Congress gave final approval Monday to legislation that for the first time would make lynching a federal hate crime in the U.S., sending the bill to President Joe Biden to sign into law.
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Years in the making, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is among some 200 bills that have been introduced over the past century 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 an open funeral casket to show the world what had been done to her child – became a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights era.
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, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. The maximum sentence under the Anti-Lynching Act is 30 years.
The House overwhelmingly approved a similar measure in 2020, but it was blocked in the Senate.
