Book World: How a Black man escaped a lynch mob - then sued its members
Marjoleine Kars, The Washington Post
Feb. 19, 2021
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By Ben Montgomery
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In 2019, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., introduced the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, named after the 14-year-old Chicago boy murdered in Mississippi in 1955. The legislation would at last make lynching a federal crime. The bill passed in the House only to stall in the Senate. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., thought its definition of lynching was too broad and prevented the measure from passing, drawing the ire of Democratic senators Cory Booker (N.J.) and Kamala Harris (Calif.). America had missed an opportunity, Booker charged, to acknowledge its racist past and look forward to a better future.