US President Joe Biden signed the law on Tuesday March 29 making lynching – these summary executions that have become symbols of the racist past of the United States – a federal crime. The legislation provides for a penalty of up to 30 years’ imprisonment for this crime. It is named after Emmett Till, a black teenager tortured and killed in 1955 in Mississippi, a state in the south of the country, whose name marked the struggle for civil rights.
Read also4000 blacks were lynched in the United States between 1877 and 1950
Joining Joe Biden at the White House signing were his Vice President Kamala Harris, the first black woman to hold the post in the United States, and Michelle Duster, a descendant of black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells. “The lynchings were pure terror”the president said, recalling the public killings of mostly black people, often in front of cheering white crowds.
“Racial hatred is not an old problem. It’s a persistent problem.” and that “never leaves, he hides”, he warned. Ms Harris also warned that “acts of terror based on race do occur(have) always in our country”. The bill was adopted in early March by US parliamentarians, after more than a century of failed attempts.