TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Kate Prince on Feb 27, 2020

The U.S. House today passed legislation that would classify lynching as a federal hate crime, The Hill reports. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act, introduced by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Illinois, passed on a 410-4 vote. Today’s vote held historic significance as it came 120 years after a committee in the lower chamber defeated legislation that would have criminalized lynchings. The first bill to make lynchings a federal crime passed the House in 1900, but was ultimately filibustered in the Senate. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old African American boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.