Deutsche Welle:Deutsche Welle US President Joe Biden signs historic anti-lynching legislation

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US President Joe Biden has signed into law the first federal legislation that makes racist lynching a hate crime, putting an end to over a century of delays in outlawing what he called “pure terror.”

The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is named after a 14-year-old Black boy whose brutal murder in the southern state of Mississippi galvanized the US civil rights movement in the 1950s.

© Provided by DW US President Joe Biden enters the Rose Garden to sign into law the Emmett Till Anti-lynching ActBiden signed the bill — which was passed by the Senate earlier this month — on Tuesday at a desk in the White House Rose Garden.

He was surrounded by Vice President Kamala Harris, members of Congress, top Justice Department officials, a descendant of Ida B. Wells, a Black journalist who reported on lynchings, and Rev. Wheeler Parker, a cousin of Till.

“Lynching was pure terror, to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone belongs in America, not everyone is created equal,” the president said.

Those convicted under the law will face up to 30 years in jail.

The bill , which passed the Senate by unanimous consent and the House of Representatives by a vote of 422-3, ends a history of impunity over what researchers say were thousands of lynching between the the end of the Civil War in 1865 and 1950 — that often went unpunished