In 1918, the first anti-lynching bill was presented to Congress. It would pass the House but was blocked by the Senate.
In December 2018, 100 years and over 200 attempts later, one finally passed, making lynching a federal hate crime. Lynching is mob violence not sanctioned by law. The mob doesn’t have to be big: three white high school boys in Missouri putting a noose around a young black boy’s neck qualifies. Three white boys in Texas putting a noose around a 12-year-old black girl and dragging her to the ground qualifies. Three white men hunting down a young black man and killing him for the audacity of jogging while black qualifies.
We have groups of police, armed and authorized to kill, doing so virtually with impunity. From Rodney King to George Floyd, and the hundreds perhaps thousands before and in between harassed or killed for being political, labor organizers or born with skin darker than those in power, who pays?
As stated in The Smithsonian, over 99% “of all perpetrators of lynching escaped from punishment by state or local officials.” This is state-endorsed murder and the targets are Americans of African heritage.
White supremacy, white domination and entitlement is our national mental illness. Like COVID-19, racism is a plague. It seems to have no treatment, vaccine and no known cure. But it’s not hopeless. We can each decide to be frontline medical workers to once and for all rid ourselves of this self-made human pestilence.
SUSAN McKEVITT
Bradford