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4 - Anti-Lynching Legislation and the Sinking of the Republican Ship in Congress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Megan Ming Francis
Megan Ming Francis
Affiliation:
Pepperdine University, Malibu
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Summary

The passage of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in the House of Representatives this afternoon by a vote of 230 to 119 is one of the most significant steps ever taken in the history of America. For the Negro it means that continual agitation has at least been answered and the appeal of the colored man to Congress for relief from mob violence has at last been granted. The reign of terrorism and anarchy must end is the message to lynchers that Congress has sent.

– James Weldon Johnson

The manner of the defeat of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill emphasizes the fact that the machinery of the United States Senate is antiquated to the point that millions of people may suffer injustice and death on account of it.

– W. E. B. Du Bois

On January 26, 1922, the House of Representatives gave African Americans a reason to celebrate in national politics. On this day, hundreds of excited African Americans filled the House of Representatives gallery to watch the floor debate of H.R. 13, a bill mandating the federal government take an active role in preventing lynchings. This was the first piece of legislation African Americans felt they had a hand in crafting, and they were not going to miss out. They watched in rapt attention and cheered as white Republicans articulated the threat lynching posed to African Americans and how it violated their constitutional rights. They booed loudly as white southern Democrats attributed lynchings to rape and argued that lynchings were a matter of states’ rights and the federal government should not be involved. When the vote was counted, supporters of African Americans won, and the House of Representatives passed its first-ever anti-lynching bill by a two-thirds vote. It was a rare moment in early twentieth century America that demonstrated to African Americans they too, could get their voices heard in the national political process.

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Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State , pp. 98 - 126
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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References

Du Bois, W. E. B., The Crisis, January 1923, p. 132
Steward, Gustavus Adolphus, “The Negro’s Loyalty,” The Crisis, April 1923, p. 255Google Scholar
Pillsbury, Albert, A Brief Inquiry Into a Federal Remedy For Lynching, Harvard Law Review 15, no. 9 (1902): 707–713CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zangrando, Robert, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950, Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1980, pp. 16–17Google Scholar
Johnson, James Weldon, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson, New York: Viking Press, 1933, p. 362Google Scholar
Kellogg, Charles Flint, NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973, p. 237Google Scholar
Zangrando, Robert, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950, Philadelphia:Temple University Press, 1980Google Scholar
Johnson, James Weldon, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson, New York, NY: Viking Press, 1933, p. 362Google Scholar
Key, V. O., Southern Politics in State and Nation, New York: Vintage Books, 1949Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B., The Crisis, 25, no. 3, January 1923, p. 104
Washington, Booker T., Frederick Douglass, Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs and Company, 1907, p. 286
McPherson, James, “Grant or Greeley? The Abolitionist Dilemma and the Election of 1872,” The American Historical Review. 71, no. 1 (1965): 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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