CHARLESTON, S.C. — It took more than a century and almost 200 attempts, but Monday night the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill that will finally make lynching a federal hate crime in America.
Long championed by U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the anti-lynching legislation faced no opposition when it came before the Senate floor in a mostly empty chamber Monday night, making its passage a quiet moment that carries historic implications.
Some 122 years after an anti-lynching bill was first proposed by a Black congressman from North Carolina, a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime is on its way to the president's desk, where it is expected to be signed into law.
"Tonight the Senate passed my anti-lynching legislation, taking a necessary and long-overdue step toward a more unified and just America," Scott tweeted shortly after the bill passed by unanimous consent, a practice that allows legislation to pass without a roll call vote so long as there is no senator present to object.
"After working on this issue for years, I am glad to have partnered with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to finally get this done," Scott said.
The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act carries the name of the 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago whose brutal killing in 1955 would catalyze the civil rights movement and lead to a national reckoning on race relations in America. After Till was kidnapped, tortured and lynched for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, his mother insisted on having an open casket funeral to show the world what had been done to her child.
Under the proposal, which was introduced in the Senate by Scott and his Democratic colleague, Cory Booker of New Jersey, a crime can be prosecuted as a lynching when a hate crime results in a death or injury. The crime would also be punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was also introduced in the House by U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat. The measure easily passed in the House last month, where only three lawmakers voted against the proposal.
All of South Carolina's seven U.S. House members voted for its passage.
"After 120 years, and more than 200 attempts, it is time to finally right this deadly wrong," U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-Columbia, the third-ranking Democrat in the House, said in a tweet ahead of the Feb. 28 House vote.
When the revised version of the House bill passed in the Senate Monday night, Senate Majority Chuck Schumer said, "Hallelujah. It is long overdue." But the New York Democrat also expressed dismay at how long it took to get here, saying, "That it took so long is a stain, a bitter stain on America."
Even before Schumer's remarks, the inability for Congress to pass this bill had been a publicly documented shame by the Senate body. In 2005, the Senate issued an apology for its past legislative failures on the matter.
More than 4,000 lynchings took place during this past century and during the Reconstruction period in the 19th century. At least 185 of those lynchings were recorded in South Carolina between 1877 and 1950, according to a report from The Equal Justice Initiative.
Scott had tried to get this legislation passed since the summer of 2018, when he worked with Booker and then-Sen. Kamala Harris of California.
In May 2020, after the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, Scott compared the 25-year-old Black jogger's killing in Brunswick, Georgia, to the lynching deaths of other Black people, including Till.
"Congress can do our part — starting with finally fully passing anti-lynching legislation. However, as a nation, we have to admit some hard truths," Scott tweeted in a three-part Twitter thread at the time. "#AhmaudArbery is far from the first person of color to meet this fate. But his life, or James Byrd's, or Emmett Till's, can't be forgotten. The only way we can stop this is together, as one American family. It's too late for Ahmaud; let's ensure his memory powers a better future."
The three white men convicted of Arbery's murder were found guilty of federal hate crimes in a jury trial last month.
In a floor speech last week, Scott urged his colleagues to pass the anti-lynching bill into law, whether it was the Senate version he led with Booker or the one filed in the House.
"If it takes a new name and minor tweaks to get this legislation signed into law — legislation that has failed 200 times — I welcome a new name, I welcome some technical changes," Scott said.
He later added, "Let this year be the year we put politics to the side and we get it done."
Despite its unanimous passage in the Senate in both 2018 and 2019, it failed to become law.
In 2020, the effort hit another roadblock when Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky blocked the bill, criticizing the legislation for being overly broad. This time, Paul worked alongside Scott and Booker as a cosponsor of the bill, along with Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat.
Paul said in a statement that he was satisfied with the bill's language, "which will ensure that federal law will define lynching as the absolutely heinous crime that it is."
