The US Senate has unanimously passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Such efforts had failed for more than a century.
Illinois Democrat Bobby Rush, who introduced the measure in the House, said: "Despite more than 200 attempts to outlaw this heinous form of racial terror at the federal level, it has never been done before. Today we rectify that historic injustice. . Next stop: [Joe Biden's] desk."
New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, co-sponsor of the Senate with Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, said: "Time has passed due to consideration with this dark chapter in our history and I need to be bipartisan to pass it. Proud to support. Important piece of legislation."
Subject to Biden's signature, the bill would make lynching a hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, approximately 4,400 African Americans were executed in the US between the end of Reconstruction, in the 1870s, and the years of World War II. Some of the killings were witnessed by the crowd. Postcards and souvenirs were sometimes sold.
The title for Biden's table is named after Emmett Till, who was 14 when he was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in August 1955. Two white men were tried, but were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury, then confessed. The murder helped spark the civil rights movement.
The House passed Rush's Anti-Lynching Measure 422-3. Three Republicans did not vote: Thomas Massey of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia.
In 2020, following the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis and amid national protests for racial justice, the chamber passed an earlier version of the bill with a similar bipartisan vote.
Then, the measure was blocked in the Senate. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said he did so because "the bill as written would allow change resulting in a cut, abrasion, bruise or any other injury, no matter how temporary, subject to a 10-year penalty." ".
Paul also called the lynching a "horror" and said he supported the bill but for its very broad language.
Kamala Harris, then a California senator who is now vice president, called Paul's stance "outrageous."
Late last year, in another high-profile case, three white men were indicted in the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man who went jogging in a Georgia neighborhood.
In an interview published Tuesday, Christine Turner, director of the Oscar-nominated Short Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day, referred to the Arbery murder when she told the Guardian: "There are many that people refer to as modern-day lynchings. Some people may take our lynching history more seriously."
On Monday, in another statement, Rush said that lynching is "a long-standing and distinctively American weapon of racial terror that has been used for decades to perpetuate the white hierarchy.
"The perpetrators of lynching repeatedly got away with murder - in most cases, they were never brought to trial ... Today, we correct this historical and sordid injustice."
He also quoted a great civil rights leader: "I am reminded of Dr. King's famous words: 'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.'"