US President Joe Biden Tuesday signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law. The law, HR 55, makes lynching that results in death or serious bodily injury a federal hate crime. The Act also establishes a maximum sentence of 30 years for those convicted of lynching. The House of Representatives passed the bill 422 to 3 on February 28, and the Senate voted unanimously in favor of the legislation on March 7.

Biden noted that Vice President Kamala Harris was a “key co-sponsor” of the bill when she served in the Senate. Biden cited research by Brian Stevenson, attorney, author and founder of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. According to Stevenson’s research, more than 4,400 black people were murdered by lynching between 1877 and 1950. Stevenson called the Act an “overdue correction to tragic failures of the past.”

The president also thanked the families of Emmett Till and Ida B. Wells for their persistent support of antilynching legislation. Emmett Till, the Act’s namesake, was brutally lynched by Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam in August 1955 at the age of 14. His mother, Mamie Till Bradley, held an open-casket funeral so that the entire nation was forced to “bear witness” to her horror.

Wells was a journalist who exposed patterns of American lynching in the late 19th century and visited the White House in 1898 to make the case for a federal antilynching law. Wells’ great-granddaughter Michelle Duster stood with the president as he delivered a statement after signing the bill.

Speaking to reporters, Biden said:

Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, 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 from trees, bodies burned and drowned and castrated. Their crimes? Trying to vote. Trying to go to school. Trying to own a business or preach the gospel. False accusations of murder, arson and robbery. Simply being black.

The Act’s sponsor, Representative Bobby Rush (D-IL), said he was “elated” that Congress finally passed antilynching legislation.