Ep 004 | 100 Years and Nothing... Anti-Lynching Laws in America

Recently, Senators Harris, Booker and Scott (the Black Senators) introduced a bill entitled “Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018.” The bill is the latest installment in this country’s attempt to pass anti-lynching legislation.  Despite lynching being “the ultimate expression of racism in the US following reconstruction,” the country has failed to pass anti-lynching legislation for 100 years, that’s right a century.  

Lynching changed the fabric of this country.  Honestly, I was very naïve before I began researching the topic.  Lynching was a threat to all Black people who knew that for any reason or no reason whatsoever you could be killed, and the killers would never be brought to justice.  Almost 5,000 people were victims of lynching in the United States between 1882 and 1968, 70% of whom were black. 

On this episode, I discuss why it is so difficult to enact a law that would give people harsher crimes for this heinous, violent act. More importantly, what the inability to pass legislation says about our culture. We also uplift the Black women who were at the forefront of the anti-lynching movement.

Sources:
https://qz.com/1322702/the-us-has-tried-to-pass-anti-lynching-laws-240-times-and-failed-every-single-time/
https://www.harris.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/ALB18773.pdf
https://www.naacp.org/history-of-lynchings/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/opinion/sunday/ida-b-wells-lynching-black-women.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/26/fearless-ida-b-wells-honored-by-new-lynching-memorial-for-fighting-racial-terror/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4f4722cf517e
https://qz.com/727602/the-naacps-a-man-was-lynched-yesterday-flag-has-been-reprised-and-hangs-in-new-york-city/
http://theconversation.com/lynching-memorial-shows-women-were-victims-too-95029