this is "nightline." >> tonight journey towards justice. anti-lynching act 120 years in the making, we're with emmett tills family. >> it's a very emotional day on a day they worked decades to see. bipartisan effort that brought together unlikely allies. >> these are unhealed wound that go deep within the flesh of our body as a nation. >> why it matters, plus 24

months how the pandemic changed our world, including entertainment, with venues shut down how bingeing became a national pasttime. from tiger king to the mandalorian. and tiktok making new stars. ♪ >> "nightline" will be right back. ♪

♪ ♪ good evening, thank you for joining us. we begin with a journey for justice, more than 100 years in the making. today president biden signed into law a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. for one family that journey is personal as abc's rachel scott found out sometimes the arc of the known universe does bend. u. >> it's a very emotional day. i know that our ancestors are smiling down and rejoicing and saying job well done.

waitedecades f. >> wha seaded to the white house where today lynching will at least become a federal hate crime. gordon is the cousin of mamie gordon is the cousin of mamie till mobley who was the mother of emmett till who was a teenage boy brutally beaten and murdered by men in mississippi 1955 this new law over 100 years in the making. gordon and her family helped to fight for this legislation that bears her cousin's name. >> lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone belongs in america, not everyone is created equal. >> anti-lynching act makes lynching punishable by up to 30 years in prison, anyone involve in lynching is part of the conspiracy and faces the same

sentence. >> everybody talked to not republican or democrat didn't know this wasn't a law. >> wow. >> strange experience you realize something wasn't done everything thought was done. >> today it is unknown how many people had been lynched, it's been documented more than 4,000 lynching of black people between 1877 to 1950. >> the lynching photos were a reminder of the racial hierarchy that existed that you could kill a person, a black person with impunity and no one would care and no one would be brought to justice. >> state and local governments did not hold anybody accountable for them so this is unhealed wounds that go deep within the flesh of our body as a nation.

>> the first anti-lynching bill was introduc iress i and since g bills have been passed until then one. till's mother put her pain on full display changed the course of history. >> reverend wheeler parker is emmett till's cousin and one of the last people to see him alive. >> we're here today because we hear emmett speaking. >> before his name was attached to the horror of linking he was to the horror of lynching, he was bobo, playful figure with his cousin living with his mother in chicago. >> he was fun-loving. he loved to pull jokes on people. he liked people to laugh. he was the oldest in the house. he was more or less our protector. >> she remembers when the

14-year-old went to visit family in money, mississippi, august, 1955. >> i remember emmett's mother trying to tell him how to behave and act because he wasn't familiar with that lifestyle in mississippi and that was the last time that i saw him alive. >> just three days into his summer trip to mississippi a white woman named caroline brian accused the boy of whistling at her at a grocery store and couple days later emmett till went missing in the night. brian's husband and family members had taken the boy, he was brutally beaten and shot in the head and his body found days later in the river. only gordon remembers what happened in chicago when the family got the news about emmett. >> the grief in the house was horrible.

the screaming. the disbelief. >> when emmett's mutilated body was brought back to chicago his mother made a decision to help launch the civil rights movement holding an open-casket funeral for her son. >> when he said do you want me to retouch the body, i said no, let the people see what i have seen. i want the world to see what is going on in mississippi. in this great old united states of america. >> thank god she had the courage to show the world what happened to her child. we would not be here today had not been for the pain and the suffering and the strength and the courage of the entire family. showed the world.

>> a murder trial would follow ending in acquittal, a devastating loss for till's family and mamie till would spend the rest of her life fighting for justice. ali gordon helping to carry on her cousin relentless pursuit of justice. >> we ended up fighting for emmitt and in years to follow would learn of other black lives that had been taken. >> i got to the point i had to turn my head because it was all over the news. you don't have to hang a person from a tree. a lynching is a lynching. >> some people look at it and say lynching happened so long ago in our country's history. >> ahmaud arbery was yesterday basically. let's not pretend it happened in a hundred years ago or in the 1980s, you hunt a man down in the middle of the street that's lynching. >> in 2018 republican senator

tim scott and democratic cory booker and kamala harris again introduced legislation in the wake of the white supremacist rally in the murder that failed. in 2019 congressman reintroduced the emmett till anti-lynching act. >> mami till is all over this bill. >> in 2020 ms. gordon travelled with her daughter to washington to push for legislation. concerns from kentucky republican rand paul who argued over how lynching sh >> senator rand paul decided we al foer and he t te didn't see the difference. in these two years his mind changed. >> it lingered for a while. those are the frustrating years

that keep you going, that's the definition of frustration in 2020 hails in comparison to 1955. >> that trip to washington, d.c. would be the last miss gordon and her daughter would take. a month after the bill failed in the senate erica gordon taylor passed away. >> what did you think when you heard the news that had finally passed both the house and senate. >> i broke down. i thought of my daughter erica and said oh, if only she could be here to see the fruits of her labor. it was bittersweet. >> it's hard to celebrate this. it's more of this sense of you hear your ancestor's sigh, that finally, finally the government of the united states of america has said that this is worthy of enacting a law against it. >> the family has struggled to get accountability for emmitt's death and to clear his name of any wrongdoing. the department of justice did reopen the case in 2017 but

closed it this past december. >> what do you make of the moment that we're in now? is it different? >> we will have to see if this law is going to be effective or if it is just some more words only the books. on the books. we need to see if they're actually going to use it and enforce it. then i will be able to answer that question. >> the hope is that this will serve in many ways as a deterrent and send a message that the federal government is putting its full weight behind the protection of people against these types of crimes and that this is a demonstration how seriously we take the crime of lynching and the intent to eradicate the thought of racial domestic terror from our society. >> but in that moment today when a long-over due bill finally became law miss gordon says her thoughts were with her cousin emmitt. >> look what his death has

brought to america, a change. the beauty of passing of this bill. the coming together of the races to make this happen. >> and especially his mother mamie till mobley. >> no emmett's death has not been in vain. they've been trying for hundreds of years and finally, finally we have a anti-lynching bill. >> our thanks to rachel. more on emmett till's family fight for justice, watch the docuseries let the world see streaming on hulu. up next, we look back at preview of the robin roberts 2020 special. 24 months that changed the world. ♪ special. 24 months that changed the world. are you tired of washing dishes? well flip the way you clean'em.

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♪ march 2020, it was two years ago when the pandemic shut everything down, no sports, no movies on the big screen, life moved to the small screen and everything and anything that we could stream. here's more >> in january 2020, lizzo was riding high, winning three grammys performing "truth hurts". next up was to be triumphant home coming performance at nrg stadium for the houston rodeo only then the pandemic shut it down.

>> it's just surreal to see no one out here. >> and i'm scared so instead of projecting fear on to my social media i was like, what else can i do. i was like i'm going to meditate and play some flute. i was like, i'll do it online and maybe we can all just kind of lessen the fear in the world. >> entertainers felt that fear as we all did. >> yeah we're staying home too. it's the safe and cool thing to do. >> found its way into their art. >> you don't think how it effects your work but now i look at surface pressure ♪ oh, that's a song i wrote in april 2020 and all about how do i keep my family safe and what happens if i don't keep my family safe? >> across the statement spectrum

the last 24 months of covid-19 sped up transformations that were already underway in how we watch and listen. >> i think it's just changed a little bit more because we watch everything kind of at home, you know. >> due to closures from the pandemic. >> historic charlotte movie theater has closed. >> more than 500 theaters closed according to com score. even berkeley film mecca at cal. >> the theater is closed now they say is not going to reopen. just so sad. look at that. once it had lines around the block, the california theater showed its first film, the silent caberia in 1914. it with stood the inventions of television, hbo an the vcr. this time things were different. >> i'm like the most i want to see it in movie theater first kind of guy there is, but in the lsat two years i've not gone to that many movies because i don't want to expose myself to that kind of risk.

>> it's not every day a zoo keeper went to prison for murderer for hire. >> tiger king to the mandalorian. >> you know this is no place for a child. >> ted lasso. >> i always figured tea was gonna tste like hot, brown water. you know what, i was right. >> it was binge watching that helped us through the isolation. streaming services offered massive escapism to your home no one enjoyed more explosive growth than tiktok. >> tiktok boomed during the pandemic. >> up nearly 600% in visits in 2020. an interactive space for recording artists and influencers to boost each other. no artist benefited more from tiktok's reach than this guy, a 42-year-old country artist who was starting to think the big

time passed him by. >> there weren't many outlets dieing for more walker hayes music. >> now he's in demand with his first number one song on country radio. ♪ fancy like apple bees ♪ ♪ on a date night ♪ ♪ >> a catching working class ode to spending date night at apple bees might have come and gone had it not been for his 15-year-old daughter. >> we choreographed it together. ♪ on tiktok. i was like whoa it got like 60,000 hits leila. she came over like, dad that's 600,000, by the next saturday it had 13 million. >> to no one's surprise apple bee's hoping to bring back hungry pandemic weary customers made it part of its ad campaign.

>> it blew the song up even bigger. ♪ fancy like ohh ♪ ♪ >> the married father of six is on tour. >> i'm accidentally a rock star right now. along with me on this adventure. something positive for me that came over the last 24 months is just my relationship with my kids. >> now every night those kids make a cameo, proof positive while the pandemic might have locked us down music can still lift us up. >> y'all be safe going home now. >> our thanks to chris. the robin roberts 2020 special 24 months that changed the world airs tomorrow at 10:00 p.m. eastern, 9:00 central right here on abc. up next, music underground, the festival in the bomb shelter. ♪

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♪ and finally tonight, the car kiev music festival was cancelled because of the russian invasion, instead musicians played in one of the citys underground shelters. ♪

♪ >> bravo. standing tall in ukraine. it was reverend martin luther king jr. who said a man can't stand on your back unless it's bent. that's "nightline" catch our full episodes on hulu, see you back here same time tomorrow. thanks for the company, america. good night. ♪ ♪ thousands of women with metastatic breast cancer... are living in the moment and taking ibrance. ibrance with an aromatase inhibitor

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