October 21, 1921

President Warren Harding delivered a speech in Birmingham denouncing the lynching of blacks in the South. The speech was the first by a president to condemn lynchings, which, at the time, claimed the lives of two blacks every week. Harding voiced his support for pending anti-lynching bills in Congress that sought to impose $10,000 fines on counties where lynchings occurred, to prosecute negligent state and county officials, and to charge participants with federal murder charges. Southern Democrats in the Senate, however, successfully defeated the bills multiple times over the next few years. Congress did not pass an anti-lynching law until 2005.

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