President Joe Biden signed a bill into law on Tuesday (March 29) that makes lynching a federal hate crime, acknowledging how racial violence and terrorism were propelled via lynching and its heinous and horrid history in the United States.

At a White House Rose Garden signing ceremony, the President forcefully spoke while describing the history of racial violence experienced by Black Americans and its continued impact.

“Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone … belongs in America, not everyone is created equal. Terror, to systematically undermine hard-fought civil rights. Terror, not just in the dark of the night but in broad daylight. Innocent men, women and children hung by nooses in trees, bodies burned and drowned and castrated," the 79-year-old Biden remarked.

President of the United States Joe Biden delivers remarks after signing into law, H.R. 55, the “Emmett Till Antilynching Act” in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C. on March 29, 2022