After a century of failed attempts, Congress passed legislation on Wednesday that would classify lynching as a federal hate crime.
“We must pass it to correct the inactions of those before us. The inaction of others does not relieve one of the obligation to do what is right,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson said on the House floor Wednesday, testifying to the importance of the bill.
Thompson was one of the bill’s sponsors. He represents Mississippi’s second congressional district, which includes where Emmett Till’s murder took place.
The Emmett Till Antilynching Act passed in a bipartisan 410-4 vote. A separate version of the legislation, the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act, passed unaminously in the U.S. Senate last year. There are only small differences between the two bills, and if the House’s version is approved by the Senate, it will be sent to President Donald Trump’s desk.
The bill, which comes after 200 failed attempts to pass an antilynching bill over the last 100 years, describes lynching as an act willfully done by a group of people who assemble with intention to commit violence against another person and then cause that person’s death, according to a copy of the bill.
The legislation is named after Till, who was brutally lynched in 1955 while visiting family in Money. During his trip, white shopkeeper Carolyn Bryant accused 14-year-old Till of making sexual advances toward her at Bryant’s Grocery. Four days later, Bryant’s husband Roy, and his half-brother J.W. Milam kidnapped Till from his uncle’s home. They beat him, shot him in the head and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River.
The jury that acquitted the two murderers only deliberated for 67 minutes. Decades later, Carolyn Bryant admitted that her claims Till harassed her were lies. Roy Bryant and Milam did not wait nearly as long to admit their crimes, doing so in a 1956 interview with Look Magazine, as their acquittal provided them double jeopardy protections.
After Till’s mutilated body was recovered from the river, his mother, Mamie, demanded an open casket at her son’s funeral so others would have to confront the horrors inflicted on him. The photos this produced provided an initial spark for the Civil Rights Movement.
All four Mississippi congressmen voted to pass the bill. Only four lawmakers — Reps. Louie Gohmert (Texas), Thomas Massie (KY) and Ted Yoho (FL), and independent Rep. Justin Amash (MI) — voted against it.
Rep. Bobby Rush (IL) introduced the bill in January 2019, and he is the representative for the first congressional district of Illinois, which includes the area of Chicago where Till was from. In a press conference with several national news outlets after the bill passed, Rush said that the image of Till in his casket “created an indelible imprint on my brain, on my spirit,” which was part of his motivation for the bill’s name.
“It made me conscious of the risk, the trepidation of being a black man in America,” Rush said in the same press conference.
While there are no recently recorded lynchings, sponsors of the bill said its passage is incredibly important. On social media, Rush thanked his colleagues who helped pass the bill and said the House sent “a strong message that violence—and race-based violence, in particular—has no place in America.”
If the Senate signs off on the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, it will be the first attempt to make lynching a federal hate crime since 1900 to succeed in both the House and the Senate. The most recent attempt was last year when the Senate passed its similar antilynching bill.
Mississippi has had more lynching victims than other Southern states and highest lynching rate per capita from 1877 to 1950. During that time period, 654 people were lynched in the state, many of whom were black men like Till, and the per capita rate from those years is 0.62. If the bill is signed into law, anyone found guilty of lynching would face up to life in prison.
Because of an editing error, this post used a visual with the wrong final vote count. Four representatives voted against the bill, not 12.
