A Brief Moment of Hope for a Federal Anti-Lynching Bill
The Dyer Bill, which would have made lynching a crime, and was first introduced in April 1918, was passed by the House of Representatives on this day.
Republicans, many of whom still considered themselves members of the party of Abraham Lincoln, controlled both the House and the Senate in the 1920s, making enactment of the anti-lynching bill at least possible, even though segregationist southern Democrats exerted considerable control in both houses. On several occasions when a vote was likely, southern Democrats refused to come to the floor of the House so as to prevent a majority from being present.
The NAACP lobbied hard for the Dyer Bill, and on this day it came up for vote in the House. The atmosphere in the House was tense, as African Americans packed the gallery and cheered loudly on several occasions in violation of the rules of the House. Members of the gallery traded attacks with segregationist representatives on the floor of the house, who attacked them as “race agitator” and “niggers.”
When the Dyer Bill finally came to a dramatic vote, four members voted present, 74 did not vote at all, and in a historic moment, the bill passed by vote of 230 to 119. In the national racist climate of the 1920s, the vote was a great victory for the NAACP, which was then only 13 years-old, and for racial justice.
Unfortunately, however, segregationists tied the bill up in the Senate and it never came to a vote. Hopes for a federal anti-lynching bill died for over a decade, and were not revived until a new federal anti-lynching bill was introduced in 1934.
On the anti-lynching campaign read: Robert Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1900–1950 (1980)
And more about the Dyer anti-lynching bill: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/dyer-anti-lynching-bill-1922
Read the 2015 report: Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (2015)
Visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture here