December 18, 1852 Birth of Republican U.S. Rep. George White (R-NC), last former slave to serve in Congress; authored bill to make lynching a federal crime Senator White's anti-lynching bill was stalled by Democratic opponents in the Judiciary Committee and never came to a vote before the full House. Over the next half century, the House eventually passed three anti-lynching bills, all of which failed in the Senate. Texas Senator Lyndon B. Johnson voted against one of the bills. On June 13, 2005, the Senate acknowledged and apologized for this inaction (even though only the Democrats were responsible for it) by unanimously approving Resolution 39, which admitted the federal government's failure to address the mob violence that killed thousands of Americans in the first half of the twentieth century.
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