‘Emmett Till Anti lynching Act’ becomes Law in USA
After 122 years and about 200 attempts in America, finally a law has been made against lynching. President Joe Biden has signed a bill passed against lynchings. It is interesting that the full story of America’s Anti-Lynching Act, why and how it got its name see below
These provisions in the bill became law
US President Joe Biden has signed a bill against lynching passed by both houses of the US Parliament. After the sign of the US President, the bill passed against lynching has now become law. The name of this law made against lynching in America has been named Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act. Under this new law, if a person is now beaten to death in America, then a provision of maximum 30 years of imprisonment has been made for the guilty of lynching.
The wait of 122 years is over
This anti-lynching law made in America is very special in itself because after a long wait of 122 years, there is a law on lynching. In 1900, the country’s first anti-lynching bill was introduced by Republican Party MP George Henry White from North Carolina, who was the only black lawmaker at that time. But this bill could not move ahead of the committee and fell. Since then, a bill has been brought in the US Parliament 200 times to legislate against lynching, but each time it has either fallen in the lower house of parliament, the House of Representatives or the Upper House Senate.
70% of blacks die in lynchings
According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an organization working for the rights of blacks in America, from 1882 to 1968, 4700 people were lynched in America, out of which 70% of the people who died were black Americans. In the US, in the year 2020, the anti-lynching bill was passed in the lower house House of Representatives, but once again it was not allowed to pass from the upper house Senate.
Only 3 MPs out of 422 protested
Finally, after a long wait, on 28 February 2022, this bill was again passed by the US lower house, the House of Representatives, in which 422 MPs voted in favor of the anti-lynching bill and 3 voted against it. After which on the 7th of this month, finally the US Congress (Upper House) unanimously passed the bill. At the same time, after the President’s sign, the bill took the form of law.
How did the law get this name?
After 122 years of waiting and 200 attempts in the US, the story of the anti-lynching law being made is as conflicting and interesting as the name of this law. The name of this anti-lynching law was named Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act. Actually ‘Emmett Till’ was a 14-year-old black American child who was brutally murdered in 1955.
On August 24, 1955, Emmett came to visit his relatives from Chicago to Mississippi. At the same time, he along with his relative had gone to a nearby grocery store to get the grocery. Emmett Till was alleged to have whistled Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working at a grocery store there and fled. According to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), four days after the incident, on August 28, 1955, Carolyn Bryant’s husband Roy Bryant and Roy’s half-brother JW Milam kidnapped 14-year-old Emmett Till from his relatives’ house in the middle of the night. He then took him to some place like a closet, beat him badly, then shot him on the head and then threw Emmet’s body into the river by tying a fan and a sharp wire around his neck. Emmett Till was murdered so brutally that no one can even imagine.
Roy Bryant and JW Milam, who killed Emmett Till, were charged with murder
But both of them were released by the US court in September 1955. The jury of judges that ordered the release of Roy and Milam was an all-white judge. However, in an interview to America’s ‘Look Magazine’ in the year 1956, both Roy and Milam had confessed that both of them had killed Emmett Till.
Intelligence agency FBI had investigated
In 2004, when the FBI re-examined the Emmett Till murder case after 49 years, it was found that both Roy and Milam had died. However, this time the FBI wanted to investigate the matter from this angle whether there was anyone other than Roy and Milam involved in Till’s murder. However, in 2007, the FBI closed the file due to lack of evidence. After 10 years, i.e. in 2017, the US Law Ministry once again started investigating this case on the basis of new evidence, but in December 2021 once again that file was closed.
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