President Joe Biden has signed a bill that makes lynching a federal hate crime in the U.S., CNN reports. The bill comes after more than 120 years and nearly 200 failed bills.
The bill, titled The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, is named after 14-year-old Emmett Till, whose viscous killing garnered national attention in 1955. Till’s mother, Mamie Till, made the decision to have an open-casket funeral to allow the world to see the hate and violence happening in America.
The new legislation will now allow for the prosecution of crimes as lynchings when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime leads to death or serious injury, PBS News reports.
According to CNN, as per Tuskegee University lynching records, from 1882 to 1968, 4,743 people were lynched. Of those crimes, 3,446 of the victims were Black.
The first anti-lynching bill was brought to Congress in 1900, PBS News reports. It was introduced by Republican Rep. George Henry White from North Carolina. According to the History, Art, & Archives of the U.S. House of Representatives, he was the last Black member of Congress before Jim Crow.
The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was brought to the House of Representatives by Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush, CNN reports. Three Republican representatives, Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., Tomas Massie, R-Ky., and Chip Roy, R-Tx., opposed the bill.
After signing the bill, Biden addressed attendees, which included lawmakers, administration officials and civil rights advocates, PBS News reports. He acknowledged the long effort it took to pass the legislation and thanked those involved for staying the course.
“Thank you for never giving up, never ever giving up,” the president said, PBS News reports. “Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone, belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.”
He continued, saying, “Racial hate isn’t an old problem — it’s a persistent problem.”
Several suspected lynchings have been recorded in recent years. According to The Washington Post, Jill Collen Jefferson, lawyer and founder of civil rights organization Julian, started investigating a variety of suspected lynching cases in 2019.
Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson said that more work needs to be done to continue to protect the Black community. He said the following in a statement:
“While we celebrate this historic moment, we cannot pretend that the passage of this bill is an end to the ongoing violence Black people face. Seeing Congress condemn a tool of political oppression from the last century does not let them off the hook when it comes to addressing the tools of anti-Black political oppression in this century. We must keep pushing Congress and the White House to deliver real justice for Black people. This includes preventing conservative mobs from making Black votes disappear and getting rid of the Jim Crow filibuster. The fights to dismantle racism in all its forms must get even stronger after today.”
