Overview

Leonidas C. Dyer was a Republican U.S. Representative from Missouri who served in Congress from 1911 to 1933. He is best known for authoring the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill; the first federal legislation aimed at making lynching a federal crime. Dyer represented a majority-Black district in St. Louis and was motivated by the 1917 East St. Louis race massacre; in which white mobs killed an estimated 40-200 Black residents in one of the worst episodes of racial violence in American history. The Dyer Bill; introduced in 1918; would have classified lynching as a federal felony; made counties where lynchings occurred liable for damages of $10;000 to the victim's family; and authorized federal prosecution of state officials who failed to protect victims or prosecute perpetrators. The bill passed the House of Representatives in January 1922 by a vote of 230-119; with the support of the NAACP and prominent activists including Ida B. Wells and Mary Burnett Talbert. However; Southern Democratic senators filibustered the bill in the Senate; and Republican leadership withdrew it rather than fight the filibuster. Despite repeated reintroductions over subsequent decades; no federal anti-lynching legislation was passed during Dyer's lifetime. It was not until March 2022; more than a century after Dyer first introduced his bill; that the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law; making lynching a federal hate crime. During the period between the Civil War and the passage of federal legislation; an estimated 4;743 people were lynched in the United States; the vast majority of them Black Americans in the South.

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2 documented sources from official records, investigations, and reports