It took more than a century and nearly 200 failures, but the U.S. Congress finally passed a federal law against lynching. The Senate passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act by unanimous consent Monday night. Why did it take this long if the bill was going to be passed by unanimous consent? Most recently because Sen. Rand Paul blocked the antilynching bill in 2020, objecting that it might “conflate lesser crimes with lynching.” After the words “death or serious bodily injury” were added, Paul got out of the way.
The Till Act already passed the House 410 to three last month, with the votes against coming from Republican Reps. Andrew Clyde, Thomas Massie, and Chip Roy.
The bill is named after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was tortured and murdered in 1955 for whistling at a white woman. Only two of his killers were tried. They were acquitted. It’s still unknown exactly how many people participated in the lynching, but it was definitely more than two. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, allowed Jet magazine to photograph his battered body in an open casket, saying, “Let the world see what I’ve seen.” The world did see, but nonetheless it was more than half a century before this bill was passed in Till’s name.
“Lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy,” said Rep. Bobby Rush, who introduced the bill in the House, in a statement. “Perpetrators of lynching got away with murder time and time again — in most cases, they were never even brought to trial. Legislation to make lynching a federal crime and prevent racist killers from evading justice was introduced more than 200 times, but never once passed into law.
“Today, we correct this historic and abhorrent injustice. Unanimous Senate passage of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act sends a clear and emphatic message that our nation will no longer ignore this shameful chapter of our history and that the full force of the U.S. federal government will always be brought to bear against those who commit this heinous act.”
”I am overjoyed with the Senate passage of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act,” Sen. Cory Booker, who introduced the bill in the Senate with Republican Sen. Tim Scott, tweeted. “The time is past due to reckon with this dark chapter in our history and I’m proud of the bipartisan support to pass this important piece of legislation.”
The history of efforts to pass an antilynching law starts, in Congress, with Rep. George Henry White, then the only Black member of Congress, reading the text of an antilynching bill on the floor of the House. That bill died in committee. A later effort, sponsored by Rep. Leonidas Dyer, passed the House in 1922 only to be filibustered in the Senate by southerners claiming concern for “states’ rights.” And most recently it was Paul standing in the way out of a claimed concern that people might be prosecuted for lynching for crimes that left only “minor bruising.” But now it has passed.
The bill, which makes lynching a hate crime with a sentence of up to 30 years in prison, goes to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.