Emmett Till Antilynching Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Madam Speaker, one hundred years ago, Missouri Republican Congressman Leonidas Deyer introduced an anti- lynching bill in the 65th Congress. The legislation eventually died in the Senate in 1918. In the one hundred years since that failure, there have been over two hundred unsuccessful attempts to prohibit lynching in the United States through legislative redress. Those one hundred years saw the advent of the civil rights movement and Jim Crow, but it also was marred by undercurrents of racism and random acts of violence.

As the Representative of the Fourth Congressional District of Georgia and a senior member of the House Judiciary, this legislation, which would finally make the act of lynching a hate crime, has particular significance to me and my constituents. Our district is home to Stone Mountain which is commonly known as the symbolic birthplace of the modem Klu Klux Klan. Since 1915, the Klu Klux Klan has met at Stone Mountain and as recently as 2018, white supremacist organizations sought to rally atop the mountain with Confederate flags. Over the years, many civil rights battles have been won in our district, but our fight for equality is not over.

Lynching is a vestige of slavery and America's views on race and racism in this country. It has long been a practice used to keep enslaved Africans, and later, free Black men, women, and children living in terror. The practice has irrevocably damaged the American psyche. It is time to formally distance our country from these heinous acts and raise the crime to the consideration of a hate crime. In doing so, we declare to ourselves and the rest of the world that we will not tolerate bigotry in the United States and that those who would harm others because of the color of their skin will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Rep. Bobby Rush's Emmett Till Antilynching Act will finally be considered by the Full House. This bill honors Emmett Till, a 14-year- old African American boy lynched in Mississippi in 1955. As we progress towards a more perfect union by recognizing lynching for what it is--a hate crime, we reflect on how this heinous practice has been wielded to oppress minorities throughout American history.

My good friend Rep. Rush brings this legislation to the House floor citing the riots that took place in Charlottesville in 2017 and during the deadly El Paso shooting in 2019. The lynching of black and brown people in our country is truly, as he says, prevalent in American society today. Its face may have evolved, but the crime of hate that it represents is indisputable.

The Senate passed a resolution in 2005 that apologized to victims of lynching crimes; however, lynching still is not classified as a federal hate crime. We honor, today, the herculean efforts from American heroes like my fellow Georgia Congressman John Lewis, who worked to mobilize our country against these violent acts.

We have waited too long to raise this crime to the level of a federal hate crime, and we cannot delay any longer. Only when we reckon with our troubled history and the epidemic of hate crimes against black and brown people in the United States can we begin to construct a more perfect union.

I'm proud to lend my support and my vote to this important legislation.

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