I had heard about the  Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act some time ago and I my first thought was “Why do we need it? How bad are lynchings nowadays that somebody thought it was the utmost importance that we make lynching a Federal crime?

And the answer is: It is not a problem.

I have been assisting doing research for a book that has me going through news articles from the USA through the years. One of the search subjects is the lynching of multiple suspects and I had gained a little insight on the subject. Lynchings, specially after the Civil War and almost through the end of the 19th century, were almost a weekly occurrence in this country. However the numbers are heavily reduced as we approach and enter the 20th century because of 2 things: Sheriffs that stood strong and had no qualms at dropping  people in a lynching mob and a very strong prosecution and trial of those persons engaged in lynching.  The moment that the court started to hand 20 year sentences for the extra-judicial killing of people (murder), the wide fervor of lynching started to disappear. It does not matter if the State only sent 4 or 5 of the 500 lynchers to the pen, the rest got the message loud an clear.

By the first decade of the 20th Century, it is almost impossible to find but one case of a multiple-subject lynching and the organizer and a couple of his friends ended up going to prison.  And yes, single individual lynchings continued, but also in a reduced numbers and not quite in the open as before.

This is the worst lynching in the history of the US. March 1891. It was a watershed moment, to coin a phrase.

You can read the details here: The Grisly Story of America’s Largest Lynching.