More Than a Century After it Was First Proposed, President Biden Signs Historic Law Making Lynching a Federal Crime

After more than a cen­tu­ry of efforts by civ­il rights lead­ers to make lynch­ing a fed­er­al crime, President Joe Biden on March 29, 2022 signed into law his­toric anti-lynching legislation. 

Flanked by the bill’s spon­sors, Vice President Kamala Harris, and fam­i­ly mem­bers of the late Ida B. Wells and Emmett Till in a cer­e­mo­ny on the White House lawn, Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act (pic­tured), offi­cial­ly denom­i­nat­ing lynch­ing a fed­er­al hate crime. The law allows for crimes — such as kid­nap­pings, aggra­vat­ed sex­u­al abuse, or attempts to kill — to be pros­e­cut­ed as lynch­ings in fed­er­al court when a con­spir­a­cy to com­mit a hate crime results in death or seri­ous bod­i­ly injury. Individuals con­vict­ed of lynch­ing face pun­ish­ment of up to 30 years in prison. 

“Lynching was pure ter­ror to enforce the lie that not every­one belongs in America, not every­one is cre­at­ed equal,” Biden said after sign­ing the bill. Citing recent high-pro­file inci­dents of racist vio­lence, he warned that racism remains ​“a per­sis­tent prob­lem” across the United States. 

“From the bul­lets in the back of Ahmaud Arbery to count­less oth­er acts of vio­lence — count­less vic­tims known and unknown — the same racial hatred that drove the mob to hang a noose brought that mob car­ry­ing torch­es out of the fields of Charlottesville just a few years go,” Biden said. ​“Racial hate isn’t an old prob­lem; it’s a per­sis­tent prob­lem. A per­sis­tent prob­lem. And I know many of the civ­il rights lead­ers here know, and you heard me say it a hun­dred times: Hate nev­er goes away; it only hides. It hides under the rocks. And giv­en just a lit­tle bit of oxy­gen, it comes roar­ing back out, scream­ing. But what stops it is all of us, not a few. All of us have to stop it.”

The bill is named for Emmett Till, a teenag­er from Chicago who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. Till, who was 14 at the time, was vis­it­ing rel­a­tives when a white woman accused him of whistling at her. He was kid­napped, beat­en, and bru­tal­ly killed. His assailants threw his body into a riv­er, weighed down by a met­al fan tied to his neck. Two men were charged with his mur­der, but were acquit­ted by an all-white, all-male jury. At Till’s funer­al, his moth­er, Mamie Till, insist­ed on an open cas­ket to pub­licly expose the vio­lence inflict­ed on her son. 

Sponsors of the bill say 200 iter­a­tions of anti-lynch­ing leg­is­la­tion have failed to pass since North Carolina Rep. George Henry White first intro­duced a sim­i­lar ver­sion in 1900. At the time, White was the only Black mem­ber of Congress. 122 years lat­er, Rep. Bobby Rush (D‑Illinois) intro­duced the lat­est anti­lynch­ing bill in the U.S. House, with Senators Cory Booker (D‑New Jersey) and Tim Scott (R‑South Carolina) intro­duc­ing a com­pan­ion bill in the Senate. The House over­whelm­ing­ly approved the bill by a vote of 422 – 3 on March 7 and it then passed in the Senate by unan­i­mous con­sent. Three House Republicans vot­ed against the mea­sure: Andrew Clyde (R‑Georgia), Thomas Massie (R‑Kentucky), and Chip Roy (R‑Texas).

The law has been ​“a long time com­ing,” said Rev. Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till’s who wit­nessed his kid­nap­ping. Parker stood on stage with the pres­i­dent dur­ing the sign­ing, along with Michelle Duster, great-grand­daugh­ter of jour­nal­ist Ida B. Wells, whose fear­less jour­nal­ism brought nation­al atten­tion to lynch­ings at a time it was ignored or excused by the white press. ​“Through her writ­ing and speak­ing, [Wells] exposed uncom­fort­able truths that upset the sta­tus quo,” Duster said. ​“The truth that lynch­ing was being used as an excuse to ter­ror­ize the Black com­mu­ni­ty in order to main­tain a social and eco­nom­ic hier­ar­chy based on race. 

“And for that her life was threat­ened. Her print­ing press was destroyed. And she was exiled from the south. But despite los­ing every­thing, she con­tin­ued to speak out … about the vio­lence and ter­ror of lynching.”

In an inter­view with the Associated Press after the cer­e­mo­ny, Parker cred­it­ed the protests in response to the police mur­der of George Floyd and oth­er racial hate crimes with cre­at­ing the atmos­phere in which the bill could finally pass.

Till’s extend­ed fam­i­ly has long advo­cat­ed for fed­er­al anti-lynch­ing leg­is­la­tion. In an inter­view with the Atlanta Black Star ahead of the Senate vote, Ollie Gordon, a cousin of Emmitt Till, expressed cau­tious opti­mism that the bill would final­ly become law. 

“I’m not sure what Emmett would say, but I’m sure he would be pleased with it,” Gordon said. ​“I’m sure his moth­er would feel like Emmett’s death would not be in vain and her hard work to keep his lega­cy alive and fight for some kind of recog­ni­tion or justice.”

At the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Vice President Harris, who co-spon­sored anti-lynch­ing leg­is­la­tion when she was a U.S. Senator, described the pas­sage of the law as a mat­ter of ​“unfin­ished business.” 

“Today we are gath­ered to do unfin­ished busi­ness, to 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 said. ​“Lynching is not a rel­ic of the past. Racial acts of ter­ror still occur in our nation, and when they do, we must all have the courage to name them and hold the per­pe­tra­tors to account.”

In a pair of land­mark reports on Lynching in America, the Equal Justice Initiative has doc­u­ment­ed more than 6,500 racial ter­ror lynch­ings in the United States between 1865 and 1950. The Death Penalty Information Center’s November 2020 report, Enduring Injustice: the Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty, tracks the his­tor­i­cal rela­tion­ship between lynch­ings and the U.S. death penalty. 

During slav­ery, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was used as a tool for con­trol­ling Black pop­u­la­tions and curb­ing rebel­lions. After eman­ci­pa­tion, ter­ror lynch­ings pro­lif­er­at­ed. To dis­cour­age lynch­ings, pub­lic offi­cials promised legal exe­cu­tions, often after sham tri­als. As lynch­ings decreased in the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry, exe­cu­tions began to take their place in cir­cum­stances that ear­li­er would have drawn a lynch mob. Across the South, African-American men and boys were con­demned and exe­cut­ed for the alleged rape or attempt­ed rape of white women or girls. No white man was ever exe­cut­ed for rap­ing a Black woman or girl.