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.
