Cory Booker: “Thank you, Madam President. I want to thank Senator Harris for her incredible partnership and leadership on this bill…”

“Thank you, Madam President. I want to thank Senator Harris for her incredible partnership and leadership on this bill, and I want to thank Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina for his leadership and for the consistent examples of character and integrity they both have shown as my partners on this legislation in this body. As my colleague has said, it has been a very long time coming. For over a century, Members of Congress have attempted to pass some version of a bill that would recognize lynching for what it is--a biased, motivated act of terror. Today, Senator Harris and I have requested that after a century-- after 100 years and over 200 bills introduced in this body--we finally make lynching a Federal crime in the United States of America. Thanks to the work of incredible people around this country--truth tellers such as Brian Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative-- today, we have a more comprehensive understanding of just how widespread and purposefully lynching was used as a tool of racial terror and oppression in our history. We know that the Equal Justice Initiative was able to document thousands of cases--over 4,000 documented cases of racially motivated lynchings between 1877 and 1950. During that time, lynchings were used to terrorize communities. They weren't only vicious acts of murder against individuals, but in many cases bodies were hung trying to drive fear into communities to make them submit to second-class citizenship and inconsistent justice.…”