coming after you,” Sykes said.