Editorial: 120 years late, anti-lynching law still needed

Mamie Till Mobley and her son, Emmett Till, whose lynching in 1955 became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. Last month, President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, the first legislation making lynching a federal hate crime.

If it hadn’t taken more than 120 years to pass, the new law could have been applied to the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a modern-day lynching. This law also recognizes an important distinction about lynchings, historic or modern day. They are not only murders, but also threatening messages to entire communities.has documented more than 4,400 lynchings of Black people in the United States between 1877 and 1950.

Lynching and its use to subjugate and terrorize Black people is an ugly part of American history some would prefer to minimize and ignore.

Ahmaud Arbery's killers were convicted of federal hate crimes without the Emmett Till law so the present need (and indeed there may be a need to take such cases beyond state jurisdictions) never was explained.

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