Anti-Lynching Bill

Legislation aimed at stopping the practice of lynching African Americans in the United States, which occurred primarily in the South. The anti-lynching movement began in the 1890s with civil rights reformer Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was a spearhead in critically denouncing lynching through her Memphis Free Speech and Headlight newspaper and numerous other articles and pamphlets.

In July 1917, about 150 African Americans were killed in race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois. In response to these deaths, as well as other lynchings around the country, religious and civic leaders in Harlem, the large black neighborhood of New York, organized a protest march to take place later in July.

The Silent Protest Parade on July 28, 1917, was one of the first widespread expressions of African American discontent with the failure of the federal government to recognize lynching as a felony offense. Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote extensively on the East St. Louis Riot, in addition to later incidents of lynching in Chicago, Arkansas, and other places across the nation.

Strengthened by the symbolic effect of the Silent Protest Parade, in which 8,000 African Americans paraded down New York's Fifth Avenue in silence, the Anti-Lynching Bill, also known as the Dyer Bill after its author, Congressman Leonidas Dyer of Missouri, was introduced to the House of Representatives in 1918. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), backed by a coalition of African American women called the Anti-Lynching Crusaders, did not begin its support of the bill until 1919, after members of Congress made revisions based on the recommendations of Moorfield Storey, the president of the NAACP.

The Dyer Bill essentially defined lynching as a crime and outlined the measures the state governments [Page 51]must take to ensure protection from lynching and to punish those who engaged in the act. The legislation also called for the penalization of state officials who condoned lynching and failed to administer punishment to those involved.

On January 26, 1922, the Dyer Bill passed the House of Representatives, but the Senate curtailed its passage in July of that year by a filibuster that led to its eventual abandonment on the grounds that it impinged on state sovereignty. The question of antilynching legislation was not raised again until the introduction of the Costigan-Wagner bill in the 1950s. Still, the Dyer Bill was significant for its role in promoting the anti-lynching cause and for calling attention to the need for such legislation through highlighting the brutal atrocities of specific lynching incidents.

In 1922, the NAACP and the Anti-Lynching Crusaders under Mary Talbert had actively rallied around the Dyer Bill as a means of publicizing the issue and coaxing Congress into taking action. Although the bill ultimately failed, the momentum gained by the rigorous anti-lynching campaign fueled later efforts to promote the Costigan-Wagner Bill in the 1950s. To this day, the federal government has not specifically acknowledged lynching as a felony through formal legislation. The act would, however, fall under the definition of a hate crime, which is covered by federal legislation passed in 1999.

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