Next month is the 15th anniversary of the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a landmark law that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has used since 2009 to prosecute those who commit hate crimes. Over the next several months, the Civil Rights Division will highlight their work to combat hate crimes. Today’s blog post will discuss their work in combating hate crimes that target Black people.
In announcing the hate crime prosecution of the man accused of murdering 10 Black people in June 2022 at the Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and wounding three other people, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland observed that “The Justice Department was founded more than 150 years ago with the first principal task of protecting Black Americans — and our democracy — from white supremacist violence. Today, we approach that task with the same degree of urgency as we did then.”
Also in June 2022, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division, emphasized the importance of this mission: “From the thousands of lynchings of Black people, to the deaths of Emmett Till, the four little girls killed at the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and James Byrd, to the nine peaceful worshippers gunned down in Charleston, South Carolina, to the senseless murder of Ahmaud Arbery — racially motivated violence is a stain on our nation’s history.”
And, addressing the convictions of three men in February 2022 who killed Ahmaud Arbery just because he was Black, Attorney General Garland affirmed that “The Justice Department does have the authority — and will not hesitate to act — when individuals commit violent acts that are motivated by bias or hatred.”
A key source of the authority the Attorney General was citing is the Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. That statute and a broad array of other federal laws provide the Justice Department multiple tools to hold perpetrators of hate crimes accountable. One of the namesakes of the Act, James Byrd Jr., was murdered 26 years ago in Jasper, Texas, by three white men, two of them avowed white supremacists. They chained 49-year-old Byrd by the ankles to the back of a pick-up truck, dragged him nearly three miles to his death and then abandoned his decapitated, mutilated body.
This hate crimes statute is a fitting legacy for Mr. Byrd.
One of the tools the Shepard-Byrd Act creates is 18 U.S.C. § 249. That provision authorizes the Justice Department to prosecute anyone who causes or attempts to cause bodily injury using a firearm, dangerous weapon, fire or an explosive or incendiary device “because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion or national origin of any person.” The punishments for violating this provision are substantial, including, in certain circumstances, the death penalty. That was one of the statutes invoked against the Buffalo shooter and the killers of Ahmaud Arbery.
The department has other tools at its disposal as well. Under 18 U.S.C 245 (1967), it can charge violent interference with federally protected rights because of the victim’s race or color. It can bring hate crime charges under the Fair Housing Act (1968), Damage to Religious Property Act, also known as the Church Arson Prevention Act (1996) or Emmett Till Antilynching Act (2022). And the Ku Klux Klan Act has been on the books since 1871.
Here are just a few examples of the department’s hate crimes prosecutions from the first eight months of 2024:
- In July, a Kansas man pleaded guilty to two counts of interference with federally protected activities, two counts of interstate threats and one count of interference with housing for brandishing a firearm and using racial slurs to threaten two Black juveniles, using his firearm to threaten a Black adult who intervened to support the children and threatening to hurt or kill any Black person who visited a white woman in her home.
- In June, a Michigan man was sentenced to 26 months in prison for conspiring with his co-members of a white supremacist group to threaten Black and Jewish people in the exercise of their rights.
- In April, a man in Florida was sentenced to five years in prison for attacking two Black women with a gun.
- In March, a man in Maine pleaded guilty to sending racist death threats to a Black family living in his apartment complex.
- In February, a South Carolina man was convicted of killing a Black transgender woman.
In 2023 as well, the department vigorously prosecuted hate crimes involving violence or threats against Black people. Those cases included:
- In December, we charged a Florida man with a federal hate crime for murdering a Black man in the Kansas City, Missouri, area.
- In October, we charged a Georgia man for making racially motivated threats and shooting at his neighbor, a Black man, in violation of the criminal provisions of the Fair Housing Act.
- In October, a Florida man was sentenced for using his car to attack a group of Black men who were surveying land for a possible memorial regarding the 1923 Rosewood Massacre in Florida.
- In July, an Oklahoma man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a racially motivated attack on a Black victim in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
This is a small sample of the many similar cases the department brought in 2023. Since January 2021, the department has charged more than 140 defendants with bias-motivated crimes in more than 125 cases. Most of these hate crime prosecutions have involved violence or threats against Black Americans. These totals do not include the other matters the department has handled involving bias against Black people, including findings of racial discrimination by police departments in Minneapolis, Louisville, Kentucky, and Phoenix, among others.
Prosecutions alone are not enough in the work to combat hate. Separate and apart from the laws used by the Justice Department to prosecute perpetrators of hate crimes, the Justice Department has also taken steps to improve hate crime reporting, encourage better data collection and expand public education campaigns concerning hate crimes, especially at the state and local levels. Laws like the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act and Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act (2021) have helped strengthen outreach and data-collection efforts across the country.
The Civil Rights Division — indeed, the entire nation — is profoundly indebted to the many heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, both leaders and foot soldiers, who sacrificed so much to advance racial justice in this country. We are determined to honor their sacrifices and to redeem their legacy by combatting bigotry, including hate crimes against Black people, wherever it rears its ugly head. We have done that, and we will continue along that path.
