On this date in 2005, the United States Senate issued a resolution addressing its delay in voting against American lynching.
The decree voiced regret for the chamber's unwillingness for decades to pass a law stopping lynching in America. Lynchings have taken the lives of over 5,000 known people and thousands more who were never documented. The non-binding measure apologizes for the government’s failure and expresses the "most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching." Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana sponsored the legislative resolution.
In the past, efforts for such legislation were victims of Senate filibusters. Non-passage has spanned seven presidents between 1890 and 1952. Landrieu called lynching and mob violence "an American form of terrorism," documented in at least 46 states.
