PITTSBURGH — Lynching is now a federal hate crime. President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Law into effect on March 29 at the White House. It took more than a century and 200 attempts by lawmakers to get legislation to a president's desk.
The law's namesake is Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black Chicagoan kidnapped, tortured and murdered by two white Mississippians in 1955 for allegedly whistling at the wife of one of the men held for trial over the gruesome killing.
Despite overwhelming evidence, the defendants were exonerated by an all-white jury. Knowing that double jeopardy insulated them from the possibility for a second trial, the two men confessed to the murder in Look magazine a year later in exchange for $4,000.
There was no federal law that dealt with the racial terrorism that routinely bubbled up from the local level across America. Ever since 1918, when Leonidas Dyer, a Black congressman from Missouri, introduced the first anti-lynching bill, each Congress has somehow always found an excuse to kill it or ignore it.
The same day that President Biden signed the anti-lynching bill into law, Devonte White, a 29-year-old Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, man was murdered. He became another data point in Pittsburgh's burgeoning murder rate for 2022.
Devonte White wasn't "lynched" according to the definition the federal or local government recognize. Though his killer remains unknown, there was likely no racial element that would trigger an investigation by the feds. As far as we know, he was not chased down the streets of Brookline where his body was found by a crazed white mob. Devonte White might've gotten fatally shot, but he wasn't lynched. It's a distinction without a difference if you're the one with the hole in the head.
As he lay dying, Devonte White probably wasn't relieved that of all the potential murderers in the world, it wasn't a cop or a white vigilante standing over him as he took his last breath. If anything, he was probably more distressed to see the face of someone he knew or someone who looked like him double checking his murderous handiwork.
Even if it was a stranger who pulled the trigger, Devonte White was probably just as distressed to die at the hands of someone with whom he shared no history. Death is always absurd, and no less terrifying if the killer happens to be another Black male.
The day after Devonte White was murdered, Dayvon Vickers, 15, was shot in the head on North Homewood Avenue in Pittsburgh. He was just a year older than Emmett Till when he was murdered in 1955. Across town on Mount Washington, Micah Stoner, 23, was also shot in the head.
There were no ropes involved. Neither was set on fire or thrown into a river wrapped with barbed wire. Neither endured the terror of being dehumanized because of their race. Neither young man was lynched according to the strict definition of the term. The language of the bill Biden signed into law addresses racial violence. Both young men were dispatched by killers who probably looked like them. For those who lay dying, the terror and dread is the same whether dancing at the end of a rope in 1903 or face down in a pool of blood after a headshot in 2022.
Since the beginning of the year, at least three young Black men, ages 18 and 19, have been arrested on suspicion of having committed various murders around town in recent months. They haven't gone to trial or been convicted yet, so their innocence must be presumed until a jury says otherwise. Still, those arrested fit a tragically familiar pattern. There are many young Black men and boys whose capacity for empathy is nonexistent or easily overwhelmed by perceived slights or disrespect.
In the 1920s, the NAACP responded to reports of lynchings around the country by flying a banner from its Manhattan headquarters that read: "A Man Was Lynched Today." It was a powerful statement that captured the public's attention even though lynching continued throughout the length of the Jim Crow years.
Perhaps it is time to revive protest banners that signal a renewed dedication to dealing with these murders that puncture the heart and soul of so many communities in Pittsburgh. I've long thought that the campaign against lynching that began at the beginning of the last century should give birth to a related campaign that addresses the deadly reality of murders committed by young men, especially in underserved communities. Too many young men and boys who have lost their way resort to deadly violence to settle scores.
If we begin to see white banners with black letters flying from front porches across town after every shooting, perhaps the sentiment will sink in: "Yesterday, someone's loved one was murdered" or "Yesterday, someone's child murdered someone else's child" or "Lynching by another name happened again" or "What would Emmett Till say?"
