Evizda

More than a century after legislation to recognize lynching as a crime was first introduced in Congress, a bill was unanimously passed in the Senate on Wednesday making the brutal method of public execution—which was common throughout the late 19th century and persisted through the civil rights era—as a “federal civil-rights crime.”

Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Tim Scott (R-S.C.) introduced the latest bill to make lynching punishable as a hate crime. The legislation passed unanimously.

“This is an historic piece of legislation that would criminalize lynching, attempts to lynch, and conspiracy to lynch for the first time in American history,” said Harris on the Senate floor ahead of the vote. “Lynching is part of the dark and despicable aspect of our country’s history that followed slavery and many other outrages in our country…They were needless and horrendous acts of violence and they were motivated by racism. And we must acknowledge that fact lest we repeat it.”

Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), who came under fire last month when she joked about attending a “public hanging” while facing black Democratic candidate Mike Espy in a run-off election—in the state with the most recorded lynchings in U.S. history—was presiding over the Senate during the debate.

According to the NAACP, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968, and nearly three-quarters of the victims were black. White victims were generally targeted for their anti-racist and anti-lynching beliefs.

Over the past two decades, two murders of black men by white supremacists—those of James Byrd and Brandon McClelland—were classified as lynchings by some. 

Despite the persistence of these public extrajudicial killings, lawmakers failed to pass legislation codifying the practice as a crime—although proposals were brought up in Congress about 200 times since the first attempt at the turn of the 20th century, according to Harris.