Joe Biden signs bill making lynching a federal hate crime
Presidents typically say a few words before they turn legislation into law. But Joe Biden flipped the script Tuesday when it came time to put his signature on the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act. He signed the bill at a desk in the White House Rose Garden. Then he spoke. “All right. It’s law,” said the president, who was surrounded by Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, and top Justice Department officials. He was also joined by a descendant of Ida B. Wells, a Black journalist who reported on lynchings, and Rev. Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till. Biden said it’s “a little unusual to do the bill signing, not say anything and then speak. But that’s how we set it up.” He thanked the audience of civil rights leaders, Congressional Black Caucus members, and other guests who kept pushing for the law for “never giving up, never ever giving up.” Congress first considered anti-lynching legislation more than 120 years ago. Until March of this year, it had failed to pass such legislation nearly 200 times, beginning with a bill introduced in 1900 by North Carolina Rep. George Henry White, the only Black member of Congress at the time. Harris was a prime sponsor of the bill when she was in the Senate. The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is named for the Black teenager whose killing in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 became a galvanizing moment in the civil rights era. His grieving mother insisted on an open casket to show everyone how her son had been brutalized. “It’s a long time coming,” said Parker, who was onstage with Biden when the president signed the bill. Parker, two years older than Till, was with his cousin at their relatives’ home in Mississippi and witnessed Till’s kidnapping. In his remarks, Biden acknowledged the struggle to get a law on the books and spoke about how lynchings were used to terrorize and intimidate Blacks in the United States. More than 4,400 Blacks died by lynching between 1877 and 1950, mostly in the South, he said. “Lynching was pure terror, to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone belongs in America, not everyone is created equal,” he said. Biden, who has many Black men and women in key positions throughout his administration, stressed that forms of racial terror continue in the United States, demonstrating the need for an anti-lynching statute. “Racial hate isn’t an old problem — it’s a persistent problem,” Biden said. “Hate never goes away. It only hides.” The new law makes it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime leads to death or serious bodily injury, according to the bill’s champion, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. The law lays out a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and fines. The House approved the bill 422-3 on March 7, with eight members not voting, after it cleared the Senate by unanimous consent. Rush had introduced a bill in January 2019, but it stalled in the Senate after the House passed by a vote of 410-4. The NAACP began lobbying for anti-lynching legislation in the 1920s. A federal hate crime law was passed and signed into law in the 1990s, decades after the civil rights movement. “Today we are gathered to do unfinished business,” Harris said, “to acknowledge the horror and this part of our history, to state unequivocally that lynching is and has always been a hate crime, and to make clear that the federal government may now prosecute these crimes as such.” “Lynching is not a relic of the past,” she added. “Racial acts of terror still occur in our nation, and when they do, we must all have the courage to name them and hold the perpetrators to account.” Till, 14, had traveled from his Chicago home to visit relatives in Mississippi in 1955 when it was alleged that he whistled at a white woman. He was kidnapped, beaten, and shot in the head. A large metal fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire, and his body was thrown into a river. His mother, Mamie Till, insisted on an open casket at the funeral to show the brutality he had suffered. Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam were accused but acquitted by an all-white-male jury. Bryant and Milam later told a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till. During a video interview after the bill signing, Parker credited current events for helping the anti-lynching bill move through Congress and to Biden’s desk. Parker specifically mentioned the police killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020, which sparked months of protests in the United States and other countries after videotape of the officer’s actions circulated. He drew a connection between Floyd and Till, saying, “That’s what caused Rosa Parks to not give her seat up, and that sparked the civil rights movement because she thought about Emmett Till.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
What’s inside Montgomery’s new national peace memorial and slavery legacy museum
The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) will open two institutions Thursday as part of its work to advance truth and reconciliation around race in America and to confront the legacy of slavery, lynching and segregation. The openings of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration will be accompanied by several days of panel discussions and presentations from national civil rights figures. There will also be performances and concerts featuring acclaimed artists and an opening ceremony. The Montgomery-based EJI litigates on behalf of prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, were without effective legal counsel or who may have been denied a fair trial, as well as juveniles prosecuted as adults. The memorial and museum are designed to promote the just treatment of all people. “There is still so much to be done in this country to recover from our history of racial inequality,” said EJI Founder and Executive Director Bryan Stevenson. “I’m hopeful that sites like the ones we’re building and conversations like the ones we’re organizing will empower and inspire people to have the courage to create a more just and healthy future. We can achieve more in America when we commit to truth-telling about our past.” Here are closer looks at the memorial and the museum. The National Memorial for Peace and Justice This is the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the legacy of enslaved black people, people terrorized by lynching, African-Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary presumptions of guilt and police violence. Work on the memorial began in 2010, when EJI staff began investigating thousands of lynchings in the South, many of which had never been documented. Six million black people fled the South as refugees and exiles as a result of lynchings, and the EJI was interested in understanding not only lynching but the terror and trauma it created in the black community. This interest led to the 2015 EJI report Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, which documented thousands of lynchings in 12 states. Since its initial release, the original research has been supplemented with data related to lynchings in states beyond the Deep South. EJI staffers visited hundreds of lynching sites, collected soil and erected public markers in an effort to reshape the cultural landscape with monuments and memorials that accurately reflect history. For the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the EJI partnered with artists like Ghanaian native Kwame Akoto-Bamfo, whose sculpture on slavery confronts visitors when they enter the memorial. From there, text, narrations and monuments to lynching victims take visitors on a journey from slavery through lynching and racial terror. In the center of the site, visitors encounter a memorial square, created with assistance from the MASS Design Group. The memorial experience continues through the civil rights era, brought to life through a Dana King sculpture dedicated to the women who sustained the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Finally, the memorial journey ends with contemporary issues of police violence and racially biased criminal justice expressed in a work by artist Hank Willis Thomas. Displayed throughout the memorial are writings from Toni Morrison and words from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and there is a reflection space in honor of pioneering African-American journalist Ida B. Wells. One of the most poignant features is the memorial square, featuring 800 six-foot monuments that symbolize the thousands of racial terror lynching victims in the U.S. and the counties and states where this terrorism took place. Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration The 11,000-square-foot museum, built on the site of a former warehouse that imprisoned enslaved black people, is midway between a historic slave market and the main river dock and train station where tens of thousands of enslaved people were trafficked during the height of the domestic slave trade. By 1860, Montgomery was the capital of the domestic slave trade in Alabama, one of the two largest slave-owning states in America. The Legacy Museum employs technology to dramatize the enslavement of African-Americans, as well as the evolution of racial terror lynchings, legalized racial segregation and racial hierarchy in America. Relying on rarely seen first-person accounts of the domestic slave trade, the EJI’s research materials, videography, exhibits on lynching and recently composed content on segregation, the museum explores the history of racial inequality and its relationship to a range of contemporary issues, including mass incarceration and police violence. “Our nation’s history of racial injustice casts a shadow across the American landscape,” Stevenson said. “This shadow cannot be lifted until we shine the light of truth on the destructive violence that shaped our nation, traumatized people of color and compromised our commitment to the rule of law and to equal justice.” Museum visitors encounter slave-pen replicas, where they can see, hear and get close to what it was like to be imprisoned while awaiting sale at the nearby auction block. First-person accounts from enslaved people narrate the sights and sounds of the domestic slave trade. Extensive research and videography vividly expose the racial terrorism of lynching and the humiliation of the Jim Crow South. And compelling data-rich exhibits about America’s history of racial injustice and its legacy give visitors the opportunity to investigate the dynamic connections across generations of Americans affected by the narrative of racial difference. The Legacy Museum houses the nation’s most comprehensive collection of data on lynching. It also presents previously unseen archival information about the domestic slave trade brought to life through new technology. As a physical site and an outreach program, the facility is an engine for education about the legacy of racial inequality. To read more about EJI, click here. Republished with the permission of Alabama Newscenter.
