American History Bends A Little More Towards Justice

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

- Martin Luther King Jr. 

In what has literally been a century in the making, the United States Congress FINALLY passed an anti-lynching law that should help ensure some justice against the racism that haunts this nation. Via AP News:

Congress gave final approval Monday to legislation that for the first time would make lynching a federal hate crime in the U.S., sending the bill to President Joe Biden to sign into law.

Years in the making, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is among some 200 bills that have been introduced over the past century that have tried to ban lynching in America.

It is named for the Black teenager whose brutal killing in Mississippi in 1955 — and his mother’s insistence on a open funeral casket to show the world what had been done to her child — became a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights era.

“After more than 200 failed attempts to outlaw lynching, Congress is finally succeeding in taking a long overdue action by passing the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer...

The House overwhelming approved a similar measure in 2020, but it was blocked in the Senate.

Last week, the House overwhelmingly approved a revised version and the Senate passed the bill unanimously late Monday...

I'm not sure what happened to end the endless filibustering that kicked up in the Senate every time an anti-lynching bill came to a vote. There had always been just enough Conservative types - from the Dixiecrats  of the early-mid 20th Century to the Far Right Republicans like Rand Paul during the last 40 years - to delay its passage long enough for the clock to run out each congressional term.

Thankfully this time, that stoppage didn't happen.

This law is coming after not just decades of Blacks suffering vigilante violence at the end of the rope but recent acts of straight-up racist murders from Trayvon Martin to Jordan Davis to George Floyd and most recently to Ahmaud Arbery. There are tens of other deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police or gun-toting assholes to list here.

In cases like Floyd and Arbery, the federal government did pursue hate crime charges, that the murderers responsible violated the civil rights of their victims, but it still seems not enough to ensure justice was served, that the racism driving those acts of violence were not truly exposed to the nation so we could understand just how severe a problem lynching continues to be.

The matter now - once President Biden signs the bill - is going to be a question of enforcement: How often will the federal government call on this law to investigate those victims whose deaths were conspiratorial acts of racism? There are a number of questionable Black deaths by hanging across the United States that the local police are dismissing as suicides that could now - I would hope - get investigated as possible lynchings.

We can only hope, as always. The fear and rage that drives racism runs deep in this nation, it's been a mindset haunting our collective psyche for generations: It will take a lot of work to fight racism until justice and equality can drive that rage and fear from our world.

There's also a lot of work to stop the goddamn racists from pushing their censoring "Let's never teach how bad racism is" bullshit in our public schools, but that would require a majority of American voters to stop voting for the goddamn Far Right Republicans to our county school boards and state legislatures.

We need to keep bending the United States towards justice.