Long after the horses have left the barn and died of old age did America close the barn door as a symbol that horses should be kept securely in the barn at night.
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Trump signed legislation that set free numerous black prisoners. Pelosi sat on it for political purposes.
Now, Democrats and ‘progressives’ actually think Trump won’t sign anti-lynching legislation.
Reason No. 523 Dems are going to get wiped out in November.
4
It is doubly symbolic that Chicago has just renamed a major thoroughfare for Ida B. Wells, who campaigned against lynching. What is remarkably ironic here is that peviously that street honored Congress, which failed to act against lynching for 120 years. Congress deserved to lose its street to Ida B. Wells.
6
Will Trump sign it, do you think?
I for one am relieved that rather than Congress working for meaningful action to control the methods and weapons of modern day hate crimes, or building a memorial dedicated to the victims of lynching in the Capitol, they have dedicated time to solving something that really will do nothing to rock the boat.
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Eh, not too long. It only took one-hundred and fifty-seven year after the Emancipation Proclamation. But Roger Stone deserves "unbiased" justice. God bless America, we are certainly "exceptional."
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It's app. 245 yrs. too late.
It is one of the reasons in imo that FDR did great things but was not a great president.
To get his new deal legislation thru the Congress he refused to support an anti lynching bill. His wife never forgave him for it.
Supporting segregation and discrimination was one thing to get his legislation passed by the south. It was "normal" back then but even lynchings were considered wrong in that period outside of the south.
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I read the legislation and I can't see it actually changes anything.
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As a political statement, the anti-lynching bill is a no-brainer: who isn't opposed to lynching? But the root of the lynching horror was never the federal government's failure to pass legislation -- it was the failure of state and local communities to prosecute racially motivated murders under State law and, indirectly, the federal government's turning a blind eye to the entire Jim Crow system for almost 100 years after the adoption of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The bottom line is effective laws were on the books; it was the humans entrusted to uphold those laws who failed the black community.
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I'm wondering about cases where lynching is not a hate crime in the accepted sense as when a white prisoner is lynched by a white mob.
The law usually separates that kind of thing from a racially motivated murder.
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@Ambrose That fact pattern has fortunately not existed yet. Probably only if Trump is defeated.
@Ambrose That is called "Vigilantism" and is entirely different. Although, I think, they still hate the person, in fact, all but the most heinous crimes involves hate.
Could be a problem here. If the bill makes lynching a federal crime and someone is lynched, Trump will be able to pardon the lyncher claiming there are good people on both sides of the rope!
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The real story here should be why 4 congressmen -- Justin Amash, Louie Gohmert, Thomas Massie, and Ted Yoho -- voted against this bill.
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It was reported earlier that this bill would not be signed by ImPOTUS is it included making the lynching of anyone in the LBGTQ community illegal. I do not see in this article if that was stripped out of the bill. Does anyone know if it was?
Does anyone truly believe if this wasn’t an election year that this anti-lynching law, which was brought forth to protect people he has been openly racist against (rental records to begin with) would even be considered offered to the president* for his signature?
I surely don’t when anyone and everyone faces immediately being fired and ridiculed on Twitter and Fox Propaganda if they speak any truth not in line with his outlandish, totally fictional and increasingly paranoid alternative reality.
Americans please remember that is OUR White House he and his family are squatting in. It is OUR Country he had weakened and made a laughingstock of. It is OUR Judicial system he is tearing apart with his good ol boy pardons and his own lawbreaking. WE, the Citizens of what was once the Bravest and Greatest Country in the entire World need to stop this with our voices, our votes and our volunteering to help others get to the polls on Election Day.
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This frames it all nicely. 155 years since the end of the Civil War, 100 Years since it was originally introduced, 64 years since Emmit Till, and just now it passes the House? They should let it go on a little longer so they can lynch the House and Senate members. Disgraceful and an embarrassment - like Trump.
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This is certainly timely! The rise in lynchings across the country is staggering. Now if we could only get some action on, say, global warming, pollution, corruption, infrastructure, the deficit, and too many more to mention, before those get out of hand, we’d be great again.
4
How could anyone NOT support such logical and humane legislation. Oh right, republicans.
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Actually for most of the history of the failure to pass federal anti lynching laws (and most other civil rights legislation) - Democrats. It always surprises me that Americans don’t know their own history.
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Yes, I am cynical, thinking that this bill being signed by President Trump will only make it through the Senate and to his desk because of the political value that can be extracted from it for his reelection campaign.
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120 years!? Well that's just disappointing...On so many levels. I had no idea lynching wasn't a federal crime. Due the horrendous nature of the offense, I never stopped to think about it. But this points out a larger problem: why was I ignorant to this fact? This sounds like something I should have learned about in high school. I remember learning about people being lynched through Jim Crow, but I certainly didn't learn that lynching isn't a federal crime. Aside from my jaw-dropping astonishment, the answer to my ignorance is pretty simple. I'm white and white people are shielded from very real truths about black people. Is it any wonder why reconciliation has been so slow in the US?
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Good luck getting a vote on it in the Senate.
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@Judy This already passed the Senate.
@Judy It already passed in the Senate last year.
@Judy
The Senate unanimously passed a version of this bill last year.
The Death of Emmett Till (PART II)
by Bob Dylan
The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
12
Well gee, were they away for 120 years?
1
Of course, should the current occupant of the White House sign it, he'll take all the credit for its passing into law ignoring the fact that the "Do Nothing" Democrats were the catalists in its passing while he probably didn't know about it or the history behind it.
10
The House version of the Emmet Till Anti-Lynching Act, in effect, redefines lynching as conspiring with another person to commit a hate crime. Two people qualify as a lynch mob.
If you torch a church, cathedral or synagogue solo, you couldn’t be charged with lynching, but if you recruit someone to pour the gasoline while you strike the match, it’s a lynching. James Alex Fields didn’t lynch Heather Heyer when he drove his car into a crowd at the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville; no one was riding shogun for him. The Charleston Church shooting was not a lynching because Dylan Roof acted alone. The Jasper, Texas, men who dragged James Byrd to death behind their pickup truck could be charged with lynching under the new act, but Texas has executed two of them.
But the federal lynch law doesn’t require a fatality. Two or more persons who threaten or injure someone due to their race, religion, ethnicity or nationality could be charged with lynching. Most lynchings prosecuted under the new law will probably be gang-related.
4
The Death Of Emmett Till (PART I)
by Bob Dylan
"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.
Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.
Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.
And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
6
"House Passes Anti-Lynching Bill After 120 Years of Failure"
Other than pure hatred and racism, I cannot for the life of me understand, much less comprehend, why it took 120 YEARS for this bill to pass the House.
One would think this bill getting signed into law would be a given. But then I see who would have to approve and sign it.
This is the same guy who awarded the Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh a few weeks ago.
There are no givens with this administration.
I sincerely hope I am completely wrong in my thinking.
6
Yes sir, our House of Reps has sure been busy. Glad to see them get such important legislation done.
1
check the records of votes in Congress at the time and you will find it was Republicans and Conservatives who blocked its passage throughout the early 20th century.
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''It's against our southern heritage'', so Mitch will bury the bill.
After his comments repeatedly on the Central Park Five, it's doubtful Trump would sign it. To sign it would anger his base.
1
The passage of time has rendered Congress...increasingly symbolic.
I guess this should help set our expectations about how long it might take to make all of the things Trump has done illegal.
3
Justice delayed is justice denied.
5
No one has done to make this happen than the Equal Justice Initiative and its leader, Bryan Stevenson. Learn more about it at their museum and memorial in Montgomery, AL.
3
I wonder at what point groups of cops who who inappropriately use excessive force against black men will be legally defined as a mob guilty of lynching. I predict “never,” even though a few such killings in recent years have seemed more like lynchings than well-conducted police work.
3
I have just carefully reread article 1 section 8 of the United States Constitution, "powers of Congress". It still says nothing about murder. But that doesn't matter, as the Constitution is merely a symbolic document today.
If the GOP is smart, they'll pass the bill. Not passing it is an invitation to energize black voters.
2
Suppose he’ll sign it?
WHAT? It took this long? Why? Who could have been against this, except for white supremacists? This is just sick.
1
I'll bet the rent that Trump won't sign it.
1
Lynching were an affront to all Americans, not just blacks! And couldn't the author find the space to note the largest mass lynching in US history was perpetrated against 11 Italians in 1891 New Orleans!
1
@Donna Gray yeah that's terrible. And over 4,000 lynchings of African Americans, not to mention continued violent attacks from police officers and white supremacists on them to this day doesn't answer your question?
4
(Shoulda added this at the end of my first one). Suppose he’ll sign it? Or will he just let ‘em continue and just say there were plenty of good people on each end of the noose?
A lynching is, by definition, done publicly with the acquiescence or approval of legal authority. Emmet Till was not lynched; he was murdered.
Unlike the Till case, which was clearly racially motivated, the majority of lynchings were not racially motivated. The majority of lynch victims were white, killed by white mobs. There were a few Negro victims killed by Negro mobs.
Lynching is the mob response to a perceived failure of the legal system to adequately punish those accused of crime. Often it was racially motivated, and often the victim was innocent, but those are not synonymous with lynching. The classic fictionalized account (in which race plays no part) is "The Oxbow Incident".
3
@Jonathan Katz most lynching were done to black people by white mobs. Where did you get your information?
8
@Jonathan Katz
Lol.
1
@Jonathan Katz Emmet Till was lynched - because it was done with the tact approval of authority. Lawmen the country over "approved" such actions.
3
Wow. Such political courage. A real ‘profile of freedom’ moment.
19
Good to know we only have to wait 70 years or so after the damage is done to pass a symbolic law. Thanks Congress! It bodes well for the other pressing issues we are facing. like climate change.
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This is not going to sit well with Donald Trump's base, but they still know that he has their back.
9
If the bill actually does get signed, it could be as significant an achievement as the Vatican admitting that Galileo was right.
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@Eric Actually it did officially recognize it about 50 years ago.
Call me cynical, but isn't this just a little too coincidental? I don't even want this bill if it has to be tainted with the imprimatur of Trump.
14
I'm gobsmacked that it wasn't already a federal crime.
16
@Hummingbird Same here! Murder is murder. It was a crime before 1955, it is a crime now.
@Hummingbird Murder is already a crime, this is just showboating and making it a double crime.
1
@Hummingbird
Because murder is generally a matter of state law. It takes a bit of a stretch to make it a federal offense.
1
Will this bill outlaw any killings by 2 or more people of people of ANY race, religion or country of origin?
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@turbot : is there any crime legislation that forbids the designation of hate crimes because of someone's race, religion or country of origin? NO.
There's your answer.
1
If it makes it through McConnell's shameful stack of unsigned bills, it would be paradoxical considering the overt cruelty in the current administration.
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Lynching is just like murdering, what’s the difference?
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@Kurtis Wan I think with murder there's only one murderer and with lynchings, there's often more people participating or present.
@Kurtis Wan
Lynching is public murder, done with the acquiescence or approval of legal authority, of a victim accused of a crime. That's the definition.
@Kurtis Wan
If you have to ask you'll never know.
FYI there's different DEGREES of the crime of murder, and assault, and torture is also a crime.
It is Emmet Till's face before his hideous murder that brings tears to my eyes now, not after. Like everything else in this cold country while being black this bill is long overdue. I hope Trump signs it but I'll be clear that his signing it will not redeem him in my eyes or absolve him of his own racism. Even the Devil is bound to do right on a Sunday.
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What irony if this Senate were to pass and this president to sign such a bill.
11
Is lynching a relevant issue for anyone today, other than Jussie Smollet ?
8
@CJT
It occurs comparatively frequently in some other countries, including Mexico. We pass laws against crimes that might occur in the future, even if they haven't occurred recently.
These days we don't have lynch mobs gathering around Southern jails and dragging black arrestees out to be tortured and killed. What we have are cops shooting unarmed blacks sleeping in their cars, playing with toy guns in a playground, etc. Because those heavily-armed cops always "fear for their lives."
42
I'd prefer that the government focused on bills that would help people who are victims of disenfranchisement and discrimination in today's society; not the society that existed in the early 20th century. If not, then draft a bill that makes witch trials a federal crime too. People are hurting today. This lynching bill is a distraction and will not save a single life or make a single life better.
7
Everyone should see the documentary
“Always in Season” if you question why this has relevance today. Alwaysinseasonfilm.com
3
It is unbelievable that this country took so long to finally admit that lynchings were happening throughout the country. Were the Southern politicians so powerful that no one dared oppose them?
It only took a decade for politicians to undo the accomplishments of the Civil War, end Reconstruction and restore power to the Confederacy. (Black laws were passed that actually made it illegal for black Americans to accept a higher paying job!) In 1878, the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Bill of 1865 was unconstitutional. The court gave individuals the right to discriminate as they saw fit. (Keep your eyes on the Freedom of Religion case before the Supreme Court that will determine whether religious persons can discriminate against you if their religion calls for it).
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Yes. The southern democrats were so powerful, FDR gave up asking for minimum wage for farm workers in order to get some of his new deal passed. Southern dems knew that Blacks were the predominant farm workers. That legacy stays with us.
2
@Potlemac the house has passed many anti-lynching bills before. During the period of time when it mattered most the House passed Anti-lynching bills repeatedly, and southerners in the Senate killed them like they did any other Civil Rights Legislation.
2
Emmett Till was not 'lynched' by a 'white mob.' He was murdered by two white men.
35
@SAM
From https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lynching:
lynch[ linch ]
verb (used with object)
to put to death, especially by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority.
The two men constituted the mob; their action was done without legal authority. It was a lynching.
Semantic gymnastics will not make Emmett Till's murder by lynching anything less that what it was.
20
@SAM
Two white men were "charged" with the horrific crime, but more than two men had to be involved -- especially if you're familiar with the circumstances behind Emmett Till's death.
In any case, you're missing the point if you think it's about how many people were involved in his lynching.
28
@eheck
The distinction is that Till was not murdered in public with the knowledge and acquiescence of legal authority. That is the distinction---the usurpation of legal authority by a mob.
1
McConnell will ignore this bill, just like the hundreds of of other bills that have passed the House.
24
Except for the minor detail that the Senate already passed an anti-lynching bill unanimously last year.
10
@Kevin Brock This bill has passed through the Senate and has moved on to the House. I'm not a fan of Mitch either but he let this bill go through.
2
@Kevin Brock Doesn't it say the bill already passed through the Senate? Did you even read the article?
"The Senate has passed a version of the bill, and the House is voting on its own version on Wednesday afternoon."
6
Why has it taken so long to remove this “stain on America” ? Why is America so reluctant to come to terms with its so challenged past in brutalizing African Americans ? Why are we so reluctant to fully educate our young people on trails and tribulations of the African American experience since Africans were first brought to these shores in bondage ? And especially how the Civil War literally tore our nation apart with nearly a million casualties ?
71
Somewhat similar reasons to ignoring the genocide of the native american population before europeans spread across the land. Not admitting the shame. Risk of suits for reparations.
13
The brutal slaying of Emmett Till.
One of the darkest chapters in recent American History, and that a bill still hasn't been passed to make the lynching of Americans of color a federal crime is nothing, if not proof of just how much in denial this country is when it comes to racial discrimination.
And if this president and the Republican members of Congress want to make good on their assertions of supporting racial equanimity -- not to mention getting the support of African-Americans in an upcoming election that is theirs to lose, they will not only sign this bill into law, but do more to ensure that this is one chapter in America's past that is closed for good.
But not forgotten.
32