President Joe Biden made lynching a federal hate crime upon signing the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act on Tuesday afternoon.
The bill overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives on March 1 and unanimously passed the Senate one week later. The bill’s passage is monumental, as Congress previously failed to pass federal anti-lynching legislation over 200 times, according to ABC News.
Biden, after signing the legislation, highlighted “the lie that not everyone … is created equal.”
“Terror, to systematically undermine hard fought civil rights, terror, not just in the dark of night but in broad daylight. Innocent men, women and children, hung by nooses, from trees, bodies burned and drowned, castrated,” the president said.
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“Their crimes?” the president continued. “Trying to vote, trying to go to school, trying to own a business or preach the gospel.” (RELATED: Two Charged With Homicide, Hate Crime In Killing Of Black Navy Veteran, Says DA)
The Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act is named after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955.
Accused of whistling at a white woman, Till was tortured, had his eye gouged out and was then shot in the head by the woman’s brother and husband. The duo later tied up Till’s body to a cotton-gin fan with barbed wire and threw him in the river.
The new law means an individual charged with lynching can face up to 30 years in prison, according to ABC News. Because of the Emmett Till bill, an offense such as kidnapping or attempting to kill or abuse another individual can be prosecuted as a lynching when the “offender conspires to commit a hate crime” resulting in death or serious injury, ABC News added.