A bill named after Emmett Till, who was a 14-year-old who was beaten and killed in 1955 in Mississippi, has now become law.President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act at the end of March, which makes lynching a federal hate crime. It marked the end of a centuries-old fight.Congress failed to pass similar legislation more than 200 times before this bill last year."For this to come now, and to be named in his honor, and really to honor his honor and his legacy, and what it meant to this nation, to this state, and even the world, is a remarkable moment," said JSU professor of history Robert Luckett.Till was beaten and killed after being accused of whistling at a white woman. Till, along with thousands of other Black men, women, and children, were lynched. Luckett said this legislation honors them all."It keeps their names and their lives alive in some ways, they have a legacy and it's important for us now to not just think of them as victims, but people who had lives and lives of meaning," Luckett said.Till's cousin, the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr., was 16-years-old when he witnessed his abduction, prior to his brutal killing. He was at the signing. Others, like him, have been directly impacted by the loss of loved ones as a result of hate crimes. They are finally able to see the bill become law after so many years."But the law is not just about the past. It's about the present and our future as well. The same racial hatred that drove the mod to hang a noose also brought that mob to carry torches out of the field in Charlottesville just a few years ago," Biden said."Not too far from our own campus, the story of James Craig Anderson walking down Ellis Avenue. While I was at Jackson State, he was murdered on Ellis Avenue, right around the corner. So there is a long history of this in Mississippi, and it is a history that continues to impact people in various ways," Luckett said.The new laws make it possible to prosecute a crime as a lynching when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime leads to death or serious bodily injury.