<p>US President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed into law a bill finally making racist lynchings a federal hate crime, ending more than a century of delays in outlawing the symbol of what he called "pure terror."</p>.<p>Anyone convicted under the new law will face up to 30 years in prison, ending a history of impunity over what researchers say were thousands of lynchings -- often unpunished -- between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and 1950.</p>.<p>The bill is named after Emmett Till, a 14-year old African American whose brutal murder galvanized the US civil rights movement in the 1950s.</p>.<p>Biden was joined at the Rose Garden ceremony by Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman in the post, and Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of pioneering Black journalist and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells.</p>.<p>"Lynching was pure terror," Biden said, recounting the horrific practice of public vigilante killings of mostly African Americans, often in front of enthusiastic white crowds in the post-slavery United States.</p>.<p>Biden, however, warned that "racial hate isn't an old problem. It's a persistent problem" and that "hate never goes away, it only hides."</p>.<p>And Harris warned that "lynching is not a relic of the past."</p>.<p>"Racial acts of terror still occur in our nation," she said.</p>.<p>The Senate unanimously passed the bill earlier this month, with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying that the long delay in agreeing on a federal measure had been "a stain on America."</p>.<p>Till was abducted and murdered in August 1955 while visiting relatives in the southern state of Mississippi. The boy's mutilated body was found three days later in a local river.</p>.<p>This came days after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, alleged that he had propositioned her in a store and touched her on the arm, hand and waist.</p>.<p>Till's mother famously insisted that her son's remains be displayed in an open casket to show the world what had been done.</p>.<p>Two white Mississippi men, Roy Bryant, Carolyn Bryant's husband, and J.W. Milam, his half-brother, were charged with murder but acquitted by an all-white jury. The pair later admitted in a magazine interview that they had killed the boy.</p>
<p>US President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed into law a bill finally making racist lynchings a federal hate crime, ending more than a century of delays in outlawing the symbol of what he called "pure terror."</p>.<p>Anyone convicted under the new law will face up to 30 years in prison, ending a history of impunity over what researchers say were thousands of lynchings -- often unpunished -- between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and 1950.</p>.<p>The bill is named after Emmett Till, a 14-year old African American whose brutal murder galvanized the US civil rights movement in the 1950s.</p>.<p>Biden was joined at the Rose Garden ceremony by Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black woman in the post, and Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of pioneering Black journalist and anti-lynching campaigner Ida B. Wells.</p>.<p>"Lynching was pure terror," Biden said, recounting the horrific practice of public vigilante killings of mostly African Americans, often in front of enthusiastic white crowds in the post-slavery United States.</p>.<p>Biden, however, warned that "racial hate isn't an old problem. It's a persistent problem" and that "hate never goes away, it only hides."</p>.<p>And Harris warned that "lynching is not a relic of the past."</p>.<p>"Racial acts of terror still occur in our nation," she said.</p>.<p>The Senate unanimously passed the bill earlier this month, with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying that the long delay in agreeing on a federal measure had been "a stain on America."</p>.<p>Till was abducted and murdered in August 1955 while visiting relatives in the southern state of Mississippi. The boy's mutilated body was found three days later in a local river.</p>.<p>This came days after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, alleged that he had propositioned her in a store and touched her on the arm, hand and waist.</p>.<p>Till's mother famously insisted that her son's remains be displayed in an open casket to show the world what had been done.</p>.<p>Two white Mississippi men, Roy Bryant, Carolyn Bryant's husband, and J.W. Milam, his half-brother, were charged with murder but acquitted by an all-white jury. The pair later admitted in a magazine interview that they had killed the boy.</p>