On Wednesday, the Senate moved one step closer to making lynching a federal hate crime in the United States. A bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Tim Scott (R-SC) was unanimously approved by the Senate—for the first time in history.
As Think Progress notes, this has been a long time coming. Since 1901, there have been almost 250 attempts to pass anti-lynching laws but they have been either filibustered or voted down by the Senate. In 2005, a Senate resolution was passed that formally apologized to the victims of lynching but passing federal legislation remained elusive.
The timing of this bill is significant. In April of this year, a memorial to the thousands of victims of racial terror lynchings across the South opened up in Montgomery, Alabama. And though we often think about lynching as a thing of the past, it has made headlines recently because of the suspicious death by hanging of the son of a prominent Ferguson, Missouri activist and a racist joke by Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith while on the campaign trail in November. Lynching is a terrible part of America’s history—so gruesome and painful that it should never be forgotten and should have already been made a federal crime.
Though it looks like lynching is well on the way to being made unlawful, the hard-fought battle to getting this bill signed into law isn’t over yet. It must pass in the House before going before Donald Trump to sign it into law. So many of these lawmakers are cowardly and evil and refuse to do what makes sense and is just. But let’s hope (especially as Democrats take over the House in January), they all do the right thing in this case.