Bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depressive illness or manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by wide mood swings from high (manic) to low (depressed). Periods of high or irritable mood are called manic episodes.
James Byrd, Jr. was not engaged in a federally-protected activity when he was lynched and killed. The Matthew Shepard Act expanded the 1969 Federal Hate Crime Law to cover these and other types of brutal murders.
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on January 26, 1922 but its passage was halted by a Southern Democratic filibuster in the U.S. Senate.Attempts to propose similar legislation took a halt until the 1930s with the Costigan-Wagner Bill.he bill classified lynching as a federal felony, which would have allowed the United States to prosecute cases. States and local authorities had seldom pursued prosecution in lynchings.