LYNCHING TO BECOME A FEDERAL CRIME AFTER MORE THAN 100 YEARS OF WHITE RESISTANCE

Feeling Rebloggy 

    In a legislative victory [well over]100 years in the making, the Senate unanimously approved a bill on Wednesday that declares lynching a federal crime in the United States.

     The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act was a bipartisan effort introduced earlier this year by three African-American Senators: California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker and South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott. The bill, according to CNN’s Eli Watkins, deems lynching—or mob killings that take place without legal authority—as “the ultimate expression of racism in the United States,” and adds lynching to the list of federal hate crimes.
     Though the practice existed during the era of slavery in the United States, lynchings proliferated in the wake of the Civil War, when African-Americans began to establish businesses, build towns and even run for public office. “Many whites … felt threatened by this rise in black prominence,” according to PBS. In turn, the article reports, "most victims of lynching were political activists, labor organizers or black men and women who violated white expectations of black deference, and were deemed 'uppity' or 'insolent.'"
     ... The new bill states that 99 percent “of all perpetrators of lynching escaped from punishment by state or local officials....

Read more: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/after-200-failed-attempts-us-has-made-lynching-federal-crime-180971092/#95hhf2CdYi4oKyJM.99

Tomorrow: 
An Introduction To The U.S. History of Whites Lynching Blacks For Profit

BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM