Emmett Till Antilynching Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The previous speaker, Mr. Green from Texas, said that it is time, that it is past time. But it is never too late to do the right thing.

I am pleased that this will be a bipartisan vote.

This is about Emmett Till. It is about lynching. It is about violence. It is about hate. But in a larger sense, this is about who we are as a country, who we are as a country that said: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.''

Surely, our Founders today would have said all men and women are created equal.

But in the eyes of two murderers, Emmett Till was neither equal nor a fellow human being, but a dehumanized being, undeserving of protection or of decency.

To the surprise, I think, of probably many Americans, Madam Speaker, lynching has not been described as a hate crime. We will do that today.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Collins and Chairman Nadler for bringing this bill to the floor. The House will make that determination today. I am proud to bring this legislation to the floor as majority leader.

A broadcaster in our area, Joe Madison, came up to me some year and a half ago and said: Why can't you pass lynching legislation?

I had no answer, so I went to the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, who spoke just earlier, Karen Bass, the former speaker of the California Assembly, one of the leaders in this House. I said to her: ``Karen, I want to make sure that we get lynching legislation on the floor.''

I talked to my friend, Bobby Rush, who I have been a close friend of for more than two decades, a leader in this House, a leader on the Energy and Commerce Committee and in this House. I talked to him about it. I talked to him about his legislation.

Two Senators also had legislation. I am glad that they were able to come together and that we have this legislation before us. Bobby Rush represents the district in which Emmett Till lived.

Emmett Till took a summer vacation to Mississippi. It was his last vacation. He came to be, and continues to this day to be, a symbol of the terror and hate and atrocities and prejudice directed against American citizens whose color of skin was different than some others. This should be a lesson to us all.

Then you see movies like ``Hidden Figures,'' the heroine of which just died a few days ago at the age of 101, or ``The Help,'' or ``Harriet,'' Harriet Tubman from my State, to see the violence that was visited on our fellow human beings because of the color of their skin.

If Elijah Cummings, my colleague, were alive today, he would say: ``We are better than this.''

That is what this legislation is saying: We are better than this.

Madam Speaker, I thank Representative Rush, Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Collins, the Congressional Black Caucus, Chairwoman Karen Bass, and the CBC itself for their work on this bill.

The Senate passed a similar bill last year, and, Madam Speaker, I thank Senators Booker and Harris for their work.

I hope we can get this to the President's desk and signed quickly.

It is very fitting that this legislation will be named in memory of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old whose brutal lynching in 1955 marked a turning point in America's history.

Many Americans might associate the term ``lynching'' with hanging, but if you go to the dictionary, it has a broader definition: the premeditated, extrajudicial killing by a mob or group of people in order to instill fear, to intimidate, to subjugate populations and individuals, and to enforce a social order on people, contrary to the concepts out of which America was born.

According to the Tuskegee Institute, by the time of Emmett Till's murder, it had recorded more than 4,700 victims of lynching in America since the 1880s.

We had a Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and still, from 1870 to the 1960s, there were people who thought, with impunity, they could take the lives or brutalize others--with impunity.

Even today, we continue to see the memory of lynchings used to instill fear and threaten minority populations, from nooses being displayed as hate speech to threats of political violence using imagery of lynching. We still live with its dark legacy.

Madam Speaker, I say to my colleagues, as we continue to observe Black History Month throughout February, let us resolve to commemorate that history by doing our part to correct its injustices.

I paraphrase Martin Luther King when he said: Do not worry so much about the voices of your opponents as you worry about the silence of your friends.

Madam Speaker, this day, the House of Representatives shall not be silent. Vote ``yes.''

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