Senate Apologizes for Never Passing Anti-Lynching Law
Eighty U.S. Senators on this day officially apologized for the fact that the Senate had never passed an anti-lynching bill.
The first bill making lynching a federal crime was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 1, 1918, and the first national conference on lynching was held in New York City on May 5, 1919. In the 1930s the anti-lynching bill became one of the major issues for the NAACP, although its efforts were never successful.
Missing from the list of senators signing the apology were the two from the state that had the most lynching incidents in American history: Mississippi.
On April 20, 1939, the great jazz singer Billie Holiday recorded the famous anti-lynching song, “Strange Fruit.”
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), co-sponsor of the resolution: “There may be no other injustice in American history for which the Senate so uniquely bears responsibility.”
Examine a collection of photographs of lynchings: Dora Apell and Shawn Smith, Lynching Photographs (2007)
Read the 2015 report on the number of lynchings: Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (2015)
Watch a documentary on the history of lynching in America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYFqv_mRMPI
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here