US: Biden signs bill making lynching a federal hate crime

United States President Joe Biden has signed into law the first federal legislation that makes lynching a federal hate crime in the country after civil rights groups pushed for such a measure for more than a century.

The legislation is named after 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered in a racist attack in Mississippi in 1955 – an event that drew national attention to the atrocities and violence that African Americans faced and galvanised the US civil rights movement.

“No federal law expressly prohibited lynching until today,” Biden said on Tuesday after signing The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act during a ceremony in the White House’s Rose Garden.

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