This page was created by Dianne Sanchez Shumway.

This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Great Wall Institute: The Process of the Great Wall of Los Angeles

NPR Article: Lynching is now a federal hate crime after a century of blocked efforts

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1086720579/lynching-is-now-a-federal-hate-crime-after-a-century-of-blocked-efforts

Excerpt:

After multiple failed attempts across twelve decades, there is now a federal law that designates lynching as a hate crime. In a Tuesday ceremony at the White House, President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law.

"Racial hate isn't an old problem. It's a persistent problem," Biden said. "Hate never goes away, it only hides under the rocks. If it gets a little bit of oxygen, it comes roaring back out, screaming. What stops it? All of us."

This page has paths:

Beulah Melton, widow of Clinton Melton, talks with civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Everett Collection Historical / Alamy Stock Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed legislation that would make lynching a federal hate crime. It was a historic moment. Congress has tried and failed to pass anti-lynching legislation more than 200 times over the course of more than a century. According to the NAACP, more than 4700 people were lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968. The new Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act – as it’s called – is named for the 14-year-old boy whose murder, 67 years ago, shocked the nation. In 1955, Emmett Till had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family when he was kidnapped, beaten, and killed by white men after allegedly flirting with a white woman. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Emmett Til’s death became a media sensation, partly because of a widely distributed photograph of his disfigured face. Today, his murder is considered the spark that ignited the Civil Rights Movement. But for every Emmett Till, there are many others whose names are lost in time. One of them was a Black gas station attendant who lived just a few miles from where Till was killed.
Contents of this path: