







The NAACP, along with other civil rights groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and Equal Justice Initiative, support the measure. And it is being presented at a time when there has been increased national attention on what the EJI cited as an “instrument of terror and intimidation” used against more than 4,000 black men, women, and children during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Moreover, reports indicate that the impact of lynching in the Jim Crow South had been the decimation of countless black businesses and economic devastation of multitudes of African American households. As a result, it is still unknown how much black wealth had been unrealized due to such acts of malice.  

The anti-lynching movement dates back to the late 1800s when journalist and civil rights crusader Ida B. Wells investigated the murder of a friend, who had been a successful black Memphis grocer, and his two employees. She discovered that they had been killed by a mob because their business competed against a nearby white-owned store. Wells, who also had her Memphis newspaper offices destroyed in 1892, engaged in a 40-year campaign of exposure and protest.

 In 1918, Congressman Leonidas C. Dyer (R-MO) would become the first member of Congress to introduce a bill, seeking to punish authorities unwilling to prevent lynching. That failed effort would represent one of roughly 200 such attempts by Congress. In fact, as recently as 2005, 90 members of the U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan resolution apologizing to lynching victims for its continuous inability to enact anti-lynching legislation. 

Today, Harris, Booker, and Scott seek to continue the battle and appear to be rallying support within and outside the corridors of Congress. Asserts EJI Executive Director Bryan Stevenson, who founded the Montgomery, Alabama-based National Memorial for Peace and Justice dedicated to lynching victims, of the renewed political urgency: “It is never too late for our nation to express our sorrow for the decades of racial terror that traumatized millions in this country. Passing an anti-lynching law is not just about who we were decades ago, it’s a statement about who we are now that is relevant, important, and timely.”



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