President Joe Biden appears to believe “some people” still want to lynch Black Americans.
Biden hosted a screening of the movie “Till,” about Mamie Till-Bradley’s search for justice after the 1955 lynching of her son Emmett Till, at the White House on Thursday.
He noted the event came nearly one year after he signed into law legislation making lynching a federal crime.
“It was one of the great honors of my career,” Biden said. “You know folks, lynching is pure terror, enforcing the lie that not everyone belongs in America and not everyone is created equal.”
He continued:
“Pure terror to systematically undermine hard-fought civil rights. Innocent men, women, children, hung by a noose from trees. Bodies burned, drowned, castrated. Their crimes: trying to vote, trying to go to school, trying to own a business, trying to preach the Gospel. False accusations of murder, arson, robbery. Lynched for simply being black. Nothing more.”
Watch the video below:
Biden on lynching: "White families gathered to celebrate the spectacle, taking pictures of the bodies … Some people still want to do that" pic.twitter.com/oNY0x9UKcv
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 17, 2023
Finally, Biden said, “White crowds, white families gathered to celebrate the spectacle, taking pictures of the bodies and mailing them as postcards.”
“Hard to believe but that’s what was done. Some people still want to do that,” he added.
Conservative radio host Grace Curley tweeted, “Good Lord, Joe really is the worst President in American history.”
Good Lord, Joe really is the worst President in American history. https://t.co/HcPvk8A99J
— Grace Curley (@G_CURLEY) February 17, 2023
“Name a hobby Biden loves besides demonizing white people,” wrote conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong.
Name a hobby Biden loves besides demonizing white people. https://t.co/12ahS0hxBf
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) February 17, 2023
Filmmaker Dean Cain tweeted, “WTF…?”
WTF…? https://t.co/UCnXfNynvz
— Dean Cain (@RealDeanCain) February 17, 2023
A 2020 press release from the United Nations Human Rights Council condemned “modern-day racial terror lynchings” in the U.S.
The release said, “A group of independent UN rights experts today called on the United States Government to take decisive action to address systemic racism and racial bias in the country’s criminal justice system by launching independent investigations and ensuring accountability in all cases of excessive use of force by police. They also issued a statement regarding the nationwide protests against racial injustice.”
“The UN human rights experts made the call after a recent spate of killings of African-Americans involving impunity, particular disregard or depravity toward human life, and the use of public spaces to assert racial control, each characteristic of lynching,” it added.
It pointed to the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd by police officers and the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia by white men.