NAACP president comments on Biden signing the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act

JACKSON, Tenn. (WNBJ) - This week President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act into law.

Congress first considered anti-lynching legislation more than 120 years ago.

The new law makes it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime leads to death or serious bodily injury.

The law lays out a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and fines. The President of the Jackson-Madison County NAACP branch talks about the signing of the new law.

“The lynching law is needed because we still have racism. Racism is now in our institutions, and we must fight hard. What the congress did, and what the president signed is just the beginning of things we need to try to correct,” said Harrell Carter Jr., the President of the Jackson-Madison County NAACP Branch.

The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act is named for the black teenager whose killing in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 became a galvanizing moment in the Civil Rights Era.

His grieving mother insisted on an open casket to show everyone how her son had been brutalized.