St. Louis riots 1917

In May 1917, a riot broke out in St. Louis; white ethnic workers, out on strike, attacked black strikebreakers, brought in to replace them. In July, mob violence broke out in East St. Louis against blacks, also against a background of competition over jobs. Two white police officers were killed early in the confrontation. In retaliation, white mobs killed 35 blacks, mutilated the bodies, and threw them into the Mississippi River.^[9] White rioters openly targeted and lynched several blacks. Those who attempted to stop the lynchings were threatened by the white mob with physical violence. As blacks fled into St. Louis, white rioters threatened to kill them upon their return. White Illinois National Guardmen, sent to quell the riot either did nothing to stop the violence or participated in the attacks on the black community instead. One black child was shot and thrown into a burning building, while white prostitutes openly attacked black women. After the riots, of the 134 persons indicted, only nine whites who were put on trial went to prison while 12 indicted blacks who went to trial were imprisoned. Nearly one-third of the total 134 persons indicted were black.^[10] The conviction rate, mathematically, was more than doubled for blacks than for whites.

Dyer was distressed by such mob violence, with its disregard for the courts and the rule of law. His district in St. Louis had mostly African-American residents and he wanted to protect his constituents and other citizens. Many black people from his district had migrated to St. Louis from the South, in the exodus known as the Great Migration. They settled in St. Louis along with immigrants from southern and eastern Europe where industrialization had led to a strong economy and an increase in jobs.^[9] Dyer also knew of the continuing high rate of lynchings, mostly of blacks by whites in the South. Working with W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), who had been working on a national anti-lynching campaign, Dyer helped develop and agreed to sponsor anti-lynching legislation.^[11]

Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill introduced 1918

Calling for an end to mob violence, on April 1, 1918, Dyer introduced the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which would have made lynching a federal crime.^[9] In his speech, he anticipated some members likely objections about the federal government sponsoring "social" legislation, and noted that lynching violated individuals' rights under the 14th Amendment. In addition, he noted that Congress had passed child labor laws and the Prohibition amendment. He said:

If Congress has felt its duty to do these things, why should it not also assume jurisdiction and enact laws to protect the lives of citizens of the United States against lynch law and mob violence? Are the rights of property, or what a citizen shall drink, or the ages and conditions under which children shall work, any more important to the Nation than life itself?^[12]

Black leaders in the North had insisted that the Republican Party National platform for the presidential election of 1920 include support for anti-lynching legislation. After the election, the black community complained when months passed without Harding's getting a bill introduced and passed by Congress.^[2]

Dyer introduced a revised version of the bill in the House of Representatives in 1921. U.S. President Warren G. Harding, a Republican spoke in favor of Dyer's anti-lynching bill at an appearance in Birmingham, Alabama, and stated he would sign the bill if it was passed by the Senate.^[2] With high interest in the bill across the country, described as an "insistent country-wide demand", the bill passed by a large margin (230 to 119) ^[13] on January 26, 1922.^[2] The first such federal legislation to gain House passage in the twentieth century, it would have enabled the federal government to prosecute the crime. Southern authorities seldom did so. In the South, most blacks had been disfranchised from 1890 to 1911 by constitutional changes and discriminatory legislation after southern Democrats regained power in the state legislatures.^[14] Unable to vote, blacks were disqualified from serving on juries or holding any political office; they had virtually no political power within the official system. In the few cases that came to trial, all-white juries generally never convicted a white of lynching a black.

Proponents of Dyer's anti-lynching bill believed that lynching and mob violence took away African-American citizens' rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. These rights included a speedy and fair trial by an impartial jury. Other citizen rights included the right to be informed of the nature of the crime accused, the ability to have witnesses in the defense's favor, and to be represented by counsel in court.^[2] Many blacks felt betrayed by the Republicans due to the bill's slow process to the Senate. A silent protest march by many blacks took place in front of the Capitol grounds and White House in 1922 while the bill's constitutionality was being contemplated. A protest sign read, "Congress discusses constitutionality while the smoke of burning bodies darkens the heavens."^[2]

Senate filibuster 1922

U.S. Sen. Lee Slater Overman from North Carolina, Harris & Ewing, 1914. Southern Democratic senators filibustered the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill in December 1922 and twice more to prevent its passage.

William Borah c. 1919–1925

After Dyer's bill reached the Senate and received a favorable report from the Judiciary Committee, some Republican senators, including most prominently William Borah, an otherwise progressive Senator from Idaho, spoke against it. Borah was concerned about issues of state sovereignty and believed that the bill was not constitutional.^[11] He was especially concerned about the clause that provided for federal authorities to punish state officials "remiss in the suppression of lynchings."^[15][16]

A prolonged filibuster by Southern white Democrats prevented consideration of the bill and defeated it. After the Democrats had held up voting on all the national business in the Senate for a week in December 1922 by their filibuster, the Republicans realized they could not overcome the tactic and finally conceded defeat on Dyer's bill.^[9] Senator Lee S. Overman of North Carolina told The New York Times that the "good negroes of the South did not want the legislation for 'they do not need it'."^[17]

Aftermath and legacy

Following the defeat of his first bill in the Senate in 1922, Dyer tried unsuccessfully twice more to get it passed by the Senate.^[9] Some of the bill's opponents claimed that the threat of lynching protected white women from sexual advances from black men.^[9] The studies by the journalist Ida B. Wells in the late 1890s had shown that black lynch victims were accused of rape or attempted rape only one third of the time.^[18] Rather, the murders of blacks were an extreme form of white extrajudicial punishment and community control, often targeting blacks who were economic competitors with whites, who were trying to advance in society, who were in debt to landowners (settlement season for sharecroppers was a time of high rates of lynchings in rural areas), or those who failed to "stay in their place".^[19] In 1919, according to the Pittsburgh Gazette Times, many Southerners viewed the practice of lynching as a sporting event.^[20]

In 1923, to gain national support for his anti-lynching bill, which was to be heard again that year in the Senate, Dyer toured the western United States to generate public support. His motto for his anti-lynching campaign was "We have just begun to fight." (This was the statement made famous by John Paul Jones.) Dyer attracted mixed black and white audiences in Denver, Portland, Los Angeles, Omaha, and Chicago. He thanked the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for supporting his bill and praised their continuing to publicize the terrible human toll of lynching in the United States. In Chicago, 4000 people attended his anti-lynching rally. Dyer's campaign received positive coverage by the white mainstream press, which helped strengthen an anti-lynching movement in the West.^[21]

The national attention received by Dyer's anti-lynching bill and speaking campaign may have helped reduce lynchings in the South. More significantly, the Great Migration was underway, and black workers by the tens of thousands were leaving the South for Northern and Midwestern industrial cities, for jobs, education, and a chance to escape Jim Crow laws and violence. By 1934, when the Costigan-Wagner anti-lynching bill was introduced, lynchings had dropped to 15 per year.^[9] In 1935 and 1938, Senator Borah repeated his constitutional arguments against the bill; he added that he believed such legislation was no longer needed, because the rate of lynchings had fallen so dramatically.^[16] By 1940, 1.5 million blacks had left the South in the Great Migration. Another five million left from 1940 to 1970.

The political power of the white Democrats in the South came from their having disfranchised most blacks from 1890 to 1910. The South was essentially a one-party, Democratic region in which only whites voted and held office, well into the 1960s, but Congressional representation was based on the total population. The situation of disfranchisement did not change markedly until passage in the 1960s of federal civil rights legislation that protected and enforced the constitutional rights of voting and citizenship for African Americans and other minorities.

From 1882 to 1968 "...nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and three passed the House. Seven presidents between 1890 and 1952 petitioned Congress to pass a federal law."^[22] None was approved by the Senate because of the powerful opposition of the Southern Democratic voting bloc. In June 2005, through passing a bipartisan resolution sponsored by senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and George Allen of Virginia, the US Senate officially apologized for not having passed an anti-lynching law "when it was most needed."^[22]