Rand Paul: “I ask unanimous consent for the expedited passage of H.R. 35, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, as amended. I seek to…”

“I ask unanimous consent for the expedited passage of H.R. 35, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, as amended. I seek to amend this legislation not because I take lynching lightly but because I take it seriously, and this legislation does not. Lynching is a tool of terror that claimed the lives of nearly 5,000 Americans between 1881 and 1968, but this bill would cheapen the meaning of lynching by defining it so broadly as to include a minor bruise or abrasion. Our Nation's history of racial terrorism demands more seriousness from us than that. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote in his autobiography about the 1899 lynching of Sam Hose in Georgia. Du Bois wrote that, after the lynching, Hose's knuckles were viewed on display at a store on Mitchell Street in Atlanta. His liver and heart were even presented to the Governor of Georgia as a souvenir. Sickening, grotesque--the images of lynching. In 1931, Raymond Gunn was lynched in Maryville, MO. The spectacle drew a crowd of almost 4,000 people, including, if you can believe it, women and their children. In the tragedy of lynching, the author writes that one woman even held her little girl up so high so she could better see the victim who was ``blazing on the roof.'' Sickening and grotesque, these images. In the summer of 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was visiting family in Money, MS, when he went to a country store and bought some candy.…”