At last, Congress appears poised to designate lynching as a federal hate crime punishable with enhanced penalties. The House last month passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act with just three “no” votes. That’s three too many, but the potential for unanimous passage in the Senate could still send a strong message of zero tolerance for this form of domestic terrorism.
During the hundred years from the end of the Civil War to the peak of the civil rights movement, thousands of Americans, most of them Black, were lynched by groups or mobs of fellow Americans driven primarily by racial hatred. Among the victims was Till, 14, of Chicago, who was abducted, beaten and shot to death while visiting relatives in Mississippi in 1955 after false allegations he had accosted a white woman. Till’s mother insisted that his mutilated body be displayed in an open casket to show the world the brutality he’d suffered, which helped spur the civil rights movement.
The legislation in Till’s name, now on the cusp of passage, would define lynching, in the words of lead sponsor Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., as “a conspiracy to commit a hate crime [that] results in death or serious bodily injury.” It would be punishable by up to 30 years in prison, in addition to any sentencing for other federal crimes.
