Explainer: What’s Behind the Federal Anti-Lynching Legislation?
President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law the first bill that specifies lynching as a federal hate crime.
President Joe Biden is expected to sign into law the first bill that specifies lynching as a federal hate crime.
Blacks became the prey of lynch mobs if they were accused of a crime, committed a perceived slight against someone white or demanded changes, such as the right to vote. The report documents more than 4,400 cases of men, women and children who were killed between 1877 and 1950. The vast majority were men. Artist Alexis Joyner created art around the tragedy..
Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) called lynchings racially-motivated acts of violence and terror that represent a dark and despicable chapter of our nation’s history.
“They were acts against people who should have received justice but did not. With this bill, we can change that by explicitly criminalizing lynching under federal law,” noted Harris, who suspended her presidential campaign late last year.
“Had there been no May 17, 1954 (the day the Supreme Court ruled in Brown V. Board of Education), I’m not sure there would have been a Little Rock. I’m not sure there would have been a Martin Luther King Jr., or Rosa Parks, had it not been for May 17, 1954. It created an environment for us to push, for us to pull,” Lewis said.
Last week, December 19, 2018, U.S. Senators Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) took to the Senate floor on to ask for unanimous consent to pass the bipartisan Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018, historic legislation that would criminalize lynching, attempts to lynch, and conspiracy to lynch for the first time in American history.