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The Society Pages (TSP) is an open-access social science project headquartered in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota
Black Americans largely want the same things that white people do. So why are their demands treated as extreme?
On March 29, President Joe Biden signed a bill to make lynching a federal crime. Devised by a group of Black lawmakers in the House and Senate--Tim Scott of South Carolina, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Bobby Rush of Illinois and Kamala Harris of California (when she was still in the Senate)--the law comes into being after more than 200 failed attempts, over more than 100 years, to pass anti-lynching legislation through Congress.
Summary: If we begin to see white banners with black letters flying from front porches across town after every shooting, perhaps the sentiment will sink in: "Yesterday, someone's loved one was murdered" or "Yesterday, someone's child murdered someone else's child" or "Lynching by another name happened again" or "What would Emmett Till say?"
Columnist Jessica Johnson writes about the murder of Emmett Till and the significance of the anti-lynching bill named in his honor.