Should Lynching Be Punishable Under Federal Hate Crime Laws? (S. 488)

"Today's Senate passage of the Justice For Victims of Lynching Act is a historic step towards acknowledging a long and painful history and codifying into law our commitment to confronting bias-motivated acts of terror in all of its forms. I urge the House of Representatives to take up this bill so that after over 100 years and 200 attempts, we can finally make lynching a federal crime."

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), also an original cosponsor of the bill, added:

"Today the Senate sent a strong signal that this nation will not stand for the hate and violence spread by those with evil in their hearts. I look forward to this important legislation ending up on the President's desk for signature."

When recently asked about anti-lynching legislation during the previous Congress, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) expressed support and said that he believed an anti-lynching law was already on the books. In an interview on Sirius XM, Sen. McConnell said, “I thought we did that many years ago. I hadn’t thought about it, I thought that was done back during L.B.J. or some period like that. If we need [an anti-lynching law] at the federal level, I certainly will support it.”

Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative and the founder of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, a national memorial acknowledging the victims of racial terror lynchings, argues:

“It is never too late for our nation to express our sorrow for the decades of racial terror that traumatized millions in this country. Passing an anti-lynching law is not just about who we were decades ago, it's a statement about who we are now that is relevant, important and timely."

In an NPR interview after the Senate passed a resolution apologizing to lynching victims for its failure to pass anti-lynching legislation, University of New Hampshire African-American History and American Studies professor Harvard Sitkoff argued that the need for federal anti-lynching legislation was negated by the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s:

“[L]ynching as such now has decreased very significantly. In part because of the threat of federal anti-lynching legislation, Southern states began to do much, much more to stop lynching from occurring and to themselves prosecute lynchers when a lynching did occur. To a very large extent, then, a federal anti-lynching law became superfluous.”

There are 47 bipartisan cosponsors of this bill, including 29 Democrats, 16 Republicans and two independents. The Senate unanimously passed this bill's predecessor in December 2018, but the House didn't approve the bill before the conclusion of the 115th Congress.

Of Note: Lynching is the willful act of murder by a collection of people assembled with the intention of committing an act of violence upon any person. Historically, it’s been associated with racially-motivated crimes, especially in the South. From 1882 to 1968, nearly 5,000 people, over 70% of whom were African-American, were victims of lynching in the U.S. Despite the number of crimes, 99% of those responsible for lynchings escaped prosecution or punishment by state or local officials. While lynching no longer occurs with regularity in the U.S., it’s never been officially made a federal offense. According to a film produced by Ted Koppel, the last documented lynching in the U.S. was of Michael Donald in Mobile, AL in 1981 by two members of the KKK.

Congress has tried — and failed — to enact anti-lynching legislation at least 240 times. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, seven presidents called for an end to lynching, and the House of Representatives passed multiple anti-lynching measures between 1920 and 1940. The Senate, however, repeatedly failed to enact anti-lynching legislation despite repeated requests by civil rights groups, presidents, and the House of Representatives.

In 1918, Rep. Leonidas C. Dyer (R-MO) was the first to introduce an anti-lynching bill. His bill, intended to punish authorities that failed to prevent lynching, was designed to act as a deterrent that’d end the practice. Dyer’s bill ultimately died in the Senate after facing stiff opposition.

The last attempt to pass an anti-lynching bill was in 1965. In 2005, the Senate issued an apology for its past legislative failures. In a bipartisan resolution, 90 out of 100 Senators apologized to lynching victims for the Senate’s repeated failure to enact anti-lynching legislation, and expressed their deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity, and the constitutional protections accorded to all U.S. citizens.

Media:

• Sponsoring Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) Press Release
  
• S.Res.39 - Senate Apology to Victims of Lynching and Their Descendants
  
• The Columbus Dispatch (Op-Ed In Favor)
  
• New York Times (Previous Version)
  
• Axios (Previous Version)
  
• Quartz (Context)
  
• UMKC School of Law (Lynching History)