Emmett Till Anti-lynching bill, hundreds of years in the making, becomes law

By Mona Austin

Above: amioe Tills Mobley cries bu her son Emmett Tills casket. Decades later, even though law makers and Civil Rights leaders relished in the history-making moment in the White House Rose Garden that lynching became a hate-crime, they realize the work of uprooting race-based crimes is not done.

After over 200 attempts, Pres. Joe Biden inked the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill into law on March 29, 2022. With this action, lynching is not merely a moral outrage, but a cemented federal hate crime. Legislative reform around anti-lynching underwent multiple iterations over several decades before Congressman Bobby Rush (D-Ill) presented H.R. 55 in an agreeable form, against the evidential deluge of race-based assaults grabbing national headlines. Now, race-based violence resulting in death carries a minimum sentence of 30 years of imprisonment.

In the White House Rose Garden, Biden smiled politely when the great-grand daughter of Ida B. Wells Barnett, Michelle Duster standing at the podium to introduce him, acknowledged that no other U.S. president before him had done what he did. There had been over 100 years of legislative passivity on the measure. Then, the 46th president, with the help of persistent politicians, finally codified punishment for lynchings.

Barnett's relative and the extended family of Emmett Till, Congressional Leaders, members of the Cabinet and the Congressional Black Caucus were witnesses to the signing that took a century's worth of action as similar injustices continued to unfold.

It was in 1898 that Barnett, using her influence as a respected Black journalist, visited the White House to appeal to then president McKinley to bring an end to the murderous act. Her work sparked

“After more than 200 failed attempts to outlaw lynching, Congress is finally succeeding in taking the long overdue action by passing the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Hallelujah. It’s long overdue,” said Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in remarks on the Senate floor after the bill was pased in the 117th Congress.

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VP Kamala Harris who worked on the legislation when she was a California Senator along with NJ Senator Cory Booker and South Carolina's sole Black Republican Senator Tim Scott were all involved in furthering the law. In her remarks Harris stated that that lynching is not just a relic of the past.

Continuing to champion Barnett never stopped documenting the atrocities to keep the nation and lawmakers aware of the growing problem.

On the legislative front in 1900 George Henry White (R-NC) the sole Black Senator in the U.S. Congress filed the first anti-lynching bill. He focused on the mob violence that was taking place. There was support from New Jersey lawmakers, but not enough. White's efforts were tabled and he did not seek re-election after serving two terms. It would be 30 years latter before another

It was the death of Emmett Till that brought the vicious Jim Crow era practice of citizens publicly taking the law into their own hands and murdering Blacks to widespread public consciousness when his mother, Mamie Tills-Mobley insisted that his mutilated remains were exposed in an open casket funeral. The Black Press obliged her request to publish the gruesome photo of the child, age 14 at the time of his death.

Till, born in Chicago, was lynched in Money, Mississippi during a visit to his family in the summer before his 8th grade year. In the dead of night a mob of white men stormed into his uncle's home, abducted him and shot and beat him to the point of being unrecognizable, before tossing his body into the Tallahatchie river. Their motive? The child allegedly flirted with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was a cashier at a local five and dime. Donham, admitted she lied decades later.

Biden noted that the death of young Emmett "energized the Civil Rights Movement" as exactly one month after his murder Rosa Parks took her rest on a Montgomery, AL bus and refused to get up. Symbolizing the tiredness of a race in the grip of inequality and hatred, Parks' "rest" became resistance.

Peaceful protests in various forms became a way for Blacks to expose Black discrimination. Shift to over 100 years after the journalist fouht against ineqaulity and Wells' great-grand-daughter stood next to the president as he recognized Wells' activism in tracking and exposing the truth about lynching crimes as a pre-Civil War era Black journalist. Her example was embedded in Black owned and operated media, the source of dependence for justice seekers throughout American history.

Lynchings would not be confined to days of old. In her remarks Vice President Kamala Harris stated that the The copious Black faces quilted together through unjust murders are lynchings anew.

While at times people from other racial groups were lynched it was mostly a tool of terror targeting Blacks. In fact, in her work to get the president to lawfully condemn lynching, Barnett had cited cases involving Asians and Italians.

Nearly 3 months ago, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, Chief of the DOJ Civil Rights Division informed surviving members of Emmett Till's family that his case was sealed.

It was in 1880 that a case in Virginia determined that it was unconstitutional to prohibit Blacks from serving on juries. Despite the law recognizing this right, racially discriminatory jury selection was common especially in the Deep South. In Mississppi the all White jury acquitted the men who murdered Till. The fight to have balanced juries continues today.