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Three components defined the bill: punishment of state and municipal officers who failed to protect lynching victims, punishment of the mob itself, and mandatory compensation by the county, within which the lynching occurred, towards family members of the victims.<ref name=blackpast/> In the event that the lynching victim was kidnapped from one county and murdered in another, both counties would be fined $10,000.<ref name=talbert/> The constitutional basis was rooted in the [[14th Amendment]], which guarantees "equal protection under the law."
Three components defined the bill: punishment of state and municipal officers who failed to protect lynching victims, punishment of the mob itself, and mandatory compensation by the county, within which the lynching occurred, towards family members of the victims.<ref name=blackpast/> In the event that the lynching victim was kidnapped from one county and murdered in another, both counties would be fined $10,000.<ref name=talbert/> The constitutional basis was rooted in the [[14th Amendment]], which guarantees "equal protection under the law."
==Birmingham Address: Harding initiates traction for congressional anti-lynching action==
In his famous "Address at Birmingham" given in the Deep South state of [[Alabama]], President Warren Harding spoke in favor of racial equality and better treatment of black people—among the segregated audience, the black side eagerly cheered while the white side was mostly silent with only scatterings of vocal approval.<ref name=talbert/> In ''The Crisis'', civil rights activist [[W. E. B. Du Bois]] expressed lukewarm support for Harding, who quickly alarmed Southern Democrats. Mississippi senator Pat Harrison asserted:
{{cquote|To encourage the Negro, who, in some States, as in my own, exceeds the white population, to strive through every political avenue to be placed upon equality with the whites, is a blow to the white civilization of this country that will take years to combat. If the President's theory is carried to its ultimate conclusion, namely, that the black person, either man or woman, should have full economic and political rights with the white man and white woman, then that means that the black man can strive to become President of the United States, hold a Cabinet position and occupy the highest places of public trust in the nation.|||Byron Patton "Pat" Harrison (D–MS)}}
==U.S. House: initial defeat, later passage==
==U.S. House: initial defeat, later passage==