Lynching: A Federal Crime, But When?

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act was passed on March 29, 2022, by President Joe Biden, making lynching a federal hate crime in the United States. The bill was named after Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955. Till was kidnapped, beaten, and killed, and his body was dumped into a river.

The history of lynching in the United States is a long and dark one. It was most prevalent in the South during the Reconstruction era, and was used as a tool to enforce white supremacy and intimidate ethnic minorities. While the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, African Americans became the primary targets of these attacks.

The first recorded lynching took place in St. Louis in 1835, and the practice continued until 1981. During this time, an estimated 4,467 people were victims of lynching. While lynching has become rare following the civil rights movement, some lynchings have still occurred in recent years.

The history of lynching in the United States

Lynchings were used as a tool to enforce white supremacy and intimidate ethnic minorities, with most taking place in the American South, where the majority of African Americans lived. However, racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states. In addition to Blacks, Mexicans, Native Americans, Chinese, and Italian immigrants were also frequent targets of lynchings. The largest single mass lynching in American history took place in New Orleans in 1891, with 11 Italian immigrants killed.

Lynchings were often justified as a response to rape or murder, but these charges were often pretexts for lynching African Americans who had violated Jim Crow-era rules or competed economically with Whites. Other common accusations included theft, assault, and robbery. Lynch mobs varied in size and were sometimes treated as spectator sports, with thousands of people in attendance. The victims were killed in a variety of ways, including hanging, shooting, burning alive, and dragging behind a car.

The emergence of the Second Ku Klux Klan in the early 1900s accelerated the rate of lynchings, which remained common until the Great Depression. The 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy, galvanised the civil rights movement and marked the last classical lynching. Despite over 200 attempts to pass anti-lynching legislation in Congress, it was only in 2022 that the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was passed, making lynching a federal hate crime.

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act

The Act amends section 249(a) of Title 18 of the United States Code to include:

> (5) Lynching.--Whoever conspires to commit any offense under paragraph (1), (2), or (3) shall, if death or serious bodily injury (as defined in section 2246 of this title) results from the offense, be imprisoned for not more than 30 years, fined in accordance with this title, or both.

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> (6) Other conspiracies.--Whoever conspires to commit any offense under paragraph (1), (2), or (3) shall, if death or serious bodily injury (as defined in section 2246 of this title) results from the offense, or if the offense includes kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, be imprisoned for not more than 30 years, fined in accordance with this title, or both.

The bill was introduced by Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL) on January 3, 2019, at the beginning of the 116th United States Congress. It was reported out of the House Judiciary Committee on October 31, 2019, and was passed by the House, 410–4, on February 26, 2020. The bill was reintroduced by Rush as H.R. 55 for the 117th Congress, this time revised to include a serious bodily injury standard, and was passed by the House on February 28, 2022, by a vote of 422–3. The bill was introduced to the Senate by Senator Cory Booker and cosponsored by Senators Paul, Tim Scott, and Raphael Warnock, among others. They passed the bill through unanimous consent on March 7, 2022.

The Tuskegee Institute's definition of a recognised lynching

The Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, defined the following conditions that constituted a recognised lynching:

• There must be legal evidence that a person was killed.
• That person must have met death illegally.
• A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing.
• The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race, or tradition.

The first recorded lynching in the United States

Lynching, which became prevalent in the United States in the pre-Civil War South in the 1830s, refers to the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings. The victims of these killings were members of various ethnicities, but after the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, they became the primary targets of white Southerners.

Lynchings in the U.S. typically involved the seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim by a mob, often with the participation of police officers. These acts of violence were used to terrorize and control Black people, enforce white supremacy, and intimidate ethnic minorities. They were often public spectacles attended by the white community, with photographs of the lynchings being sold as souvenir postcards.

The first recorded lynching of McIntosh in St. Louis followed a similar pattern. McIntosh, who had killed a deputy sheriff, was captured and chained to a tree in a public space downtown. Over 1,000 people witnessed McIntosh being burned to death.

The origins of the word 'lynching'

The word "lynching" is believed to have originated in the United States during the American Revolution. The term "lynch law" is derived from the name of Charles Lynch (1736-1796), a Virginia planter and justice of the peace who, during the American Revolution, headed an irregular court that punished loyalists without trial. Lynch was known to have used the term in 1782, while another Virginian, William Lynch (1742-1820), is not known to have used the term until much later.

The verb "lynch" comes from the phrase "Lynch's Law", which referred to punishment without trial. Lynch himself was a self-appointed judge who sentenced people to death without a proper trial. This method of condemning someone to death by hanging later became known as "lynching".

The word "lynch" also has a longer history. The archaic verb "linch", meaning to beat severely with a pliable instrument, has been proposed as a possible etymological source. However, there is no evidence that this word survived into modern times, so this claim is considered implausible.

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