Finally The House Passes Emmett Till Antilynching Act By Huge Margin

House Passes Emmett Till Act By Overwhelming Margin

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime. The bill was passed with a overwhelming vote of 410-4. introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), and now the Senate will need to vote on the House bill before it goes to the White House to be signed into law. For over 100 years, Congress unsuccessfully attempted to pass this legislation.

The bill is named in honor of Emmett Till, who was murdered at age 14 in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman in her family’s grocery store. Till a Chicago native was visiting relatives during summer vacation in the Mississippi Delta region. He spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the white married proprietor of a small grocery store there. Bryant had testified that Till made physical and verbal advances. In 2008, Bryant disclosed that she had lied regarding her interaction with Till, specifically the portion where she accused Till of grabbing her waist and uttering obscenities. The incident drew national attention, especially after his mother insisted on an open-casket funeral and photos of his disfigured face circulated nationwide.

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“I am just so, more than words can express, so delighted that finally after over 200 tries in Congress, finally after former Congressman Leonidas Dyer … sponsored legislation in 1902 and it passed the House and failed in the Senate,” Rush told reporters before the vote. “We’re finally poised to pass the Emmett Till Antilynching Act in the House today.”

Lynching was tactic used by angry Southern white mobs to suppress and scare African Americans after the Civil War. 4,743 recorded lynching which took place between 1882 and 1968, 72.7% of the victims were black, according to the NAACP.

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