[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 200 (Wednesday, December 19, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7842-S7844]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF LYNCHING ACT OF 2018
Ms. HARRIS. Madam President, over 2 months ago, the Senate Judiciary
Committee unanimously voted to advance the Justice for Victims of
Lynching Act of 2018, which I introduced proudly with Senators Booker
and Scott. This is a historic piece of legislation that would
criminalize lynching, attempts to lynch, and conspiracy to lynch, for
the first time in America's history.
Lynching is a part of the dark and despicable aspect of our country's
history that followed slavery and outrageously continued unabated in
our country. 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. These lynchings were needless and
horrendous acts of violence motivated by racism. We must acknowledge
that fact, lest it be repeated.
Lynching is a crime committed against innocent people. These crimes
should have been prosecuted. There were victims who should have
received justice, but they did not.
With this bill we are finally able to change that and correct a
burden on our history as a country. We finally have a chance to speak
the truth about our past and make clear that these hateful acts should
never happen again without serious, severe, and swift consequence and
accountability.
From 1882 to 1986, the U.S. Congress failed to pass anti-lynching
legislation when it had an opportunity 200 times. We now have an
opportunity to pass this bill and to offer some long overdue justice
and recognition to the victims of lynching and their families--
recognition that these are crimes for which there should be severe
consequence and accountability.
I now yield to my friend, the Senator from the great State of New
Jersey, Cory Booker.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. BOOKER. Thank you, Madam President.
I want to thank Senator Harris for her incredible partnership and
leadership on this bill, and I want to thank Senator Tim Scott of South
Carolina for his leadership and for the consistent examples of
character and integrity they both have shown as my partners on this
legislation in this body.
As my colleague has said, it has been a very long time coming. For
over a century, Members of Congress have attempted to pass some version
of a bill that would recognize lynching for what it is--a biased,
motivated act of terror.
Today, Senator Harris and I have requested that after a century--
after 100 years and over 200 bills introduced in this body--we finally
make lynching a Federal crime in the United States of America.
Thanks to the work of incredible people around this country--truth
tellers such as Brian Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative--
today, we have a more comprehensive understanding of just how
widespread and purposefully lynching was used as a tool of racial
terror and oppression in our history.
We know that the Equal Justice Initiative was able to document
thousands of cases--over 4,000 documented cases of racially motivated
lynchings between 1877 and 1950. During that time, lynchings were used
to terrorize communities. They weren't only vicious acts of murder
against individuals, but in many cases bodies were hung trying to drive
fear into communities to make them submit to second-class citizenship
and inconsistent justice.
The use of lynching as a larger part of terrorism is disturbing. It
is a dark chapter of our past and part of our history. Its legacy
doesn't just live in our history books. Despite activists and
organizations that have dedicated themselves to studying and addressing
the racial terror in our history, we have failed to correct for many of
those past sins.
We know that the passage of this bill will not undo the damage, the
terror, and the violence that have been done and the lives that were
brutally taken in our past. We do know that the passage of this bill,
even though it cannot reverse the irrevocable harm caused by lynching
used as terrorist oppression, is a recognition of that dark past. We
know that when wrongs are ignored they fester underneath the skin of
the body politic, and we know that justice delayed is justice denied.
Today, this is a moment of potential justice in this body, a reckoning
to the victims of lynching that for too long have been denied.
I want to go back to a point in history in this body. The very first
bill introduced by Congress to address the terror of lynching was by a
man on the other side of the Capitol, Congressman George Henry White,
in 1900. The year after it was introduced, in 1901, was the last year
he would serve in Congress. That is because Congressman White was the
very last Black Congressman of the group who had been elected to
Congress during Reconstruction.
Congressman White's departure in 1901 would be the last time an
African-American Black southerner would serve in Congress for over 70
years. Congressman White must have had an understanding of what was to
come with the long dearth of time and the lack of diversity. He knew
the terror of
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Jim Crow laws and voter disenfranchisement that would stop the election
of African-Americans.
In his last speech in this body on January 29, 1901, 1 year after he
introduced the bill to criminalize lynching, he delivered a farewell
address he called ``The Negro's Temporary Farewell to the American
Congress.''
In that address to Congress over one century ago, he made the same
request that Senator Harris and I are making right now--for the United
States to officially criminalize lynching.
Congressman White said:
Mr. Chairman, permit me to digress for a few moments for
the purpose of calling the attention of the House to a bill
which I regard as important, introduced by me in the early
part of the first session of this Congress.
[It was intended] to give the United States control and
entire jurisdiction over all cases of lynching and death by
mob violence.
During the last session of this Congress I took occasion to
address myself in detail to this particular measure, but with
all my efforts, the bill still sweetly sleeps in the room of
the committee to which it was referred. The necessity of
legislation along this line is daily being demonstrated. The
arena of the lyncher no longer is confined to Southern
climes, but is stretching its hydra head over all parts of
the Union.
Referring to the terror of lynching, Congressman White knew that
``the evil peculiar to America, yes, to the United States, must be met,
somehow, some day . . . ''
Well, now in this moment in America, we have a chance to make some
day today. We have the opportunity to recognize the wrongs of our
history, to honor the memories of those brutally killed, and to leave a
legacy that future generations can look back on, knowing that after 200
attempts over the course of 100 years of trying, on this day in
American history this body will do the right thing.
So I would recognize my colleague from California for the historic
calling up of this piece of legislation.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Ms. HARRIS. Madam President, I thank my friend Senator Booker. It is
truly an honor to be on the floor of the Senate with my colleague and
friend proposing this legislation.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the
Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of S. 3178 and the
Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 3178) to amend title 18, United States Code, to
specify lynching as a deprivation of civil rights, and for
other purposes.
There being no objection, the committee was discharged and the Senate
proceeded to consider the measure.
Ms. HARRIS. I further ask unanimous consent that the substitute
amendment be agreed to and that the bill, as amended, be considered
read a third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment (No. 4168) in the nature of a substitute was agreed to.
(The amendment is printed in today's Record under ``Text of
Amendments.'')
The bill, as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading
and was read the third time.
Ms. HARRIS. I know of no further debate on the bill.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate?
Hearing none, and the bill having been read the third time, the
question is, Shall the bill pass?
The bill (S. 3178), as amended, was passed, as follows:
S. 3178
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Justice for Victims of
Lynching Act of 2018''.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The crime of lynching succeeded slavery as the ultimate
expression of racism in the United States following
Reconstruction.
(2) Lynching was a widely acknowledged practice in the
United States until the middle of the 20th century.
(3) Lynching was a crime that occurred throughout the
United States, with documented incidents in all but 4 States.
(4) At least 4,742 people, predominantly African Americans,
were reported lynched in the United States between 1882 and
1968.
(5) Ninety-nine percent of all perpetrators of lynching
escaped from punishment by State or local officials.
(6) Lynching prompted African Americans to form the
National Association for the Advancement 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.
(7) Mr. Walter White, as a member of the NAACP and later as
the executive secretary of the NAACP from 1931 to 1955,
meticulously investigated lynchings in the United States and
worked tirelessly to end segregation and racialized terror.
(8) Nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in
Congress during the first half of the 20th century.
(9) Between 1890 and 1952, 7 Presidents petitioned Congress
to end lynching.
(10) Between 1920 and 1940, the House of Representatives
passed 3 strong anti-lynching measures.
(11) Protection against lynching was the minimum and most
basic of Federal responsibilities, and the Senate considered
but failed to enact anti-lynching legislation despite
repeated requests by civil rights groups, Presidents, and the
House of Representatives to do so.
(12) The publication of ``Without Sanctuary: Lynching
Photography in America'' helped bring greater awareness and
proper recognition of the victims of lynching.
(13) Only by coming to terms with history can the United
States effectively champion human rights abroad.
(14) An apology offered in the spirit of true repentance
moves the United States toward reconciliation and may become
central to a new understanding, on which improved racial
relations can be forged.
(15) Having concluded that a reckoning with our own history
is the only way the country can effectively champion human
rights abroad, 90 Members of the United States Senate agreed
to Senate Resolution 39, 109th Congress, on June 13, 2005, to
apologize to the victims of lynching and the descendants of
those victims for the failure of the Senate to enact anti-
lynching legislation.
(16) The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which
opened to the public in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26,
2018, is the Nation's first memorial dedicated to the legacy
of enslaved Black people, people terrorized by lynching,
African Americans humiliated by racial segregation and Jim
Crow, and people of color burdened with contemporary
presumptions of guilt and police violence.
(17) Notwithstanding the Senate's apology and the
heightened awareness and education about the Nation's legacy
with lynching, it is wholly necessary and appropriate for the
Congress to enact legislation, after 100 years of
unsuccessful legislative efforts, finally to make lynching a
Federal crime.
(18) Further, it is the sense of Congress that criminal
action by a group increases the likelihood that the criminal
object of that group will be successfully attained and
decreases the probability that the individuals involved will
depart from their path of criminality. Therefore, it is
appropriate to specify criminal penalties for the crime of
lynching, or any attempt or conspiracy to commit lynching.
(19) The United States Senate agreed to unanimously Senate
Resolution 118, 115th Congress, on April 5, 2017,
``[c]ondemning hate crime and any other form of racism,
religious or ethnic bias, discrimination, incitement to
violence, or animus targeting a minority in the United
States'' and taking notice specifically of Federal Bureau of
Investigation statistics demonstrating that ``among single-
bias hate crime incidents in the United States, 59.2 percent
of victims were targeted due to racial, ethnic, or ancestral
bias, and among those victims, 52.2 percent were victims of
crimes motivated by the offenders' anti-Black or anti-African
American bias''.
(20) On September 14, 2017, President Donald J. Trump
signed into law Senate Joint Resolution 49 (Public Law 115-
58; 131 Stat. 1149), wherein Congress ``condemn[ed] the
racist violence and domestic terrorist attack that took place
between August 11 and August 12, 2017, in Charlottesville,
Virginia'' and ``urg[ed] the President and his administration
to speak out against hate groups that espouse racism,
extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and White supremacy;
and use all resources available to the President and the
President's Cabinet to address the growing prevalence of
those hate groups in the United States''.
(21) Senate Joint Resolution 49 (Public Law 115-58; 131
Stat. 1149) specifically took notice of ``hundreds of torch-
bearing White nationalists, White supremacists, Klansmen, and
neo-Nazis [who] chanted racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-
immigrant slogans and violently engaged with counter-
demonstrators on and around the grounds of the University of
Virginia in Charlottesville'' and that these groups
``reportedly are organizing similar events in other cities in
the United States and communities everywhere are concerned
about the growing and open display of hate and violence being
perpetrated by those groups''.
SEC. 3. LYNCHING.
(a) Offense.--Chapter 13 of title 18, United States Code,
is amended by adding at the end the following:
``Sec. 250. Lynching
``(a) In General.--
``(1) Offenses involving actual or perceived race, color,
religion, or national
[[Page S7844]]
origin.--If 2 or more persons willfully cause bodily injury
to any other person, because of the actual or perceived race,
color, religion, or national origin of any person--
``(A) each shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years,
fined in accordance with this title, or both, if bodily
injury results from the offense; or
``(B) each shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for
life, fined in accordance with this title, or both, if death
results from the offense or if the offense includes
kidnapping or aggravated sexual abuse.
``(2) Offenses involving actual or perceived religion,
national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity,
or disability.--
``(A) In general.--If 2 or more persons, in any
circumstance described in subparagraph (B), willfully cause
bodily injury to any other person because of the actual or
perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual
orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person--
``(i) each shall be imprisoned not more than 10 years,
fined in accordance with this title, or both, if bodily
injury results from the offense; or
``(ii) each shall be imprisoned for any term of years or
for life, fined in accordance with this title, or both, if
death results from the offense or if the offense includes
kidnapping or aggravated sexual abuse.
``(B) Circumstances described.--For purposes of
subparagraph (A), the circumstances described in this
subparagraph are that--
``(i) the conduct described in subparagraph (A) occurs
during the course of, or as the result of, the travel of the
defendant or the victim--
``(I) across a State line or national border; or
``(II) using a phone, the internet, the mail, or any other
channel, facility, or instrumentality of interstate or
foreign commerce;
``(ii) the defendant uses a phone, the internet, the mail,
or any other channel, facility, or instrumentality of
interstate or foreign commerce in connection with the conduct
described in subparagraph (A);
``(iii) in connection with the conduct described in
subparagraph (A), the defendant employs a firearm, dangerous
weapon, explosive or incendiary device, or other weapon that
has traveled in interstate or foreign commerce; or
``(iv) the conduct described in subparagraph (A)--
``(I) interferes with commercial or other economic activity
in which the victim is engaged at the time of the conduct;
``(II) otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce; or
``(III) occurs within the special maritime or territorial
jurisdiction of the United States.
``(3) Offenses occurring in the special maritime or
territorial jurisdiction of the united states.--Whoever,
within the special maritime or territorial jurisdiction of
the United States, engages in conduct described in paragraph
(1) or in paragraph (2)(A) (without regard to whether that
conduct occurred in a circumstance described in paragraph
(2)(B)) shall be subject to the same penalties as prescribed
in those paragraphs.
``(b) Attempt.--Whoever attempts to commit any offense
under this section--
``(1) shall be imprisoned for not more than 10 years, fined
in accordance with this title, or both; or
``(2) if the offense includes kidnapping or an attempt to
kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit
aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be
imprisoned for any term of years of for life, fined in
accordance with this title, or both.
``(c) Conspiracy.--If 2 or more persons conspire to commit
any offense under this section, and 1 or more of such persons
do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall
be subject to the same penalties as those prescribed for the
offense the commission of which was the object of the
conspiracy.
``(d) Certification Requirement.--
``(1) In general.--No prosecution of any offense described
in this section may be undertaken by the United States,
except under the certification in writing of the Attorney
General, or a designee, that--
``(A) the State does not have jurisdiction;
``(B) the State has requested that the Federal Government
assume jurisdiction;
``(C) the verdict or sentence obtained pursuant to State
charges left demonstratively unvindicated the Federal
interest in eradicating bias-motivated violence; or
``(D) a prosecution by the United States is in the public
interest and necessary to secure substantial justice.
``(2) Rule of construction.--Nothing in this subsection
shall be construed to limit the authority of Federal
officers, or a Federal grand jury, to investigate possible
violations of this section.''.
(b) Table of Sections Amendment.--The table of sections for
chapter 13 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by
inserting after the item relating to section 249 the
following:
``250. Lynching.''.
Ms. HARRIS. I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be
considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. HARRIS. Madam President, I want to thank our colleagues for this
incredibly important act of bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress.
Thank you, Madam President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
Mr. BOOKER. Madam President, my friend, the Senator from Oregon, just
came over. This is a very meaningful moment for this body.
There was a speech by a man that I revere. His picture hangs in my
office. His name is Martin Luther King. For many people who endured the
pain and agony of our past, with lynchings that went on up to the 1970s
in this country, and for those people who yearned for justice they
would never experience, for those people who know the pain, agony, and
hurt in their family's history and the trauma that is still felt by
many people today, who remember lynching in this country that was so
pervasive--Dr. King once spoke to those people who were hurting and
seeking justice, and he asked at the end of his speech:
How long? Not long, because ``the truth crushed to the
earth will rise again.''
He asked:
How long? Not long, because ``no lie can live forever.''
He asked:
How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe
is long, but it bends toward justice.
This has been a long arc, a painful history and shameful history in
this body--that at the height of lynchings across this country
affecting thousands of people, this body did not act to make it a
Federal crime. At least now, the U.S. Senate has acted--100 Senators,
no objections.
I just want to give gratitude to this body for what we have just
done. Thank you.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I praise my colleagues from the
Atlantic coast of New Jersey and Pacific coast of California for today
putting our entire Senate on record and on a pathway to recognizing the
deep darkness of this national scar on our justice system and on our
psyche.
Work well done today in the U.S. Senate. Thank you.
____________________