a federal crime. In his speech, he anticipated some members likely objections about the federal government sponsoring "social" legislation, and noted that lynching violated individuals' rights under the 14th Amendment. In addition, he noted that Congress had passed child labor laws and the Prohibition amendment. He said: If Congress has felt its duty to do these things, why should it not also assume jurisdiction and enact laws to protect the lives of citizens of the United States against lynch law and mob violence? Are the rights of property, or what a citizen shall drink, or the ages and conditions under which children shall work, any more important to the Nation than life itself? Black leaders in the North had insisted that the Republican Party National platform for the presidential election of 1920 include support for anti-lynching legislation. After the election, the black community complained when months passed without Harding's getting a bill introduced and passed by Congress. Dyer introduced a revised version of the bill in the House of Representatives in 1921. U.S. President Warren G. Harding, a Republican spoke in favor of Dyer's anti-lynching bill at an appearance in Birmingham, Alabama, and stated he would sign the bill if it was passed by the Senate. With high interest in the bill across the country, described as an "insistent country-wide demand", the bill passed by a large margin (230 to 119) on January 26, 1922. The first such federal legislation to gain House passage in the twentieth century, it would have enabled the federal government to prosecute the crime. Southern authorities seldom did so. In the South, most blacks had been disfranchised from 1890 to 1911 by constitutional changes and discriminatory legislation after southern Democrats regained power in the state legislatures. Unable to vote, blacks were disqualified from serving on juries or holding any political office; they had virtually no political power within the official system. In the few cases that came to trial, all-white juries generally never convicted a white of lynching a black. Proponents of Dyer's anti-lynching bill believed that lynching and mob violence took away African-American citizens' rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. These rights included a speedy and fair trial by an impartial jury. Other citizen rights included the right to be informed of the nature of the crime accused, the ability to have witnesses in the defense's favor, and to be represented by council in court.