In 1900, Representative George Henry White of North Carolina, the sole Black law maker in Congress at the time, dared to introduce legislation (HR 6963) that would make lynching a hate crime. To back his case, he submitted an anti-lynching petition from New Jersey residents protesting the lynching of Black Americans for alleged offences, from
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Bird’s death was given a one-sentence mention in the August 23 issue of
Time magazine: “At Wytheville, Va., last week gentry stormed the county jail; shot Raymond Bird, 31, Negro; hanged his black body to a tree.” The reporting glossed over the grisly specifics of the case, however. Bird was being held in jail accused of assaulting the two white daughters of his employer, and while local officials knew a mob had formed, they did little to protect the prisoner. According to an Associated Press report, the mob shot Bird and beat his head “into a pulp.” They then tied a rope around his neck, attached his corpse to a waiting automobile, and dragged his body nine miles to the scene of his alleged assaults. There, they strung his body to a tree and filled it with more bullets.