House passes historic anti-lynching bill after Congress’s century of failure
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By Felicia Sonmez, Washington Post
Rep. Bobby Rush stands on the U.S. House floor next to a photograph of Mamie Till and her future husband, Gene Mobley, as she views her son Emmett Till’s body. (Image is a still from C-SPAN video.)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also took to the floor to salute Rush for spearheading the bill and to urge members to support it.
“We cannot deny that racism, bigotry and hate still exist in America,” she said, citing the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, among other recent incidents.
The measure’s passage comes after lawmakers tried, and failed, to pass anti-lynching bills nearly 200 times.
The earliest such attempt came in 1900, when Rep. George Henry White (R-N.C.), then the country’s only black member of Congress, stood on the floor of the House and read the text of his unprecedented measure, which would have prosecuted lynchings at the federal level. The bill later died in committee.
Years later, Rep. Leonidas C. Dyer (R-Mo.) introduced an anti-lynching measure that passed the House but was filibustered in the Senate by Southern Democrats, many of whom opposed it in the name of “states’ rights.”
In 2005, the Senate approved a resolution apologizing for its failure to enact anti-lynching legislation. Then-senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) pointed to the horrific impact of the chamber’s decades of inaction, declaring that “there may be no other injustice in American history for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility.”
At least 4,742 people, mostly African Americans, were reported lynched in the United States from 1882 to 1968 in all but four states, the text of Rush’s legislation notes. Ninety-nine percent of perpetrators escaped state or local punishment, it adds.
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