by Kevin Seraaj and Frank Butler, Orlando Advocate.com
President Joe Biden has signed into law a long-awaited anti-lynching measure that will make hate crimes punishable by 30 years in prison. The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act of 2022 is more than a hundred years overdue.
The first proposed anti-lynching law was introduced in Congress on January 20, 1900 as H.R. 6963 – “A bill for the protection of all citizens of the United States against mob violence, and the penalty for breaking such laws.” It was introduced by Rep. George Henry White (R-NC, 2nd District) of North Carolina. White was the only Black member of Congress at the time.
Rep. White wanted to not only make lynching a federal crime, but his bill would also have made the act of lynching punishable by death. A national police force would also have been created– a sort of precursor to today’s FBI– to investigate and pursue charges against participants in lynch mobs. Needless to say, White’s anti-lynching bill failed to pass. And in ensuing years, anti-lynching legislation failed to pass nearly 200 times.
In 1917, according to congressional archives, a Republican lawmaker, Rep. Leonidas Dyer (R-Mo.) witnessed white mobs murder Black citizens in St. Louis. National outrage followed, and Dyer was moved to introduce the first major legislation the following year with support from the NAACP.
Between 1882 and 1968, at least 4,743 people — 3,446 of them Black and 1,297 white — are said to have been lynched in this country. Often times lynchings were public affairs, with entire families on hand to enjoy seeing black men hung and burned. Many times the perpetrators were law enforcement officers joined by white supremacists like the Ku Klux Klan and ordinary white citizens looking for something “fun” to do.
Billie Holiday, one of the best jazz vocalists of all time, was also deeply touched by the prevalence of lynchings throughout the South. She was inroduced to the song “Strange Fruit,” written by Jewish communist teacher and civil rights activist from the Bronx, Abel Meeropol, and in March 1939, at the age of 23, she inroduced the song to the world:
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black body swinging in the Southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees…”
Despite the unrelenting efforts of law enforcement officials to stop her, Holiday defiantly sang ‘Strange Fruit’ for the next 20 years until her untimely death at the age of 44.
Lynching, though, was never just about hanging. It was about terror and control– accomplished at times by hanging, and at other times by shootings, beatings, torture, mutilation, decapitation and burning.
Lynchings have always needed specific legislation to make the acts punishable under the law.
In 1968, Congress passed the first federal hate crimes statute, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, making it a crime to “use, or threaten to use, force to willfully interfere with any person because of race, color, religion, or national origin and because the person is participating in a federally protected activity, such as public education, employment, jury service, travel, or the enjoyment of public accommodations, or helping another person to do so.”
The attempt to define a hate crime as “a federally protected activity, such as . . .,” ostensibly limited the statuory reach of the law, though. Emmett Till’s purported whistling at a white woman probably would not have been deemed a federallly protected activity “like public education, employment, jury service, or the enjoyment of public accommodations.”
More was needed, and in 2009, Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, expanding the federal definition of hate crimes. The problem with the law, if one could be identified, was– in a word– jurisdiction, and the ability of the federal government to get around the issue of “state’s rights.”
Under the 2009 law, before the Civil Rights Division could prosecute a hate crime, the Attorney General or his representative had to certify in writing that (1) the state does not have jurisdiction; (2) the state requested that the federal government step in and take over; (3) the fed’s interest in eliminating bias-motivated violence was not effectively handled by the state courts; or (4) a prosecution by the United States was in the public interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.
Under the new law, however, passed by Congress on March 7 and signed by President Biden on Tuesday, conspiracies to commit crimes that result in death of serious bodily injury, where hate is the motivating factor, can be punishable by 30 years in prison.
Introduced in the House by Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-IL), and in the Senate by Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the Emmett Till Antilynching Act (H.R. 55) catches the law of hate crimes up with the reality of American life.
“Lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy,” said Rep. Rush after the bill passed in the House. “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,” Rush continued. “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.”
The Senate passed the measure unanimously in February. In the House it passed by a vote of 422–3. The three House Republicans who voted against the bill were U.S. Representatives Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), and Chip Roy (R-Texas).
The new law does not change existing law substantially. Even under the old law, hate crimes involving kidnapping, murder or aggravated sexual abuse carried a maximum penalty of up to life in prison. Just as Rush stated, the Anti-Lynching Act most importantly sends a clear message that the nation has at long last moved to another place– another state of mind when it comes to race-hate violence.
“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 ago,” Biden continued.
“Racial hate isn’t an old problem,” Biden said. “It’s a persistent problem.”
