On 29 March, US President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that designates lynching as a federal hate crime.
The law, called the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, given that there have been around 200 hundred unsuccessful attempts to pass an anti-lynching bill.
Those convicted of lynching resulting in either death or injury as a product of a hate crime can face jailtime for up to 30 years.
President Biden made some strong comments regarding the bill. "Thank you for never giving up, never ever giving up. Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone, belongs in America, not everyone is created equal," he said, as reported by the BBC.
"Racial hate isn't an old problem – it's a persistent problem. Hate never goes away. It only hides," he added.
Who Was Emmett Till?
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African-American boy who was brutally lynched in Mississippi in 1955.
Accused of offending a White woman in a grocery store, his gruesome killing along with the acquittal of the perpetrators made him posthumously an icon of the Civil Rights movement.
Emmet Till and his mother Mamie Till.
(Photo Courtesy: Library of Congress)
The first anti-lynching bill in the US was introduced in the year 1900 by the only black Congressman at the time named George Henry White.
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