The 'Emmett Till Antilynching Act' was introduced by Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush and named after a 14-year-old boy lynched in Mississippi 65 years ago.
Sixty-five years after 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi, the House has approved legislation designating lynching as a hate crime under federal law.
Rush, a Democrat whose Chicago district includes Till’s former home, said the bill will belatedly achieve justice for Till and more than 4,000 other lynching victims, most of them African Americans.Till, who was black, was tortured and killed in 1955 after a white woman accused him of grabbing her and whistling at her in a Mississippi grocery store. The killing shocked the country and stoked the civil rights movement.
Gohmert said he supported the bill’s concept, but preferred that those accused of lynching in Texas be tried in state court, where they could face the death penalty. “Make no mistake, lynching is terrorism,” she said. “While this reign of terror has faded, the most recent lynching [in the United States] happened less than 25 years ago.”
“Lynchings were horrendous, racist acts of violence,” Harris said in a statement. “For far too long Congress has failed to take a moral stand and pass a bill to finally make lynching a federal crime. This justice is long overdue.”Booker called lynching “a pernicious tool of racialized violence, terror and oppression” and “a stain on the soul of our nation.
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