
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1918) was first introduced in the
65th United States Congress
The 65th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, D.C., from March 4, 1917, ...
by Representative
Leonidas C. Dyer, a
Republican from
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an Independent city (United States), independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Miss ...
, in the
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...
as H.R. 11279 in order "to protect citizens of the United States against lynching in default of protection by the States." It was intended to establish
lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged or convicted transgressor or to intimidate others. It can also be an extreme form of i ...
as a federal crime.
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was re-introduced in subsequent sessions of
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
and passed, 230 to 119, by the House of Representatives on January 26, 1922,
but its passage was halted in the
United States Senate
The United States Senate is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the United States House of Representatives, U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and ...
by a
filibuster
A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking ...
by
Southern Democrats
Southern Democrats are members of the U.S. Democratic Party who reside in the Southern United States.
Before the American Civil War, Southern Democrats mostly believed in Jacksonian democracy. In the 19th century, they defended slavery in the ...
, who formed a powerful block. Southern Democrats justified their opposition to the bill by arguing that lynchings were a response to rapes and proclaiming that lynchings were an issue that should be left for states to deal with.
Attempts to pass similar legislation took a halt until the
Costigan-Wagner Bill of 1934.
Subsequent bills followed but failed due to powerful opposition from Southern senators; it was not until 2022 that both chambers of Congress passed
an Act to make lynching a federal crime.
Background

In the early 20th century, lynchings were predominantly committed by whites against African Americans in
the Southern and border states. According to statistics compiled by the
Tuskegee Institute
Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU; formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute) is a Private university, private, Historically black colleges and universities, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama, United States. It was f ...
, between the years 1882 and 1951 some 4,730 people were lynched in the United States, of whom 3,437 were black and 1,293 were white. The first wave of lynchings occurred in the years immediately following the
Civil War
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
, but fell off sharply with the dissolution of the first
Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
about 1870. There was a revival in the 1890s; the largest annual number of lynchings occurred in 1892 (230 persons were lynched that year: 161 African-Americans and 69 whites). and continued for the next two decades at relatively high levels, in what is often called the
nadir of American race relations
The nadir of American race relations was the period in African-American history and the history of the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 through the early 20th century, when racism in the country, and particularly anti-bl ...
, a period marked by
disfranchisement
Disfranchisement, also disenfranchisement (which has become more common since 1982) or voter disqualification, is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing someo ...
of African Americans and
Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, " Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. The last of the ...
in the South, and
discrimination against African Americans
Racism has been reflected in discriminatory laws, practices, and actions (including violence) against racial or ethnic groups throughout the history of the United States. Since the early colonial era, White Americans have generally enjoyed le ...
across the country.
Many lynchings were the result of Southern whites' extrajudicial efforts to maintain
white supremacy
White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine ...
, after gaining
disfranchisement
Disfranchisement, also disenfranchisement (which has become more common since 1982) or voter disqualification, is the restriction of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or a practice that has the effect of preventing someo ...
of most blacks through discriminatory voter registration and electoral rules, and imposing
segregation Segregation may refer to:
Separation of people
* Geographical segregation, rates of two or more populations which are not homogenous throughout a defined space
* School segregation
* Housing segregation
* Racial segregation, separation of human ...
and
Jim Crow
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced racial segregation, " Jim Crow" being a pejorative term for an African American. The last of the ...
laws on the black population in the late 19th and early 20th century. Maintaining white supremacy in economic affairs played a part as well.
["Who Was Lynched?"](_blank)
, Nell Painter Website Social changes resulting from a rapid rise in immigration from southern and eastern Europe, the rise of the
Second Ku Klux Klan, and the internal
Great Migration of blacks from the South to industrial cities in the Northeast and Midwest contributed to violent confrontations. In 1917, white mobs had
attacked blacks in
East St. Louis (a city located directly across the Mississippi River from
St. Louis
St. Louis ( , sometimes referred to as St. Louis City, Saint Louis or STL) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a populatio ...
,
Missouri
Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
) over competition for work and punishment for
strikebreakers
A strikebreaker (sometimes pejoratively called a scab, blackleg, bootlicker, blackguard or knobstick) is a person who works despite an ongoing strike. Strikebreakers may be current employees ( union members or not), or new hires to keep the org ...
.

In 1900 Representative
George Henry White
George Henry White (December 18, 1852 – December 28, 1918) was an American attorney and politician, elected as a Republican U.S. Congressman from North Carolina's 2nd congressional district between 1897 and 1901. He later became a banker in ...
, a black Republican from North Carolina, introduced the first anti-lynching bill in Congress. It was subsequently defeated in a committee. In April 1919, the NAACP published a report which disproved the myth that stated most lynchings were based on African-American attacks on white women: less than one sixth of the 2,500 African Americans lynched from 1889 to 1918 had even been accused of rape.
The Bill is introduced
Representative
Leonidas C. Dyer, who represented a majority African-American district, had taken notice of the
hate crime
Hate crime (also known as bias crime) in criminal law involves a standard offence (such as an assault, murder) with an added element of bias against a victim (individual or group of individuals) because of their physical appearance or perceived ...
s occurring around him and was outraged by the violence and disregard for law in such riots. Dyer was especially concerned about the continued high rate of lynchings in the South and the failure of local and state authorities to prosecute them. This inspired his anti-lynching bill. The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1918) (H.R. 11279) was introduced in order "to protect citizens of the United States against lynching in default of protection by the States."
A silent protest in support of the bill was organized by African Americans on June 14, 1922 in Washington, D.C.
Republican U.S. President
Warren G. Harding
Warren Gamaliel Harding (November 2, 1865 – August 2, 1923) was the 29th president of the United States, serving from 1921 until his death in 1923. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he was one of the most ...
announced his support for Dyer's bill during a speaking engagement in
Birmingham, Alabama
Birmingham ( ) is a city in the north central region of Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Jefferson County, Alabama, Jefferson County. The population was 200,733 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List ...
. Although the bill was quickly passed by a large majority in the
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...
, it was prevented from coming to a vote in 1922, 1923, and 1924 in the
U.S. Senate
The United States Senate is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the upper house, with the U.S. House of Representatives being the lower house. Together, the Senate and House have the authority under Article One of the ...
, due to
filibuster
A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking ...
s by the
Southern Democratic bloc.
Southern Senators opposed anti-lynching laws and other civil rights legislation on the ground that blacks were responsible for more crime, more babies born out of wedlock, more welfare and other forms of social assistance, and that strong measures were needed to keep them under control.
This was the first time the Senate Journal was used as a means to
filibuster
A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking ...
legislation as the
Senate rules
Parliamentary procedures are the accepted rules, ethics, and customs governing meetings of an assembly or organization. Their object is to allow orderly deliberation upon questions of interest to the organization and thus to arrive at the sense ...
state that "the reading of the Journal shall not be suspended unless by unanimous consent". During debate for the Bill in 1922, the Mississippi Senator
Pat Harrison
Byron Patton "Pat" Harrison (August 29, 1881June 22, 1941) was a Mississippi politician who served as a Democrat in the United States House of Representatives from 1911 to 1919 and in the United States Senate from 1919 until his death.
Early l ...
started discussing the Senate Journal and was unable to be
cloture
Cloture (, ), closure or, informally, a guillotine, is a motion or process in parliamentary procedure aimed at bringing debate to a quick end.
The cloture procedure originated in the French National Assembly, from which the name is taken. is ...
d until the sponsors withdrew the Bill.
Overview
The bill
classified lynching as a federal
felony
A felony is traditionally considered a crime of high seriousness, whereas a misdemeanor is regarded as less serious. The term "felony" originated from English common law (from the French medieval word "''félonie''") to describe an offense that r ...
, which would have allowed the United States to prosecute cases, since states and local authorities seldom did. The bill prescribed punishments for perpetrators, specifically:
*(a) A maximum of 5 years in prison, $5,000 fine, or both, for any state or city official who had the power to protect a person in his
jurisdiction
Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' and 'speech' or 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, the concept of jurisdiction applies at multiple level ...
but failed to do so ''or'' who had the power to
prosecute
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the adversarial system, which is adopted in common law, or inquisitorial system, which is adopted in Civil law (legal system), civil law. The prosecution is the ...
those responsible and failed to do so.
*(b) A minimum of 5 years in prison for anyone who participated in a lynching, whether they were an ordinary citizen or the official responsible for keeping the victim safe.
*(c) $10,000 fine to be paid by the county in which the lynching took place, to be turned over to the victim's family or his parents, or to the United States government if the victim has no family. If the victim was seized in one county and killed in another, both counties were to be fined.
In addition, the law prescribed actions of special circumstances:
* (a) If officers fail to equally protect all citizens, they can be prosecuted in federal court.
* (b) Foreign visitors were not exempt from this law and were to be prosecuted within the laws of the state or territory, as well as protected by those same laws.
Aftermath
From 1882 to 1968, "...nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 asked Congress to pass a federal law." No bills were approved by the Senate during this time period because of the powerful opposition of the conservative Southern Democratic voting bloc.
However, the publicity the bill generated, together with the NAACP report and the
National Conference on Lynching
The National Conference on Lynching took place in Carnegie Hall, New York City, May 5–6, 1919. The goal of the conference was to pressure Congress to pass the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, sponsored by Leonidas Dyer (R-MO). It was a project of the N ...
, moved local and state governments to take lynching more seriously. Lynchings decreased dramatically after 1919.
In 1922 and 1923, Senator
William Borah
William Edgar Borah (June 29, 1865 – January 19, 1940) was an outspoken Republican United States Senator, one of the best-known figures in Idaho's history. A progressive who served from 1907 until his death in 1940, Borah voted for A ...
spoke against passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which had passed the House. A strong supporter of state sovereignty, he believed that punishing state officials for failure to prevent lynchings was unconstitutional, and that if the states could not prevent such murders, federal legislation would do no good. The bill was defeated by
filibuster
A filibuster is a political procedure in which one or more members of a legislative body prolong debate on proposed legislation so as to delay or entirely prevent a decision. It is sometimes referred to as "talking a bill to death" or "talking ...
in the Senate by Southern Democrats. When another bill (Costigan–Wagner Bill) was introduced in 1935 and 1938, Borah continued to speak against it, by that time saying that it was no longer needed, as the number of lynchings had dropped sharply.
On June 13, 2005, in a resolution sponsored by senators
Mary Landrieu
Mary Loretta Landrieu ( ; born November 23, 1955) is an American entrepreneur and politician who served as a United States senator from Louisiana from 1997 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, Landrieu served as the Louisiana State Treasu ...
of Louisiana and
George Allen of Virginia, together with 78 others, the US Senate formally apologized for its failure to enact this and other anti-lynching bills "when action was most needed."
[Associated Press, "Senate Apologizes for Not Passing Anti-Lynching Laws"](_blank)
, Fox News On June 30, 2018, three senators (
Kamala Harris
Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 49th vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden. She is the first female, first African American, and ...
,
Cory Booker
Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, senior United States Senate, United States senator from New Jersey, a seat he has held since 2013. A member of the Democ ...
, and
Tim Scott
Timothy Eugene Scott (born September 19, 1965) is an American businessman and politician serving since 2013 as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States Senate, United States senator from South Carolina. A member of the Re ...
) introduced the
Justice for Victims of Lynching Act
The Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018 was a proposed bill to classify lynching (defined as bodily injury on the basis of perceived race, color, religion or nationality) a federal hate crime in the United States. The largely symbolic b ...
to make lynching a Federal hate crime. The Senate voted unanimously in favor of it on December 19, 2018, but the bill died because it was not passed by the House before the 115th Congress ended on January 3, 2019.
On February 26, 2020, the
Emmett Till Antilynching Act, a revised version of the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act, passed the House of Representatives, by a vote of 410–4.
Senator
Rand Paul
Randal Howard Paul (born January 7, 1963) is an American politician serving as the Seniority in the United States Senate, junior United States senator from Kentucky since 2011.
A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican ...
of Kentucky has held the bill from passage by unanimous consent in the Senate, out of concern that a convicted criminal could face "a new 10-year penalty for ... minor bruising". Paul requested expedited passage of an amended version of the bill, which would require "an attempt to do bodily harm" for an act to be considered lynching, saying that lynching is already illegal under federal Law. House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer
Steny Hamilton Hoyer ( ; born June 14, 1939) is an American politician and retired attorney who has served as the United States House of Representatives, U.S. representative for since 1981. He also served as House Majority Leader from 2007 to 20 ...
criticized Paul's position, saying on Twitter that "it is shameful that one GOP Senator is standing in the way of seeing this bill become law". Then-senator
Kamala Harris
Kamala Devi Harris ( ; born October 20, 1964) is an American politician and attorney who served as the 49th vice president of the United States from 2021 to 2025 under President Joe Biden. She is the first female, first African American, and ...
added that "Senator Paul is now trying to weaken a bill that was already passed — there's no reason for this" while speaking to have the amendment defeated.
A revised version of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, with the addition of a serious bodily injury standard, was introduced in the
117th Congress
The 117th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It convened in Washington, D.C., on January 3 ...
. It passed the House of Representatives on February 28, 2022, and the Senate on March 7, 2022.
It was signed into law by President
Joe Biden
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...
on March 29, 2022.
References
Further reading
*
* Timothy J. Greene, "Teaching the Limits of Liberalism in the Interwar Years: The NAACP's Antilynching Campaign," ''OAH Magazine of History,'' vol. 18, no. 2 (Jan. 2004), pp. 28–30
In JSTOR* William B. Harvey, "Constitutional Law: Anti-Lynching Legislation," ''Michigan Law Review,'' vol. 47, no. 3 (Jan. 1949), pp. 369–377
In JSTOR* William B. Hixson, Jr., "Moorfield Storey and the Defense of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill," ''New England Quarterly,'' vol. 42, no. 1 (March 1969), pp. 65–81
In JSTOR* William F. Pinar, "The NAACP and the Struggle for Anti-Lynching Federal Legislation, 1917–1950," in ''Counterpoints,'' Vol. 163 (2001), pp. 683–752
In JSTOR* Mark Robert Schneider, ''"We Return Fighting": The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age.'' Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 2002.
* Robert L. Zangrando, ''The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950.'' Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1980.
{{Warren G. Harding
United States proposed federal civil rights legislation
Lynching in the United States
Anti-racism in the United States
1918 in American law
1922 in American law
NAACP
Anti-lynching movement