Biden signs bill that makes lynching a federal hate crime
WASHINGTON — 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.
Mr. 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.
The Emmett Till AntiLynching 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.
Mr. Biden acknowledged delay in getting a law on the books, and spoke about how lynchings were used to terrorize and intimidate Blacks in the U.S. More than 4,400 Blacks died by lynching between 1877 and 1950, mostly in the South, he said.
Mr. 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.
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.