Anti-Lynching Bill Background

85th Anniversary of Anti-Lynching Bill Passage

Congressman Leonidas Dyer of Missouri first introduced his Anti-Lynching Bill--known as the Dyer Bill--into Congress in 1918. The NAACP supported the passage of this bill from 1919 onward; they had not done so initially, arguing that the bill was unconstitutional based on the recommendations of Moorfield Storey, a lawyer and the first president of the NAACP. Storey revised his position in 1918 and from 1919 onward the NAACP supported Dyer's anti-lynching legislation. The Dyer Bill was passed by the House of Representatives on the 26th of January 1922, and was given a favorable report by the Senate Committee assigned to report on it in July 1922, but its passage was halted by a filibuster in the Senate. Efforts to pass similar legislation were not taken up again until the 1930s with the Costigan-Wagner Bill. The Dyer Bill influenced the text of anti-lynching legislation promoted by the NAACP into the 1950s, including the Costigan-Wagner Bill