Lawmakers take step toward making lynching a federal hate crime

After lawmakers failing more than 200 times to pass anti-lynching bills, on Monday the house passed legislation to make the act a federal hate crime.

Lawmakers voted 422-3 in favor of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, named after a 14-year-old Black Chicago teenager who was tortured and shot in 1955. Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., Chip Roy, R-Texas and Andrew S. Clyde, R-Ga., voting against the act.

Till allegedly whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi store. Several days later, the woman’s husband and his brother decided to take vengeance on Till. Till was made to carry a heavy cotton gin fan to the banks of the Tallahatchie River where he was ordered to take off his clothes. Till was then beaten nearly to death. He had his eye gouged out, shot in the head, then tied to the fan with barbed wire and thrown into the river.

The legislation states that a crime may be prosecuted as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in serious injury or death. Perpetrators could face prison time of up to 30 years.

“By passing my Emmett Till Antilynching Act, the House has sent a resounding message that our nation is finally reckoning with one of the darkest and most horrific periods of our history, and that we are morally and legally committed to changing course,” stated Rep. Bobby Rush, who introduced the legislation.