https://www.congress.gov/116/crec/2019/02/14/CREC-2019-02-14.pdf
Excerpts from floor speeches.
Congressional record Thursday 2/14
LYNCHING. H2000
Mr. BACON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on the occasion of African American History Month to recognize two key figures in Nebraska history, Will Brown and George Smith, both murdered by lynching at the hands of lawless mobs. This is not a past Nebraskans are proud of, but it is a story we must continue to tell so we never forget them or allow acts of hate like these to ever be repeated
Nearly 100 years ago in the summer of 1919, Black people were killed amid violent race riots occurring across the country. Omaha, Nebraska, was not immune during that Red Summer and regrettably became known for one of the most heinous acts of hate and racial violence in American history.
JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF LYNCHING ACT OF 2019. (page S1345)
Ms. HARRIS. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, lynching was used as an instrument of terror and intimidation 4,084 times during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
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In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy, was lynched in Mississippi after being accused of offending a woman in her family’s grocery store. When Emmett Till’s mother held open her son’s casket at his funeral, the image of his body became one of the starkest examples of racial violence in America.
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Today we have that opportunity, and we must recognize the context in which we discuss it today. Just in the last month, we have had difficult and high profile conversations about slavery and blackface, issues that are claimed to be part of a bygone era. However, it is clear that in many ways our past is our present.
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Lynching is not a relic of the past. In 2011, three men in Brandon, MS, murdered an African-American man, James Craig Anderson. They robbed him, beat him, and ran him over with a truck. That is modern-day lynching.
Mr. BOOKER.
The use of lynching to inflict racial terror is ugly, disturbing. It is a tragic part of our history, but we know its legacy does not just live in our history books. Less than 2 weeks ago, an actor and activist was brutally attacked in Chicago by two men yelling racial and homophobic epithets.
Lynching is not a relic of the past. We are seeing in the present pernicious evil, and we still have yet to confront this in this body. Bias-motivated acts of violence and intimidation in America are actually on the rise. Hate crimes are on the rise for the third year in a row. Hate crimes against Black Americans are on the rise. Hate crimes against Jewish Americans are on the rise. Hate crimes against LGBTQ Americans and Muslim Americans are on the rise. This is unacceptable. Justice for the victims of lynching has been too long denied, and as we look forward we must collectively in this body make a strong, unequivocal statement.
From the bill,
S 488
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
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(6) Lynching prompted African Americans
to form the National Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People (referred to in
this section as the ‘‘NAACP’’) and prompted
members of B’nai B’rith to found the Anti-
Defamation League.