Lynching is now a federal hate crime in the United States. President Joe Biden signed into law yesterday the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act.
It is named after a 14-year-old Black boy who in 1955 was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in a racist attack. His murder was one of the catalysts for the civil rights movement.
The law makes lynching a federal hate crime and says it is punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Advocates and experts view the new legislation as the federal government finally addressing a history of racist killings in the U.S.
When Till was murdered, an all-white jury dismissed the charges against two white men who later fully confessed to his killing. It drew national attention to a history of atrocities and violence that Black people face in the U.S.
Historically, lynching was used as a way to terrorize Black people in the U.S., especially in the Southern states. From the late 1800s to the 1960s, it was used frequently as a technique to ignore the justice system and take the violence out on someone after a questionable claim was made. One analysis found that 6,500 people, mostly all of whom were Black, were lynched between the years 1865 and 1950. And in almost all of these cases, the perpetrator walked away completely free and unscathed.
The last time a lynching was recorded in the U.S. was in 1981. But there have been suspected cases since 2000 in Mississippi in particular. The 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, who was shot in the street after being chased down by three men while he was out for a run, was described by civil rights advocate Rev. Al Sharpton as a “lynching in the 21st century.”
Vice President Kamala Harris said after the bill was signed that Biden’s decision to enact this law addressed both “unfinished business” and “horror” in U.S. history.
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