Emmett Till Antilynching Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I strongly support the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. I will be proud to vote in favor of it on the House floor today. I have continuously fought against racial violence and racial discrimination, and this legislation is an important step forward.

This bill recognizes the federal role in directly confronting this type of racial violence. In his case, Emmett Till, an innocent African American boy, lost his life. His death came to symbolize the continual threat of violence that hung over the African American community and helped spark the Civil Rights Movement. But this bill, named for Till, goes beyond his circumstances. It also provides some modicum of justice for the victims of the People's Grocery Lynching in Memphis. Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart were falsely accused and killed in Memphis on March 9, 1892. These three men were killed because they ``were becoming economic competitors to whites.'' For my district and the country, this vote is recognizing all the men and women who were lynched and never received any justice.

In passing this bill, the House of Representatives will clearly say these types of actions--this type of hate--have no place in our country.

Unfortunately, this isn't a historic phenomenon. Now, in the year 2020, we still struggle with bias motivated crimes, racial violence, and vigilantism. We see the continuation of racial violence directed at African Americans and other minorities today.

I will continue to fight for equality and racial justice. I am proud to support this legislation and thank Rep. Bobby Rush, Speaker Pelosi, Leader Hoyer, and Chairman Nadler for their leadership. Ms. JACKSON LEE. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 35, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which amends 18 U.S. Code 249, to establish the act of lynching as a federal hate crime.

I thank our colleague, Congressman Bobby Rush of Illinois, for his work in shepherding this legislation and acknowledging the unfathomable, barbaric history of lynching.

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 is the closest our country has ever come to adopting antilynching legislation.

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is necessary legislation, intended to bring justice to victims of lynching, to heal past and present racial injustice and prevent these wretched, gruesome acts from continuing to occur.

Ida B. Wells, the renowned educator, investigative journalist, and Civil Rights activist advocated tirelessly from 1886 to 1931 for the passage of antilynching legislation and collected data to show the vast scope of racial tensions and hate crimes.

In October 1892, Ms. Wells published research on lynching in a pamphlet entitled Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases and continued to write, speak and organize for the recognition of lynching as a crime and for civil rights until her death in 1931.

She traveled internationally, teaching foreign audiences about the intensity and severity of American racial tensions.

Ms. Wells' contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and American political discourse are still immensely influential and we look to her as a leader and role model to this day.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that its research uncovered approximately 75 other people who died violently between 1952 and 1968 under circumstances suggesting that they were victims of racial violence.

For most of them, the reason their names were not added to the Memorial is because not enough was known about the details surrounding their deaths.

Sadly, the reason so little is known about these cases is because they were not fully investigated or, in some cases, law enforcement officials were involved in the killings or subsequent cover-ups.

And because the killings of African Americans were often covered up or not seriously investigated, there is little reason to doubt that many slayings were never even recorded by the authorities.

The reason justice had not been served was the callous indifference, and often the criminal collusion, of many white law enforcement officials in the segregated South.

The all-white, all-male jury acquitted Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam for the murder of Emmett Till, with the two men posing for photographs and lighting cigars after the verdict was announced.

There simply was no justice for African Americans during the civil rights era.

The entire criminal justice system--from the police, to the prosecutors, to the juries, and to the judges--was perverted by racial bigotry.

African Americans were routinely beaten, bombed and shot with impunity.

Sometimes, the killers picked their victims on a whim.

Sometimes, they targeted them for their activism.

Many times, prominent white citizens were involved and no consequences flowed.

Herbert Lee of Liberty, Mississippi, for example, was shot in the head by a state legislator, E.H. Hurst, in broad daylight in 1961.

It is, of course, fitting and proper that this legislation bears the name of Emmett Till, whose slaying in 1955 and his mother's brave decision to have an open casket at his funeral stirred the nation's conscience and galvanized a generation of Americans to join the fight for equality.

Sadly, hundreds of them were killed in that struggle, and many of the killers, like those of Emmett himself, were never successfully prosecuted.

Madam Speaker, over the past half century, the United States has made tremendous progress in overcoming the badges and vestiges of slavery.

But this progress has been purchased at great cost.

Examples of unsolved cases include the 1968 ``Orangeburg Massacre'' at South Carolina State University where state police shot and killed three student protesters; the 1967 shooting death of Carrie Brumfield, whose body was found on a rural Louisiana road; the 1957 murder of Willie Joe Sanford, whose body was fished out of a creek in Hawkinsville, Georgia; the 1946 killing of a black couple, including a pregnant woman, who was pulled out of a car in Monroe, Georgia, and dragged down a wagon trail before being shot in front of 200 people.

Solving cases like these is part of the unfinished work of America.

Madam Speaker, 53 years ago, Medgar Evers was murdered in Jackson, Mississippi; justice would not be done in his case for more than twenty years.

But that day was foretold because the evening before the death of Medgar Evers, on June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation from the Oval Office on the state of race relations and civil rights in America.

In his historic speech to the nation President Kennedy said:

``We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

``One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.''

H.R. 35 will help ensure that justice is received by those for whom justice has been delayed.

In doing so, this legislation will help this Nation fulfill its hopes and justify its boast that in America all persons live in freedom.

Madam Speaker, I strongly support this legislation and urge all Members to join me in voting for its passage.

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