The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Law: Till’s Cousin and Ida B. Wells’s Great-Granddaughter Respond

President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law on Tuesday, culminating efforts to make lynching a federal crime that started over a century ago. We’re joined by Emmett Till’s cousin and best friend, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., who was 16 years old when he witnessed Till’s abduction from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, prior to his brutal killing. Parker recalls the night of Till’s abduction and says, almost 70 years later, he is “thankful” for the new law, while acknowledging that “it shouldn’t have taken that long.” We also speak with author and public historian Michelle Duster, who spoke at Tuesday’s bill signing and is the great-granddaughter of the pioneering investigative journalist Ida B. Wells. “Finally, in 2022, we have justice. We have laws put in place that were fought for so long ago,” says Duster, who thinks the law is “better late than never.”

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