Biden to sign bill making lynching a federal hate crime

<p>Washington, Mar 29 (AP): President Joe Biden on Tuesday was signing a bill into law to make lynching a federal hate crime, more than 100 years after such legislation was first proposed.</p><p>The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is named after the Black teenager whose killing in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 became a galvanising moment in the civil rights era.</p><p> His grieving mother insisted on an open casket to show everyone how her son had been brutalised.</p><p>The new law, to be signed by Biden in a Rose Garden ceremony, makes it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime leads to death or serious bodily injury, according to the bill's champion, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill. The law lays out a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and fines.</p><p>The House approved the bill 422-3 on March 7, with eight members not voting, after it cleared the Senate by unanimous consent.</p><p> Rush also had introduced a bill in January 2019 that the House passed 410-4 before that measure stalled in the Senate.</p><p>Congress first considered anti-lynching legislation more than 120 years ago.</p><p> It had failed to pass such legislation nearly 200 times, beginning with a bill introduced in 1900 by North Carolina Rep. George Henry White, the only Black member of Congress at the time.</p><p>The NAACP began lobbying for anti-lynching legislation in the 1920s. A federal hate crime statute eventually was passed and signed into law in the 1990s, decades after the civil rights movement.</p><p>Till, 14, had travelled from his Chicago home to visit relatives in Mississippi in 1955 when it was alleged that he whistled at a white woman. Till was kidnapped, beaten and shot in the head.</p><p> A large metal fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire before his body was thrown into a river.</p><p> His mother, Mamie Till, insisted on an open casket at the funeral to show the brutality her child had suffered.</p><p>Two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, were accused, but acquitted by an all-white-male jury. Bryant and Milam later told a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till. (AP) VM VM</p><p><i>(This story is published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. No editing has been done in the headline or the body by ABP Live.)</i></p>