Entries tagged with “Ida B. Wells”
Issues
Mar 31, 2022
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…
Issues
New Voices
,Jul 19, 2021
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Descendants of Ida B. Wells Call for Freedom for Pervis Payne
As the first court hearing on Pervis Payne’s claim that his death sentence must be vacated because of his intellectual disability was about to get underway, prominent civil rights leaders and relatives of a civil rights icon added their voices to efforts to free the Tennessee death-row prisoner, who has consistently asserted his innocence. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), founded in 1957 by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists, participated in a…