This Day in History in 1918: National Liberty Congress of Colored Americans Asks Congress to Make Lynching Federal Crime
On this day in Black history, in 1918, the National Liberty Congress of Colored Americans asked the United States Congress to make lynching a federal crime.
There was an estimated 80 lynchings that took place that year alone and according to the NAACP, 4,743 lynchings took place in the U.S. between 1882-1968. America’s shameful history of lynching wasn’t acknowledged by the government until 2005. Congress failed to pass anti-lynching legislation almost a staggering 200 times.
However, Illinois Representative Bobby Rush introduced a bill in 2018 called the Emmett Till Anti Lynching Act that passed in the House, 410-4. In that same year, the Senate passed bipartisan anti-lynching legislation that was introduced by its only three Black members, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker and Tim Scott.
The legislation designates lynching as a federal hate crime, punishable by up to life in prison.
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