ANTI-LYNCHING BILL | Cory Booker, Kamala Harris

Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA).

June 11, 2020—Earlier this month, Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kamala Harris (D-CA) spoke urgently about passing this year's anti-lynching bill, which for the first time would make lynching a federal crime.

In 1900, 120 years ago, the only black representative in the Congress introduced anti-lynching legislation. Rep. George Henry White (R-N.C.) had witnessed the previous year's Wilmington, N.C., race riot, during which white supremacists overthrew the city’s multiracial government, killing perhaps 60 black people.

White tracked down lynching victims and asked why the federal government wasn't doing anything about the crime. The bill did not get past Committee.

During the rest of the 20th century, 200 such bills were introduced. Five years into FDR's administration, 83 blacks had been lynched in the south. Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) introduced an anti-lynching bill. FDR didn't pay it much attention because his party depended on southern Democrats for votes in the House.

Blanche Wiesen Cook (Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2, pp. 440-443) shows that Eleanor Roosevelt was the main Roosevelt family champion of the anti-lynching bill in 1937. It passed the House, but was filibustered to death in the Senate, where Democrats had a six-to-one majority.

Maybe this year?