US: Senate passes anti-lynching bill

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act provides that the crime will be punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

Some 4,400 African Americans were lynched in the US between the end of Reconstruction, in the 1870s, and the years following the Second World War. Postcards and souvenirs of lynchings were sometimes sold.

The bill is named after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who had been visiting relatives in Mississippi when he was accused of whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in a shop. Her husband, Roy Bryant along with his half-brother JW Milam, kidnapped the boy and tortured and murdered him before dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River in August 1955.

They were tried and acquitted by an all-white jury before they confessed. They were protected from a second prosecution by double jeopardy rules.

Emmet’s mother insisted on an open casket at his funeral to allow mourners to see the full extent of his horrific injuries. The incident sparked a new phase in the civil rights movement.

Bobby Rush, the Illinois Democrat who introduced the measure in the House, said: “Despite more than 200 attempts to outlaw this heinous form of racial terror at the federal level, it has never before been done. Today, we corrected that historic injustice. Next stop: [Joe Biden’s] desk.”

New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, Senate co-sponsor with Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, said: “The time is past due to reckon with this dark chapter in our history and I’m proud of the bipartisan support to pass this important piece of legislation.”