US finally votes to classify lynching as a hate crime after over a century of trying

Effort spearheaded by bipartisan group of legislators

The US Senate on Monday unanimously passed a bill that would make lynching a hate crime.

It’s a landmark piece of civil rights legislation that comes after more than a century’s worth of attempts to classify these attacks for the form of racist terror they have long been historically.

The bill, Emmett Till Antilynching Act, was sponsored by a bipartisan group of Senators including Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina.

The act, which has already passed in the House, now heads to the White House for a potential signature from Joe Biden.

The legislation is named for Emmitt Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who was brutally lynched in 1955 in Mississippi, a killing which helped galvanise the nationwide civil rights movement.

According to the bill, it would be possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury. The maximum sentence under the Anti-Lynching Act is 30 years.

The House had overwhelmingly approved a similar measure in 2020, however, it was blocked in the Senate.

"After more than 200 failed attempts to outlaw lynching, Congress is finally succeeding in taking a long-overdue action by passing the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act," said Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer.

"Lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy," said congressman Bobby Rush.

He added that the passage of the bill "sends a clear and emphatic message that our nation will no longer ignore this shameful chapter of our history and that the full force of the U.S. federal government will always be brought to bear against those who commit this heinous act".

“This is a huge win for democracy,” wrote congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Twitter.