Emmett Till Antilynching Act's Effectiveness Questioned Amidst Rise in Suspicious Deaths
A new report, 'A Crimson Record,' released by the civil and human rights organization JULIAN, chronicles over 70 cases since 2000 in the Deep South that it classifies as 'modern-day lynchings,' alongside more than 150 fatal hate crimes and suspicious deaths affecting Black, Brown, immigrant, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities. This report, explicitly modeled after Ida B. Wells’ 1895 'A Red Record,' raises concerns about investigative failures, premature suicide determinations, inadequate crime-scene work, disputed autopsies, and the exclusion of families in cases where individuals are found hanging or in circumstances evoking historical racial terror. The report highlights that Mississippi has the largest number of cases in JULIAN's modern-day-lynching category, with 20 instances, and nearly one-third of the total deaths examined involved Black transgender women. Despite the enactment of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act in March 2022, which authorizes penalties for hate-crime offenses resulting in death or... 
