Biden makes the ‘pure terror’ of lynching a federal crime
Earlier this month the Senate had unanimously passed this bill. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said that the long delay has proven to be ‘a stain on America’
On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden signed a bill making lynching a federal hate crime, putting an end to more than a century of delays in criminalising the symbol of what he called “pure terror.”
The new law will punish anyone convicted of lynching for up to 30 years, ending what researchers say was an unbroken history of impunity over the thousands of lynchings that took place between the end of the Civil War and 1950.