Biden Signs Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into Law, Making Lynching a Federal Hate Crime

Tuesday, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law, making lynching a federal hate crime. This comes more than 100 years after federal anti-lynching legislation was first proposed.

The bill is named after Till, a 14-year-old Black teenager from Chicago who in 1955 was abducted, tortured and killed in Mississippi after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, claimed he whistled at her and touched her in a store.

The Senate approved the bill on Mar. 7 after the House passed it on Feb. 28 in a 422-3 vote.

During the bill signing ceremony, Biden stressed that the signing of the anti-lynching bill was not about civil rights struggles Americans faced years ago, but it was also about the same racial terror that continues to persist, citing the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and the Charlottesville rally.

“From the bullets in the back of Ahmaud Arbery to countless other acts of violence, countless victims known and unknown, the same racial hatred that drove the mob to hang a noose brought that mob carrying torches out of the fields of Charlottesville just a few years ago,” said Biden.

“Racial hate isn’t an old problem — it’s a persistent problem,” Biden said. “Hate never goes away. It only hides.”

Since 1900, there have been more than 200 attempts to pass anti-lynching bills.