Scott Olson/Getty Image(WASHINGTON) — A bill to make lynching a hate crime under federal law passed the House on Wednesday, making it the first attempt since 1900 poised to successfully make its way through Congress.
The legislature is titled the Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act, an ode to Till, a 14-year-old African American boy who was kidnapped, beaten and murdered in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman.
The vote was 410-4.
The members who voted against were Independent Rep. Justin Amash and Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert, Thomas Massie and Ted Yoho.
Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., who introduced the bill in January 2019, said it will finally outlaw “an American evil.”
Rush spoke about his decision to name the bill after Till, saying the boy was from his district in Chicago and that the now-iconic image of him in his casket “created an indelible imprint on my brain, on my spirit.”
“It made me conscious of the risk, the trepidation of being a black man in America,” Rush said at a press conference.
The bill describes lynching as an act willfully done by a collection of people who assemble with the intent to commit violence on another human and then cause that person’s death, according to a copy of the bill.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer classified lynching as “the premeditated, extrajudicial killing by a mob or group of people to instill fear.”
“Lyching is a blot on the history of America, but the even greater blot is the silence that for too long maintained in the context of what people knew was happening,” he said at the press conference, calling the bill “long overdue.”
Lynchings were used in the U.S., predominantly in the South, from the 1880s to 1960s to terrorize black Americans.
“This form of terrorism was used to kill black people and terrorize and terrify those into understanding they were not considered humans,” Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said at the press conference.
The bill had bipartisan support.
Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., saying “this will ensure that those who engage in mob violence are held accountable.”
Rush said it is expected to pass the Senate by the end of the week, before the end of Black History Month, and then makes its way to the Oval Office.
Asked if they believed Trump would sign the bill, Bass said, “How could he not?”
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