Bobby Rush speaks during a news conference alongside a picture of Emmett Till at right
(Picture: AP)The US Senate has unanimously passed legislation that will make lynching a federal hate crime, in a historic first that comes after more than a century of failed efforts.
The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is among some 200 bills that have been introduced over the past 100 years that have tried to ban lynching in America.
It is named for the Black teenager whose brutal killing in Mississippi in 1955 — and his mother’s insistence on a open funeral casket to show the world what had been done to her child — became a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights era.
In the early hours of August 28, 1955, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam invaded 14-year-old Emmett Till’s great-uncle’s home and abducted the boy at gunpoint after an allegation he had offended a white woman in her family grocery store.
They severely beat him and gouged out one of his eyes before taking him to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, where they killed him with a single gunshot to the head.
They tied Till’s body to a large metal fan and dumped him into the river. His corpse, barely recognisable, was discovered in the river three days later.
There will be an Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Lynching will be a federal crime. This took so long, too long.
— Jermaine (@JermaineWatkins) March 8, 2022
Rest in Power, Emmett. 🙏🏾🕊 pic.twitter.com/bz6wv0s6uD
“After more than 200 failed attempts to outlaw lynching, Congress is finally succeeding in taking a long overdue action by passing the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
The bill would make it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury, according to the bill’s champion, Republican Bobby Rush. The maximum sentence under the Anti-Lynching Act is 30 years.
The House overwhelming approved a similar measure in 2020, but it was blocked in the Senate.
Last week, the House overwhelmingly approved a revised version and the Senate passed the bill unanimously late Monday.
“Lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy,” said Rush.
The congressman said passage of the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching 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 US federal government will always be brought to bear against those who commit this heinous act.”
