Poli Alert Political & Civics
Related Articles
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed into law the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, legislation that makes lynching a federal hate crime.
“Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone … belongs in America, not everyone is created equal,” President Biden said during a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden. “Terror, to systematically undermine hard-fought civil rights. Terror, not just in the dark of the night but in broad daylight. Innocent men, women and children hung by nooses in trees, bodies burned and drowned and castrated.”
“Their crimes? Trying to vote. Trying to go to school. Trying to own a business or preach the gospel. False accusations of murder, arson and robbery. Simply being Black,” Biden continued.
I just signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law — making lynching a federal hate crime for the first time in American history.
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 29, 2022
The legislation is named in honor of Emmett Till, a young Black teenager who was kidnapped and brutally tortured for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
“Today, we are gathered to do unfinished business,” Vice President Kamala Harris said at the ceremony. “[T]o acknowledge the horror and this part of our history, to state unequivocally that lynching is and has always been a hate crime and to make clear that the federal government may now prosecute these crimes as such.”
Harris was a prime sponsor of the bill when she was in the Senate.
The legislation was approved in early March by the House of Representatives. Three representatives voted against the bill: Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Chip Roy, R-Texas.
The Senate passed the bill almost a week later with unanimous consent.
The new law will give authorities more tools to prosecute hate crimes as a “lynching” when a conspiracy results in death or serious bodily injury. It provides for a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and fines.
“I applaud President Biden for acting swiftly and signing this critical legislation into law,” said Ollie Gordon, a cousin of Emmett Till and president of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation. “While passage of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act does not bring back Emmett or the countless other Black people lynched, it is heartening to have legislation recognizing the nature of the hateful activity that took Emmett’s and others’ lives for those of us who have lost loved ones to racist violence.”
