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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/14975-h.zip b/14975-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8ba81b9 --- /dev/null +++ b/14975-h.zip diff --git a/14975-h/14975-h.htm b/14975-h/14975-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0d66698 --- /dev/null +++ b/14975-h/14975-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1519 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In All Its Phases, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Southern Horrors, by Ida B. Wells-Barnett + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Southern Horrors + Lynch Law in All Its Phases + +Author: Ida B. Wells-Barnett + +Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14975] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTHERN HORRORS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h1>Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases</h1> + +<h2>By Ida B. Wells-Barnett</h2> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<img src="images/cover.png" +alt="Original Pamphlet" title="Original Pamphlet" /> +</div> + +<p class="center">1892, 1893, 1894</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p>[<i>Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1892 but was +subsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spelling +date back to the original or were introduced later; they have been +retained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify with +another source before quoting this material</i>.]</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p> + <a href="#PREFACE"><b>PREFACE</b></a><br /> + <a href="#HON_FRED_DOUGLASSS_LETTER"><b>HON. FRED. DOUGLASS'S LETTER</b></a><br /> + <a href="#THE_OFFENSE"><b>THE OFFENSE</b></a><br /> + <a href="#THE_BLACK_AND_WHITE_OF_IT"><b>THE BLACK AND WHITE OF IT</b></a><br /> + <a href="#THE_NEW_CRY"><b>THE NEW CRY</b></a><br /> + <a href="#THE_MALICIOUS_AND_UNTRUTHFUL_WHITE_PRESS"><b>THE MALICIOUS AND UNTRUTHFUL WHITE PRESS</b></a><br /> + <a href="#THE_SOUTHS_POSITION"><b>THE SOUTH'S POSITION</b></a><br /> + <a href="#SELF_HELP"><b>SELF-HELP</b></a><br /> + </p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PREFACE" id="PREFACE" />PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>The greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the +<i>New York Age</i> June 25, 1892, in explanation of the editorial which the +Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destruction +of my paper, the <i>Free Speech</i>.</p> + +<p>Since the appearance of that statement, requests have come from all parts +of the country that "Exiled" (the name under which it then appeared) be +issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for that +purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5 +have enabled me to comply with this request and give the world a true, +unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South.</p> + +<p>This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogether +a defense for the poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves +to be betrayed by white Delilahs. It is a contribution to truth, an array +of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great +American Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall.</p> + +<p>It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here +exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned +against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. The +awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, not +only because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the +victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it places +against the good name of a weak race.</p> + +<p>The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in +any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of +the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and +punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a +service. Other considerations are of minor importance.</p> + +<p> +IDA B. WELLS<br /> +<i>New York City</i>, Oct. 26, 1892<br /> +</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p>To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love, +earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York, +on the night of October 5, 1892—made possible its publication, this +pamphlet is gratefully dedicated by the author.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="HON_FRED_DOUGLASSS_LETTER" id="HON_FRED_DOUGLASSS_LETTER" />HON. FRED. DOUGLASS'S LETTER</h2> + + +<p><i>Dear Miss Wells:</i></p> + +<p>Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination +now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has +been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word +is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual +knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity +and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.</p> + +<p>Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can +neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half +alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if +American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of +outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and +indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.</p> + +<p>But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions +favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by +earth and Heaven yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the +power of a merciful God for final deliverance.</p> + +<p> +Very truly and gratefully yours,<br /> +FREDERICK DOUGLASS<br /> +<i>Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C.</i>, Oct. 25, 1892<br /> +</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_OFFENSE" id="THE_OFFENSE" />THE OFFENSE</h2> + + +<p>Wednesday evening May 24, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled with +excitement. Editorials in the daily papers of that date caused a meeting +to be held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for the +editors of the <i>Free Speech</i> an Afro-American journal published in that +city, and the only reason the open threats of lynching that were made were +not carried out was because they could not be found. The cause of all this +commotion was the following editorial published in the <i>Free Speech</i> May +21, 1892, the Saturday previous.</p> + +<blockquote><p>Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the <i>Free Speech</i> one at + Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke(?) + into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one + near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for + killing a white man, and five on the same old racket—the new alarm + about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting + bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.</p> + +<p> Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie + that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, + they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a + reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging + to the moral reputation of their women.</p></blockquote> + +<p>The <i>Daily Commercial</i> of Wednesday following, May 25, contained the +following leader:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of individuals of + their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind are + playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand + that there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his + defenders. A negro organ printed in this city, in a recent issue + publishes the following atrocious paragraph: "Nobody in this section of + the country believes the old thread-bare lie that negro men rape white + women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach + themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction; and a conclusion + will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of + their women."</p> + +<p> The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such + loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the + wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had enough of it.</p> + +<p> There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and + the obscene intimations of the foregoing have brought the writer to the + very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough.</p></blockquote> + +<p>The <i>Evening Scimitar</i> of same date, copied the <i>Commercial</i>'s editorial +with these words of comment:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes + themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of + those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies + to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in + the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation + with a pair of tailor's shears.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Acting upon this advice, the leading citizens met in the Cotton Exchange +Building the same evening, and threats of lynching were freely indulged, +not by the lawless element upon which the deviltry of the South is usually +saddled—but by the leading business men, in their leading business +centre. Mr. Fleming, the business manager and owning a half interest the +<i>Free Speech</i>, had to leave town to escape the mob, and was afterwards +ordered not to return; letters and telegrams sent me in New York where I +was spending my vacation advised me that bodily harm awaited my return. +Creditors took possession of the office and sold the outfit, and the <i>Free +Speech</i> was as if it had never been.</p> + +<p>The editorial in question was prompted by the many inhuman and fiendish +lynchings of Afro-Americans which have recently taken place and was meant +as a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them charged with +rape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and education +more brutalizing than slavery, and the world knows that the crime of rape +was unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of the +South were at the mercy of the race which is all at once charged with +being a bestial one.</p> + +<p>Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home because +of that editorial, the issue has been forced, and as the writer of it I +feel that the race and the public generally should have a statement of the +facts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for the +Afro-Americans Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white +Delilahs.</p> + +<p>The whites of Montgomery, Ala., knew J.C. Duke sounded the keynote of the +situation—which they would gladly hide from the world, when he said in +his paper, the <i>Herald</i>, five years ago: "Why is it that white women +attract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when such +a thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatly +suspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for colored +Romeos." Mr. Duke, like the <i>Free Speech</i> proprietors, was forced to leave +the city for reflecting on the "honah" of white women and his paper +suppressed; but the truth remains that Afro-American men do not always +rape(?) white women without their consent.</p> + +<p>Mr. Duke, before leaving Montgomery, signed a card disclaiming any +intention of slandering Southern white women. The editor of the <i>Free +Speech</i> has no disclaimer to enter, but asserts instead that there are +many white women in the South who would marry colored men if such an act +would not place them at once beyond the pale of society and within the +clutches of the law. The miscegnation laws of the South only operate +against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free +to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man +who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white +women. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a +despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="THE_BLACK_AND_WHITE_OF_IT" id="THE_BLACK_AND_WHITE_OF_IT" />THE BLACK AND WHITE OF IT</h2> + + +<p>The <i>Cleveland Gazette</i> of January 16, 1892, publishes a case in point. +Mrs. J.S. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an +Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in +1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the +kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried to +drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her, +and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible +condition. She did not know the man but could identify him. She pointed +out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested and, being in Ohio, +was granted a trial.</p> + +<p>The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went +to Mrs. Underwood's residence at her invitation and was criminally +intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against the +sworn testimony of a ministers wife, a lady of the highest respectability. +He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, for +fifteen years. Some time afterwards the woman's remorse led her to confess +to her husband that the man was innocent.</p> + +<p>These are her words:</p> + +<blockquote><p>I met Offett at the Post Office. It was raining. He was polite to me, + and as I had several bundles in my arms he offered to carry them home + for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I invited + him to call on me. He called, bringing chestnuts and candy for the + children. By this means we got them to leave us alone in the room. Then + I sat on his lap. He made a proposal to me and I readily consented. Why + I did so, I do not know, but that I did is true. He visited me several + times after that and each time I was indiscreet. I did not care after + the first time. In fact I could not have resisted, and had no desire to + resist.</p></blockquote> + +<p>When asked by her husband why she told him she had been outraged, she +said: "I had several reasons for telling you. One was the neighbors saw +the fellows here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a loathsome +disease, and still another was that I feared I might give birth to a Negro +baby. I hoped to save my reputation by telling you a deliberate lie." Her +husband horrified by the confession had Offett, who had already served +four years, released and secured a divorce.</p> + +<p>There are thousands of such cases throughout the South, with the +difference that the Southern white men in insatiate fury wreak their +vengeance without intervention of law upon the Afro-Americans who consort +with their women. A few instances to substantiate the assertion that some +white women love the company of the Afro-American will not be out of +place. Most of these cases were reported by the daily papers of the South.</p> + +<p>In the winter of 1885-86 the wife of a practicing physician in Memphis, in +good social standing whose name has escaped me, left home, husband and +children, and ran away with her black coachman. She was with him a month +before her husband found and brought her home. The coachman could not be +found. The doctor moved his family away from Memphis, and is living in +another city under an assumed name.</p> + +<p>In the same city last year a white girl in the dusk of evening screamed at +the approach of some parties that a Negro had assaulted her on the street. +He was captured, tried by a white judge and jury, that acquitted him of +the charge. It is needless to add if there had been a scrap of evidence on +which to convict him of so grave a charge he would have been convicted.</p> + +<p>Sarah Clark of Memphis loved a black man and lived openly with him. When +she was indicted last spring for miscegenation, she swore in court that +she was <i>not</i> a white woman. This she did to escape the penitentiary and +continued her illicit relation undisturbed. That she is of the lower class +of whites, does not disturb the fact that she is a white woman. "The +leading citizens" of Memphis are defending the "honor" of <i>all</i> white +women, <i>demi-monde</i> included.</p> + +<p>Since the manager of the <i>Free Speech</i> has been run away from Memphis by +the guardians of the honor of Southern white women, a young girl living on +Poplar St., who was discovered in intimate relations with a handsome +mulatto young colored man, Will Morgan by name, stole her father's money +to send the young fellow away from that father's wrath. She has since +joined him in Chicago.</p> + +<p>The <i>Memphis Ledger</i> for June 8 has the following:</p> + +<blockquote><p>If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl seventeen years of age, who + is now at the City Hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about her + disgrace there would be some very nauseating details in the story of her + life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal fearful + depravity or it might reveal the evidence of a rank outrage. She will + not divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her + disgrace, and, in fact, says it is a matter in which there can be no + interest to the outside world. She came to Memphis nearly three months + ago and was taken in at the Woman's Refuge in the southern part of the + city. She remained there until a few weeks ago, when the child was born. + The ladies in charge of the Refuge were horified. The girl was at once + sent to the City Hospital, where she has been since May 30. She is a + country girl. She came to Memphis from her fathers farm, a short + distance from Hernando, Miss. Just when she left there she would not + say. In fact she says she came to Memphis from Arkansas, and says her + home is in that State. She is rather good looking, has blue eyes, a low + forehead and dark red hair. The ladies at the Woman's Refuge do not know + anything about the girl further than what they learned when she was an + inmate of the institution; and she would not tell much. When the child + was born an attempt was made to get the girl to reveal the name of the + Negro who had disgraced her, she obstinately refused and it was + impossible to elicit any information from her on the subject.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Note the wording. "The truth might reveal fearful depravity or rank +outrage." If it had been a white child or Lillie Bailey had told a pitiful +story of Negro outrage, it would have been a case of woman's weakness or +assault and she could have remained at the Woman's Refuge. But a Negro +child and to withhold its father's name and thus prevent the killing of +another Negro "rapist." A case of "fearful depravity."</p> + +<p>The very week the "leading citizens" of Memphis were making a spectacle of +themselves in defense of all white women of every kind, an Afro-American, +M. Stricklin, was found in a white woman's room in that city. Although +she made no outcry of rape, he was jailed and would have been lynched, but +the woman stated she bought curtains of him (he was a furniture dealer) +and his business in her room that night was to put them up. A white +woman's word was taken as absolutely in this case as when the cry of rape +is made, and he was freed.</p> + +<p>What is true of Memphis is true of the entire South. The daily papers last +year reported a farmer's wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child. +When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took the +mule from the plow and fled. The dispatches also told of a woman in South +Carolina who gave birth to a Negro child and charged three men with being +its father, <i>every one of whom has since disappeared</i>. In Tuscumbia, Ala., +the colored boy who was lynched there last year for assaulting a white +girl told her before his accusers that he had met her there in the woods +often before.</p> + +<p>Frank Weems of Chattanooga who was not lynched in May only because the +prominent citizens became his body guard until the doors of the +penitentiary closed on him, had letters in his pocket from the white woman +in the case, making the appointment with him. Edward Coy who was burned +alive in Texarkana, January 1, 1892, died protesting his innocence. +Investigation since as given by the Bystander in the <i>Chicago Inter +Ocean</i>, October 1, proves:</p> + +<blockquote><p>1. The woman who was paraded as a victim of violence was of bad + character; her husband was a drunkard and a gambler.</p> + +<p> 2. She was publicly reported and generally known to have been criminally + intimate with Coy for more than a year previous.</p> + +<p> 3. She was compelled by threats, if not by violence, to make the charge + against the victim.</p> + +<p> 4. When she came to apply the match Coy asked her if she would burn him + after they had "been sweethearting" so long.</p> + +<p> 5. A large majority of the "superior" white men prominent in the affair + are the reputed fathers of mulatto children.</p> + +<p> These are not pleasant facts, but they are illustrative of the vital + phase of the so-called race question, which should properly be + designated an earnest inquiry as to the best methods by which religion, + science, law and political power may be employed to excuse injustice, + barbarity and crime done to a people because of race and color. There + can be no possible belief that these people were inspired by any + consuming zeal to vindicate God's law against miscegnationists of the + most practical sort. The woman was a willing partner in the victim's + guilt, and being of the "superior" race must naturally have been more + guilty.</p></blockquote> + +<p>In Natchez, Miss., Mrs. Marshall, one of the <i>creme de la creme</i> of the +city, created a tremendous sensation several years ago. She has a black +coachman who was married, and had been in her employ several years. During +this time she gave birth to a child whose color was remarked, but traced +to some brunette ancestor, and one of the fashionable dames of the city +was its godmother. Mrs. Marshall's social position was unquestioned, and +wealth showered every dainty on this child which was idolized with its +brothers and sisters by its white papa. In course of time another child +appeared on the scene, but it was unmistakably dark. All were alarmed, and +"rush of blood, strangulation" were the conjectures, but the doctor, when +asked the cause, grimly told them it was a Negro child. There was a family +conclave, the coachman heard of it and leaving his own family went West, +and has never returned. As soon as Mrs. Marshall was able to travel she +was sent away in deep disgrace. Her husband died within the year of a +broken heart.</p> + +<p>Ebenzer Fowler, the wealthiest colored man in Issaquena County, Miss., was +shot down on the street in Mayersville, January 30, 1885, just before dark +by an armed body of white men who filled his body with bullets. They +charged him with writing a note to a white woman of the place, which they +intercepted and which proved there was an intimacy existing between them.</p> + +<p>Hundreds of such cases might be cited, but enough have been given to prove +the assertion that there are white women in the South who love the +Afro-American's company even as there are white men notorious for their +preference for Afro-American women.</p> + +<p>There is hardly a town in the South which has not an instance of the kind +which is well known, and hence the assertion is reiterated that "nobody in +the South believes the old thread bare lie that negro men rape white +women." Hence there is a growing demand among Afro-Americans that the +guilt or innocence of parties accused of rape be fully established. They +know the men of the section of the country who refuse this are not so +desirous of punishing rapists as they pretend. The utterances of the +leading white men show that with them it is not the crime but the <i>class</i>. +Bishop Fitzgerald has become apologist for lynchers of the rapists of +<i>white</i> women only. Governor Tillman, of South Carolina, in the month of +June, standing under the tree in Barnwell, S.C., on which eight +Afro-Americans were hung last year, declared that he would lead a mob to +lynch a <i>negro</i> who raped a <i>white</i> woman. So say the pulpits, officials +and newspapers of the South. But when the victim is a colored woman it is +different.</p> + +<p>Last winter in Baltimore, Md., three white ruffians assaulted a Miss +Camphor, a young Afro-American girl, while out walking with a young man of +her own race. They held her escort and outraged the girl. It was a deed +dastardly enough to arouse Southern blood, which gives its horror of rape +as excuse for lawlessness, but she was an Afro-American. The case went to +the courts, an Afro-American lawyer defended the men and they were +acquitted.</p> + +<p>In Nashville, Tenn., there is a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged a +little Afro-American girl, and, from the physical injuries received, she +has been ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and is +now a detective in that city. In the same city, last May, a white man +outraged an Afro-American girl in a drug store. He was arrested, and +released on bail at the trial. It was rumored that five hundred +Afro-Americans had organized to lynch him. Two hundred and fifty white +citizens armed themselves with Winchesters and guarded him. A cannon was +placed in front of his home, and the Buchanan Rifles (State Militia) +ordered to the scene for his protection. The Afro-American mob did not +materialize. Only two weeks before Eph. Grizzard, who had only been +<i>charged</i> with rape upon a white woman, had been taken from the jail, with +Governor Buchanan and the police and militia standing by, dragged through +the streets in broad daylight, knives plunged into him at every step, and +with every fiendish cruelty a frenzied mob could devise, he was at last +swung out on the bridge with hands cut to pieces as he tried to climb up +the stanchions. A naked, bloody example of the blood-thirstiness of the +nineteenth-century civilization of the Athens of the South! No cannon or +military was called out in his defense. He dared to visit a white woman.</p> + +<p>At the very moment these civilized whites were announcing their +determination "to protect their wives and daughters," by murdering +Grizzard, a white man was in the same jail for raping eight-year-old +Maggie Reese, an Afro-American girl. He was not harmed. The "honor" of +grown women who were glad enough to be supported by the Grizzard boys and +Ed Coy, as long as the liaison was not known, needed protection; they were +white. The outrage upon helpless childhood needed no avenging in this +case; she was black.</p> + +<p>A white man in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, two months ago inflicted such +injuries upon another Afro-American child that she died. He was not +punished, but an attempt was made in the same town in the month of June to +lynch an Afro-American who visited a white woman.</p> + +<p>In Memphis, Tenn., in the month of June, Ellerton L. Dorr, who is the +husband of Russell Hancock's widow, was arrested for attempted rape on +Mattie Cole, a neighbors cook; he was only prevented from accomplishing +his purpose, by the appearance of Mattie's employer. Dorr's friends say he +was drunk and not responsible for his actions. The grand jury refused to +indict him and he was discharged.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_NEW_CRY" id="THE_NEW_CRY" />THE NEW CRY</h2> + + +<p>The appeal of Southern whites to Northern sympathy and sanction, the +adroit, insiduous plea made by Bishop Fitzgerald for suspension of +judgment because those "who condemn lynching express no sympathy for the +<i>white</i> woman in the case," falls to the ground in the light of the +foregoing.</p> + +<p>From this exposition of the race issue in lynch law, the whole matter is +explained by the well-known opposition growing out of slavery to the +progress of the race. This is crystalized in the oft-repeated slogan: +"This is a white man's country and the white man must rule." The South +resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the +Civil Rights Law. The raids of the Ku-Klux and White Liners to subvert +reconstruction government, the Hamburg and Ellerton, S.C., the Copiah +County, Miss., and the Layfayette Parish, La., massacres were excused as +the natural resentment of intelligence against government by ignorance.</p> + +<p>Honest white men practically conceded the necessity of intelligence +murdering ignorance to correct the mistake of the general government, and +the race was left to the tender mercies of the solid South. Thoughtful +Afro-Americans with the strong arm of the government withdrawn and with +the hope to stop such wholesale massacres urged the race to sacrifice its +political rights for sake of peace. They honestly believed the race should +fit itself for government, and when that should be done, the objection to +race participation in politics would be removed.</p> + +<p>But the sacrifice did not remove the trouble, nor move the South to +justice. One by one the Southern States have legally(?) disfranchised the +Afro-American, and since the repeal of the Civil Rights Bill nearly every +Southern State has passed separate car laws with a penalty against their +infringement. The race regardless of advancement is penned into filthy, +stifling partitions cut off from smoking cars. All this while, although +the political cause has been removed, the butcheries of black men at +Barnwell, S.C., Carrolton, Miss., Waycross, Ga., and Memphis, Tenn., have +gone on; also the flaying alive of a man in Kentucky, the burning of one +in Arkansas, the hanging of a fifteen-year-old girl in Louisiana, a woman +in Jackson, Tenn., and one in Hollendale, Miss., until the dark and bloody +record of the South shows 728 Afro-Americans lynched during the past eight +years. Not fifty of these were for political causes; the rest were for all +manner of accusations from that of rape of white women, to the case of the +boy Will Lewis who was hanged at Tullahoma, Tenn., last year for being +drunk and "sassy" to white folks.</p> + +<p>These statistics compiled by the <i>Chicago Tribune</i> were given the first of +this year (1892). Since then, not less than one hundred and fifty have +been known to have met violent death at the hands of cruel bloodthirsty +mobs during the past nine months.</p> + +<p>To palliate this record (which grows worse as the Afro-American becomes +intelligent) and excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stained +the history of a country, the South is shielding itself behind the +plausible screen of defending the honor of its women. This, too, in the +face of the fact that only <i>one-third</i> of the 728 victims to mobs have +been <i>charged</i> with rape, to say nothing of those of that one-third who +were innocent of the charge. A white correspondent of the <i>Baltimore Sun</i> +declares that the Afro-American who was lynched in Chestertown, Md., in +May for assault on a white girl was innocent; that the deed was done by a +white man who had since disappeared. The girl herself maintained that her +assailant was a white man. When that poor Afro-American was murdered, the +whites excused their refusal of a trial on the ground that they wished to +spare the white girl the mortification of having to testify in court.</p> + +<p>This cry has had its effect. It has closed the heart, stifled the +conscience, warped the judgment and hushed the voice of press and pulpit +on the subject of lynch law throughout this "land of liberty." Men who +stand high in the esteem of the public for Christian character, for moral +and physical courage, for devotion to the principles of equal and exact +justice to all, and for great sagacity, stand as cowards who fear to open +their mouths before this great outrage. They do not see that by their +tacit encouragement, their silent acquiescence, the black shadow of +lawlessness in the form of lynch law is spreading its wings over the whole +country.</p> + +<p>Men who, like Governor Tillman, start the ball of lynch law rolling for a +certain crime, are powerless to stop it when drunken or criminal white +toughs feel like hanging an Afro-American on any pretext.</p> + +<p>Even to the better class of Afro-Americans the crime of rape is so +revolting they have too often taken the white man's word and given lynch +law neither the investigation nor condemnation it deserved.</p> + +<p>They forget that a concession of the right to lynch a man for a certain +crime, not only concedes the right to lynch any person for any crime, but +(so frequently is the cry of rape now raised) it is in a fair way to stamp +us a race of rapists and desperadoes. They have gone on hoping and +believing that general education and financial strength would solve the +difficulty, and are devoting their energies to the accumulation of both.</p> + +<p>The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the +Afro-American. It has left the out-of-the-way places where ignorance +prevails, has thrown off the mask and with this new cry stalks in broad +daylight in large cities, the centers of civilization, and is encouraged +by the "leading citizens" and the press.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_MALICIOUS_AND_UNTRUTHFUL_WHITE_PRESS" id="THE_MALICIOUS_AND_UNTRUTHFUL_WHITE_PRESS" />THE MALICIOUS AND UNTRUTHFUL WHITE PRESS</h2> + + +<p>The <i>Daily Commercial</i> and <i>Evening Scimitar</i> of Memphis, Tenn., are owned +by leading business men of that city, and yet, in spite of the fact that +there had been no white woman in Memphis outraged by an Afro-American, and +that Memphis possessed a thrifty law-abiding, property-owning class of +Afro-Americans the <i>Commercial</i> of May 17, under the head of "More Rapes, +More Lynchings" gave utterance to the following:</p> + +<blockquote><p>The lynching of three Negro scoundrels reported in our dispatches from + Anniston, Ala., for a brutal outrage committed upon a white woman will + be a text for much comment on "Southern barbarism" by Northern + newspapers; but we fancy it will hardly prove effective for campaign + purposes among intelligent people. The frequency of these lynchings + calls attention to the frequency of the crimes which causes lynching. + The "Southern barbarism" which deserves the serious attention of all + people North and South, is the barbarism which preys upon weak and + defenseless women. Nothing but the most prompt, speedy and extreme + punishment can hold in check the horrible and beastial propensities of + the Negro race. There is a strange similarity about a number of cases of + this character which have lately occurred.</p> + +<p> In each case the crime was deliberately planned and perpetrated by + several Negroes. They watched for an opportunity when the women were + left without a protector. It was not a sudden yielding to a fit of + passion, but the consummation of a devilish purpose which has been + seeking and waiting for the opportunity. This feature of the crime not + only makes it the most fiendishly brutal, but it adds to the terror of + the situation in the thinly settled country communities. No man can + leave his family at night without the dread that some roving Negro + ruffian is watching and waiting for this opportunity. The swift + punishment which invariably follows these horrible crimes doubtless acts + as a deterring effect upon the Negroes in that immediate neighborhood + for a short time. But the lesson is not widely learned nor long + remembered. Then such crimes, equally atrocious, have happened in quick + succession, one in Tennessee, one in Arkansas, and one in Alabama. The + facts of the crime appear to appeal more to the Negro's lustful + imagination than the facts of the punishment do to his fears. He sets + aside all fear of death in any form when opportunity is found for the + gratification of his bestial desires.</p> + +<p> There is small reason to hope for any change for the better. The + commission of this crime grows more frequent every year. The generation + of Negroes which have grown up since the war have lost in large measure + the traditional and wholesome awe of the white race which kept the + Negroes in subjection, even when their masters were in the army, and + their families left unprotected except by the slaves themselves. There + is no longer a restraint upon the brute passion of the Negro.</p> + +<p> What is to be done? The crime of rape is always horrible, but the + Southern man there is nothing which so fills the soul with horror, + loathing and fury as the outraging of a white woman by a Negro. It is + the race question in the ugliest, vilest, most dangerous aspect. The + Negro as a political factor can be controlled. But neither laws nor + lynchings can subdue his lusts. Sooner or later it will force a crisis. + We do not know in what form it will come.</p></blockquote> + +<p>In its issue of June 4, the <i>Memphis Evening Scimitar</i> gives the following +excuse for lynch law:</p> + +<blockquote><p>Aside from the violation of white women by Negroes, which is the + outcropping of a bestial perversion of instinct, the chief cause of + trouble between the races in the South is the Negro's lack of manners. + In the state of slavery he learned politeness from association with + white people, who took pains to teach him. Since the emancipation came + and the tie of mutual interest and regard between master and servant was + broken, the Negro has drifted away into a state which is neither freedom + nor bondage. Lacking the proper inspiration of the one and the + restraining force of the other he has taken up the idea that boorish + insolence is independence, and the exercise of a decent degree of + breeding toward white people is identical with servile submission. In + consequence of the prevalence of this notion there are many Negroes who + use every opportunity to make themselves offensive, particularly when + they think it can be done with impunity.</p> + +<p> We have had too many instances right here in Memphis to doubt this, and + our experience is not exceptional. <i>The white people won't stand this + sort of thing, and whether they be insulted as individuals are as a + race, the response will be prompt and effectual.</i> The bloody riot of + 1866, in which so many Negroes perished, was brought on principally by + the outrageous conduct of the blacks toward the whites on the streets. + It is also a remarkable and discouraging fact that the majority of such + scoundrels are Negroes who have received educational advantages at the + hands of the white taxpayers. They have got just enough of learning to + make them realize how hopelessly their race is behind the other in + everything that makes a great people, and they attempt to "get even" by + insolence, which is ever the resentment of inferiors. There are + well-bred Negroes among us, and it is truly unfortunate that they should + have to pay, even in part, the penalty of the offenses committed by the + baser sort, but this is the way of the world. The innocent must suffer + for the guilty. If the Negroes as a people possessed a hundredth part of + the self-respect which is evidenced by the courteous bearing of some + that the <i>Scimitar</i> could name, the friction between the races would be + reduced to a minimum. It will not do to beg the question by pleading + that many white men are also stirring up strife. The Caucasian + blackguard simply obeys the promptings of a depraved disposition, and he + is seldom deliberately rough or offensive toward strangers or + unprotected women.</p> + +<p> The Negro tough, on the contrary, is given to just that kind of + offending, and he almost invariably singles out white people as his + victims.</p></blockquote> + +<p>On March 9, 1892, there were lynched in this same city three of the best +specimens of young since-the-war Afro-American manhood. They were +peaceful, law-abiding citizens and energetic business men.</p> + +<p>They believed the problem was to be solved by eschewing politics and +putting money in the purse. They owned a flourishing grocery business in a +thickly populated suburb of Memphis, and a white man named Barrett had one +on the opposite corner. After a personal difficulty which Barrett sought +by going into the "People's Grocery" drawing a pistol and was thrashed by +Calvin McDowell, he (Barrett) threatened to "clean them out." These men +were a mile beyond the city limits and police protection; hearing that +Barrett's crowd was coming to attack them Saturday night, they mustered +forces, and prepared to defend themselves against the attack.</p> + +<p>When Barrett came he led a <i>posse</i> of officers, twelve in number, who +afterward claimed to be hunting a man for whom they had a warrant. That +twelve men in citizen's clothes should think it necessary to go in the +night to hunt one man who had never before been arrested, or made any +record as a criminal has never been explained. When they entered the back +door the young men thought the threatened attack was on, and fired into +them. Three of the officers were wounded, and when the <i>defending</i> party +found it was officers of the law upon whom they had fired, they ceased and +got away.</p> + +<p>Thirty-one men were arrested and thrown in jail as "conspirators," +although they all declared more than once they did not know they were +firing on officers. Excitement was at fever beat until the morning papers, +two days after, announced that the wounded deputy sheriffs were out of +danger. This hindered rather than helped the plans of the whites. There +was no law on the statute books which would execute an Afro-American for +wounding a white man, but the "unwritten law" did. Three of these men, the +president, the manager and clerk of the grocery—"the leaders of the +conspiracy"—were secretly taken from jail and lynched in a shockingly +brutal manner. "The Negroes are getting too independent," they say, "we +must teach them a lesson."</p> + +<p>What lesson? The lesson of subordination. "Kill the leaders and it will +cow the Negro who dares to shoot a white man, even in self-defense."</p> + +<p>Although the race was wild over the outrage, the mockery of law and +justice which disarmed men and locked them up in jails where they could be +easily and safely reached by the mob—- the Afro-American ministers, +newspapers and leaders counselled obedience to the law which did not +protect them.</p> + +<p>Their counsel was heeded and not a hand was uplifted to resent the +outrage; following the advice of the <i>Free Speech</i>, people left the city +in great numbers.</p> + +<p>The dailies and associated press reports heralded these men to the country +as "toughs," and "Negro desperadoes who kept a low dive." This same press +service printed that the Negro who was lynched at Indianola, Miss., in +May, had outraged the sheriff's eight-year-old daughter. The girl was more +than eighteen years old, and was found by her father in this man's room, +who was a servant on the place.</p> + +<p>Not content with misrepresenting the race, the mob-spirit was not to be +satisfied until the paper which was doing all it could to counteract this +impression was silenced. The colored people were resenting their bad +treatment in a way to make itself felt, yet gave the mob no excuse for +further murder, until the appearance of the editorial which is construed +as a reflection on the "honor" of the Southern white women. It is not half +so libelous as that of the <i>Commercial</i> which appeared four days before, +and which has been given in these pages. They would have lynched the +manager of the <i>Free Speech</i> for exercising the right of free speech if +they had found him as quickly as they would have hung a rapist, and glad +of the excuse to do so. The owners were ordered not to return, the <i>Free +Speech</i> was suspended with as little compunction as the business of the +"People's Grocery" broken up and the proprietors murdered.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_SOUTHS_POSITION" id="THE_SOUTHS_POSITION" />THE SOUTH'S POSITION</h2> + + +<p>Henry W. Grady in his well-remembered speeches in New England and New York +pictured the Afro-American as incapable of self-government. Through him +and other leading men the cry of the South to the country has been "Hands +off! Leave us to solve our problem." To the Afro-American the South says, +"the white man must and will rule." There is little difference between the +Antebellum South and the New South.</p> + +<p>Her white citizens are wedded to any method however revolting, any measure +however extreme, for the subjugation of the young manhood of the race. +They have cheated him out of his ballot, deprived him of civil rights or +redress therefor in the civil courts, robbed him of the fruits of his +labor, and are still murdering, burning and lynching him.</p> + +<p>The result is a growing disregard of human life. Lynch law has spread its +insiduous influence till men in New York State, Pennsylvania and on the +free Western plains feel they can take the law in their own hands with +impunity, especially where an Afro-American is concerned. The South is +brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very +foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled.</p> + +<p>Public sentiment has had a slight "reaction" though not sufficient to stop +the crusade of lawlessness and lynching. The spirit of christianity of the +great M.E. Church was aroused to the frequent and revolting crimes against +a weak people, enough to pass strong condemnatory resolutions at its +General Conference in Omaha last May. The spirit of justice of the grand +old party asserted itself sufficiently to secure a denunciation of the +wrongs, and a feeble declaration of the belief in human rights in the +Republican platform at Minneapolis, June 7. Some of the great dailies and +weeklies have swung into line declaring that lynch law must go. The +President of the United States issued a proclamation that it be not +tolerated in the territories over which he has jurisdiction. Governor +Northern and Chief Justice Bleckley of Georgia have proclaimed against it. +The citizens of Chattanooga, Tenn., have set a worthy example in that they +not only condemn lynch law, but her public men demanded a trial for Weems, +the accused rapist, and guarded him while the trial was in progress. The +trial only lasted ten minutes, and Weems chose to plead guilty and accept +twenty-one years sentence, than invite the certain death which awaited him +outside that cordon of police if he had told the truth and shown the +letters he had from the white woman in the case.</p> + +<p>Col. A.S. Colyar, of Nashville, Tenn., is so overcome with the horrible +state of affairs that he addressed the following earnest letter to the +<i>Nashville American</i>.</p> + +<blockquote><p>Nothing since I have been a reading man has so impressed me with the + decay of manhood among the people of Tennessee as the dastardly + submission to the mob reign. We have reached the unprecedented low + level; the awful criminal depravity of substituting the mob for the + court and jury, of giving up the jail keys to the mob whenever they are + demanded. We do it in the largest cities and in the country towns; we do + it in midday; we do it after full, not to say formal, notice, and so + thoroughly and generally is it acquiesced in that the murderers have + discarded the formula of masks. They go into the town where everybody + knows them, sometimes under the gaze of the governor, in the presence of + the courts, in the presence of the sheriff and his deputies, in the + presence of the entire police force, take out the prisoner, take his + life, often with fiendish glee, and often with acts of cruelty and + barbarism which impress the reader with a degeneracy rapidly approaching + savage life. That the State is disgraced but faintly expresses the + humiliation which has settled upon the once proud people of Tennessee. + The State, in its majesty, through its organized life, for which the + people pay liberally, makes but one record, but one note, and that a + criminal falsehood, "was hung by persons to the jury unknown." The + murder at Shelbyville is only a verification of what every intelligent + man knew would come, because with a mob a rumor is as good as a proof.</p></blockquote> + +<p>These efforts brought forth apologies and a short halt, but the lynching +mania was raged again through the past three months with unabated fury.</p> + +<p>The strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severe +punishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy public +sentiment demands and sustains such action.</p> + +<p>The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remain +silent on the perpetration of such outrages, are particeps criminis, +accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty with +the actual lawbreakers who would not persist if they did not know that +neither the law nor militia would be employed against them.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="SELF_HELP" id="SELF_HELP" />SELF-HELP</h2> + + +<p>In the creation of this healthier public sentiment, the Afro-American can +do for himself what no one else can do for him. The world looks on with +wonder that we have conceded so much and remain law-abiding under such +great outrage and provocation.</p> + +<p>To Northern capital and Afro-American labor the South owes its +rehabilitation. If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. The +Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. A thorough knowledge and +judicious exercise of this power in lynching localities could many times +effect a bloodless revolution. The white man's dollar is his god, and to +stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.</p> + +<p>The Afro-Americans of Memphis denounced the lynching of three of their +best citizens, and urged and waited for the authorities to act in the +matter and bring the lynchers to justice. No attempt was made to do so, +and the black men left the city by thousands, bringing about great +stagnation in every branch of business. Those who remained so injured the +business of the street car company by staying off the cars, that the +superintendent, manager and treasurer called personally on the editor of +the <i>Free Speech</i>, asked them to urge our people to give them their +patronage again. Other business men became alarmed over the situation and +the <i>Free Speech</i> was run away that the colored people might be more +easily controlled. A meeting of white citizens in June, three months after +the lynching, passed resolutions for the first time, condemning it. <i>But +they did not punish the lynchers.</i> Every one of them was known by name, +because they had been selected to do the dirty work, by some of the very +citizens who passed these resolutions. Memphis is fast losing her black +population, who proclaim as they go that there is no protection for the +life and property of any Afro-American citizen in Memphis who is not a +slave.</p> + +<p>The Afro-American citizens of Kentucky, whose intellectual and financial +improvement has been phenomenal, have never had a separate car law until +now. Delegations and petitions poured into the Legislature against it, yet +the bill passed and the Jim Crow Car of Kentucky is a legalized +institution. Will the great mass of Negroes continue to patronize the +railroad? A special from Covington, Ky., says:</p> + +<p>Covington, June 13.—The railroads of the State are beginning to feel very +markedly, the effects of the separate coach bill recently passed by the +Legislature. No class of people in the State have so many and so largely +attended excursions as the blacks. All these have been abandoned, and +regular travel is reduced to a minimum. A competent authority says the +loss to the various roads will reach $1,000,000 this year.</p> + +<p>A call to a State Conference in Lexington, Ky., last June had delegates +from every county in the State. Those delegates, the ministers, teachers, +heads of secret and others orders, and the head of every family should +pass the word around for every member of the race in Kentucky to stay oil +railroads unless obliged to ride. If they did so, and their advice was +followed persistently the convention would not need to petition the +Legislature to repeal the law or raise money to file a suit. The railroad +corporations would be so effected they would in self-defense lobby to have +the separate car law repealed. On the other hand, as long as the railroads +can get Afro-American excursions they will always have plenty of money to +fight all the suits brought against them. They will be aided in so doing +by the same partisan public sentiment which passed the law. White men +passed the law, and white judges and juries would pass upon the suits +against the law, and render judgment in line with their prejudices and in +deference to the greater financial power.</p> + +<p>The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all +the appeals ever made to his conscience. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is +to be gained by a further sacrifice of manhood and self-respect. By the +right exercise of his power as the industrial factor of the South, the +Afro-American can demand and secure his rights, the punishment of +lynchers, and a fair trial for accused rapists.</p> + +<p>Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the +proposed lynching did <i>not</i> occur, was where the men armed themselves in +Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times an +Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and +used it in self-defense.</p> + +<p>The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, +is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black +home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to +give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as +great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he +will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the +Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the +more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.</p> + +<p>The assertion has been substantiated throughout these pages that the press +contains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most +necessary things for the race to do is to get these facts before the +public. The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator +to compare with the press.</p> + +<p>The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth, and +they lack means to employ agents and detectives to get at the facts. The +race must rally a mighty host to the support of their journals, and thus +enable them to do much in the way of investigation.</p> + +<p>A lynching occurred at Port Jarvis, N.Y., the first week in June. A white +and colored man were implicated in the assault upon a white girl. It was +charged that the white man paid the colored boy to make the assault, which +he did on the public highway in broad day time, and was lynched. This, too +was done by "parties unknown." The white man in the case still lives. He +was imprisoned and promises to fight the case on trial. At the preliminary +examination, it developed that he had been a suitor of the girl's. She had +repulsed and refused him, yet had given him money, and he had sent +threatening letters demanding more.</p> + +<p>The day before this examination she was so wrought up, she left home and +wandered miles away. When found she said she did so because she was afraid +of the man's testimony. Why should she be afraid of the prisoner! Why +should she yield to his demands for money if not to prevent him exposing +something he knew! It seems explainable only on the hypothesis that a +<i>liaison</i> existed between the colored boy and the girl, and the white man +knew of it. The press is singularly silent. Has it a motive? We owe it to +ourselves to find out.</p> + +<p>The story comes from Larned, Kansas, Oct. 1, that a young white lady held +at bay until daylight, without alarming any one in the house, "a burly +Negro" who entered her room and bed. The "burly Negro" was promptly +lynched without investigation or examination of inconsistant stories.</p> + +<p>A house was found burned down near Montgomery, Ala., in Monroe County, +Oct. 13, a few weeks ago; also the burned bodies of the owners and melted +piles of gold and silver.</p> + +<p>These discoveries led to the conclusion that the awful crime was not +prompted by motives of robbery. The suggestion of the whites was that +"brutal lust was the incentive, and as there are nearly 200 Negroes living +within a radius of five miles of the place the conclusion was inevitable +that some of them were the perpetrators."</p> + +<p>Upon this "suggestion" probably made by the real criminal, the mob acted +upon the "conclusion" and arrested ten Afro-Americans, four of whom, they +tell the world, confessed to the deed of murdering Richard L. Johnson and +outraging his daughter, Jeanette. These four men, Berrell Jones, Moses +Johnson, Jim and John Packer, none of them twenty-five years of age, upon +this conclusion, were taken from jail, hanged, shot, and burned while yet +alive the night of Oct. 12. The same report says Mr. Johnson was on the +best of terms with his Negro tenants.</p> + +<p>The race thus outraged must find out the facts of this awful hurling of +men into eternity on supposition, and give them to the indifferent and +apathetic country. We feel this to be a garbled report, but how can we +prove it?</p> + +<p>Near Vicksburg, Miss., a murder was committed by a gang of burglars. Of +course it must have been done by Negroes, and Negroes were arrested for +it. It is believed that two men, Smith Tooley and John Adams belonged to a +gang controlled by white men and, fearing exposure, on the night of July +4, they were hanged in the Court House yard by those interested in +silencing them. Robberies since committed in the same vicinity have been +known to be by white men who had their faces blackened. We strongly +believe in the innocence of these murdered men, but we have no proof. No +other news goes out to the world save that which stamps us as a race of +cutthroats, robbers and lustful wild beasts. So great is Southern hate and +prejudice, they legally(?) hung poor little thirteen-year-old Mildrey +Brown at Columbia, S.C., Oct. 7, on the circumstantial evidence that she +poisoned a white infant. If her guilt had been proven unmistakably, had +she been white, Mildrey Brown would never have been hung.</p> + +<p>The country would have been aroused and South Carolina disgraced forever +for such a crime. The Afro-American himself did not know as he should have +known as his journals should be in a position to have him know and act.</p> + +<p>Nothing is more definitely settled than he must act for himself. I have +shown how he may employ the boycott, emigration and the press, and I feel +that by a combination of all these agencies can be effectually stamped out +lynch law, that last relic of barbarism and slavery. "The gods help those +who help themselves."</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Southern Horrors, by Ida B. 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Wells-Barnett + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Southern Horrors + Lynch Law in All Its Phases + +Author: Ida B. Wells-Barnett + +Release Date: February 8, 2005 [EBook #14975] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOUTHERN HORRORS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Melissa Er-Raqabi and the PG Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. + + + + + + +[Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1892 but was +subsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spelling +date back to the original or were introduced later; they have been +retained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify with +another source before quoting this material.] + + + + +Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases + +1892, 1893, 1894 + +By Ida B. Wells-Barnett + + + + +PREFACE + + +The greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the +_New York Age_ June 25, 1892, in explanation of the editorial which the +Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destruction +of my paper, the _Free Speech_. + +Since the appearance of that statement, requests have come from all parts +of the country that "Exiled" (the name under which it then appeared) be +issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for that +purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5 +have enabled me to comply with this request and give the world a true, +unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South. + +This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogether +a defense for the poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves +to be betrayed by white Delilahs. It is a contribution to truth, an array +of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great +American Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall. + +It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here +exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned +against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. The +awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, not +only because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the +victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it places +against the good name of a weak race. + +The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in +any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of +the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and +punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a +service. Other considerations are of minor importance. + +IDA B. WELLS +_New York City_, Oct. 26, 1892 + + + + +To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love, +earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York, +on the night of October 5, 1892--made possible its publication, this +pamphlet is gratefully dedicated by the author. + + + + +HON. FRED. DOUGLASS'S LETTER + + +_Dear Miss Wells:_ + +Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination +now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has +been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word +is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual +knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity +and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. + +Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can +neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half +alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if +American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of +outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and +indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. + +But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions +favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by +earth and Heaven yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the +power of a merciful God for final deliverance. + +Very truly and gratefully yours, +FREDERICK DOUGLASS +_Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C._, Oct. 25, 1892 + + + + +1 _The_ OFFENSE + + +Wednesday evening May 24, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled with +excitement. Editorials in the daily papers of that date caused a meeting +to be held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for the +editors of the _Free Speech_ an Afro-American journal published in that +city, and the only reason the open threats of lynching that were made were +not carried out was because they could not be found. The cause of all this +commotion was the following editorial published in the _Free Speech_ May +21, 1892, the Saturday previous. + + Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the _Free Speech_ one at + Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke(?) + into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one + near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for + killing a white man, and five on the same old racket--the new alarm + about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting + bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter. + + Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie + that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, + they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a + reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging + to the moral reputation of their women. + +The _Daily Commercial_ of Wednesday following, May 25, contained the +following leader: + + Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of individuals of + their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind are + playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand + that there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his + defenders. A negro organ printed in this city, in a recent issue + publishes the following atrocious paragraph: "Nobody in this section of + the country believes the old thread-bare lie that negro men rape white + women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach + themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction; and a conclusion + will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of + their women." + + The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such + loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the + wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had enough of it. + + There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and + the obscene intimations of the foregoing have brought the writer to the + very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough. + +The _Evening Scimitar_ of same date, copied the _Commercial_'s editorial +with these words of comment: + + Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes + themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of + those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies + to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in + the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation + with a pair of tailor's shears. + +Acting upon this advice, the leading citizens met in the Cotton Exchange +Building the same evening, and threats of lynching were freely indulged, +not by the lawless element upon which the deviltry of the South is usually +saddled--but by the leading business men, in their leading business +centre. Mr. Fleming, the business manager and owning a half interest the +_Free Speech_, had to leave town to escape the mob, and was afterwards +ordered not to return; letters and telegrams sent me in New York where I +was spending my vacation advised me that bodily harm awaited my return. +Creditors took possession of the office and sold the outfit, and the _Free +Speech_ was as if it had never been. + +The editorial in question was prompted by the many inhuman and fiendish +lynchings of Afro-Americans which have recently taken place and was meant +as a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them charged with +rape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and education +more brutalizing than slavery, and the world knows that the crime of rape +was unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of the +South were at the mercy of the race which is all at once charged with +being a bestial one. + +Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home because +of that editorial, the issue has been forced, and as the writer of it I +feel that the race and the public generally should have a statement of the +facts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for the +Afro-Americans Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white +Delilahs. + +The whites of Montgomery, Ala., knew J.C. Duke sounded the keynote of the +situation--which they would gladly hide from the world, when he said in +his paper, the _Herald_, five years ago: "Why is it that white women +attract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when such +a thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatly +suspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for colored +Romeos." Mr. Duke, like the _Free Speech_ proprietors, was forced to leave +the city for reflecting on the "honah" of white women and his paper +suppressed; but the truth remains that Afro-American men do not always +rape(?) white women without their consent. + +Mr. Duke, before leaving Montgomery, signed a card disclaiming any +intention of slandering Southern white women. The editor of the _Free +Speech_ has no disclaimer to enter, but asserts instead that there are +many white women in the South who would marry colored men if such an act +would not place them at once beyond the pale of society and within the +clutches of the law. The miscegnation laws of the South only operate +against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free +to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man +who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white +women. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a +despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women. + + + + +2 + +_The_ BLACK _and_ WHITE _of_ IT + + +The _Cleveland Gazette_ of January 16, 1892, publishes a case in point. +Mrs. J.S. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an +Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in +1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the +kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried to +drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her, +and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible +condition. She did not know the man but could identify him. She pointed +out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested and, being in Ohio, +was granted a trial. + +The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went +to Mrs. Underwood's residence at her invitation and was criminally +intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against the +sworn testimony of a ministers wife, a lady of the highest respectability. +He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, for +fifteen years. Some time afterwards the woman's remorse led her to confess +to her husband that the man was innocent. + +These are her words: + + I met Offett at the Post Office. It was raining. He was polite to me, + and as I had several bundles in my arms he offered to carry them home + for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I invited + him to call on me. He called, bringing chestnuts and candy for the + children. By this means we got them to leave us alone in the room. Then + I sat on his lap. He made a proposal to me and I readily consented. Why + I did so, I do not know, but that I did is true. He visited me several + times after that and each time I was indiscreet. I did not care after + the first time. In fact I could not have resisted, and had no desire to + resist. + +When asked by her husband why she told him she had been outraged, she +said: "I had several reasons for telling you. One was the neighbors saw +the fellows here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a loathsome +disease, and still another was that I feared I might give birth to a Negro +baby. I hoped to save my reputation by telling you a deliberate lie." Her +husband horrified by the confession had Offett, who had already served +four years, released and secured a divorce. + +There are thousands of such cases throughout the South, with the +difference that the Southern white men in insatiate fury wreak their +vengeance without intervention of law upon the Afro-Americans who consort +with their women. A few instances to substantiate the assertion that some +white women love the company of the Afro-American will not be out of +place. Most of these cases were reported by the daily papers of the South. + +In the winter of 1885-86 the wife of a practicing physician in Memphis, in +good social standing whose name has escaped me, left home, husband and +children, and ran away with her black coachman. She was with him a month +before her husband found and brought her home. The coachman could not be +found. The doctor moved his family away from Memphis, and is living in +another city under an assumed name. + +In the same city last year a white girl in the dusk of evening screamed at +the approach of some parties that a Negro had assaulted her on the street. +He was captured, tried by a white judge and jury, that acquitted him of +the charge. It is needless to add if there had been a scrap of evidence on +which to convict him of so grave a charge he would have been convicted. + +Sarah Clark of Memphis loved a black man and lived openly with him. When +she was indicted last spring for miscegenation, she swore in court that +she was _not_ a white woman. This she did to escape the penitentiary and +continued her illicit relation undisturbed. That she is of the lower class +of whites, does not disturb the fact that she is a white woman. "The +leading citizens" of Memphis are defending the "honor" of _all_ white +women, _demi-monde_ included. + +Since the manager of the _Free Speech_ has been run away from Memphis by +the guardians of the honor of Southern white women, a young girl living on +Poplar St., who was discovered in intimate relations with a handsome +mulatto young colored man, Will Morgan by name, stole her father's money +to send the young fellow away from that father's wrath. She has since +joined him in Chicago. + +The _Memphis Ledger_ for June 8 has the following: + + If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl seventeen years of age, who + is now at the City Hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about her + disgrace there would be some very nauseating details in the story of her + life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal fearful + depravity or it might reveal the evidence of a rank outrage. She will + not divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her + disgrace, and, in fact, says it is a matter in which there can be no + interest to the outside world. She came to Memphis nearly three months + ago and was taken in at the Woman's Refuge in the southern part of the + city. She remained there until a few weeks ago, when the child was born. + The ladies in charge of the Refuge were horified. The girl was at once + sent to the City Hospital, where she has been since May 30. She is a + country girl. She came to Memphis from her fathers farm, a short + distance from Hernando, Miss. Just when she left there she would not + say. In fact she says she came to Memphis from Arkansas, and says her + home is in that State. She is rather good looking, has blue eyes, a low + forehead and dark red hair. The ladies at the Woman's Refuge do not know + anything about the girl further than what they learned when she was an + inmate of the institution; and she would not tell much. When the child + was born an attempt was made to get the girl to reveal the name of the + Negro who had disgraced her, she obstinately refused and it was + impossible to elicit any information from her on the subject. + +Note the wording. "The truth might reveal fearful depravity or rank +outrage." If it had been a white child or Lillie Bailey had told a pitiful +story of Negro outrage, it would have been a case of woman's weakness or +assault and she could have remained at the Woman's Refuge. But a Negro +child and to withhold its father's name and thus prevent the killing of +another Negro "rapist." A case of "fearful depravity." + +The very week the "leading citizens" of Memphis were making a spectacle of +themselves in defense of all white women of every kind, an Afro-American, +M. Stricklin, was found in a white woman's room in that city. Although +she made no outcry of rape, he was jailed and would have been lynched, but +the woman stated she bought curtains of him (he was a furniture dealer) +and his business in her room that night was to put them up. A white +woman's word was taken as absolutely in this case as when the cry of rape +is made, and he was freed. + +What is true of Memphis is true of the entire South. The daily papers last +year reported a farmer's wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child. +When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took the +mule from the plow and fled. The dispatches also told of a woman in South +Carolina who gave birth to a Negro child and charged three men with being +its father, _every one of whom has since disappeared_. In Tuscumbia, Ala., +the colored boy who was lynched there last year for assaulting a white +girl told her before his accusers that he had met her there in the woods +often before. + +Frank Weems of Chattanooga who was not lynched in May only because the +prominent citizens became his body guard until the doors of the +penitentiary closed on him, had letters in his pocket from the white woman +in the case, making the appointment with him. Edward Coy who was burned +alive in Texarkana, January 1, 1892, died protesting his innocence. +Investigation since as given by the Bystander in the _Chicago Inter +Ocean_, October 1, proves: + + 1. The woman who was paraded as a victim of violence was of bad + character; her husband was a drunkard and a gambler. + + 2. She was publicly reported and generally known to have been criminally + intimate with Coy for more than a year previous. + + 3. She was compelled by threats, if not by violence, to make the charge + against the victim. + + 4. When she came to apply the match Coy asked her if she would burn him + after they had "been sweethearting" so long. + + 5. A large majority of the "superior" white men prominent in the affair + are the reputed fathers of mulatto children. + + These are not pleasant facts, but they are illustrative of the vital + phase of the so-called race question, which should properly be + designated an earnest inquiry as to the best methods by which religion, + science, law and political power may be employed to excuse injustice, + barbarity and crime done to a people because of race and color. There + can be no possible belief that these people were inspired by any + consuming zeal to vindicate God's law against miscegnationists of the + most practical sort. The woman was a willing partner in the victim's + guilt, and being of the "superior" race must naturally have been more + guilty. + +In Natchez, Miss., Mrs. Marshall, one of the _creme de la creme_ of the +city, created a tremendous sensation several years ago. She has a black +coachman who was married, and had been in her employ several years. During +this time she gave birth to a child whose color was remarked, but traced +to some brunette ancestor, and one of the fashionable dames of the city +was its godmother. Mrs. Marshall's social position was unquestioned, and +wealth showered every dainty on this child which was idolized with its +brothers and sisters by its white papa. In course of time another child +appeared on the scene, but it was unmistakably dark. All were alarmed, and +"rush of blood, strangulation" were the conjectures, but the doctor, when +asked the cause, grimly told them it was a Negro child. There was a family +conclave, the coachman heard of it and leaving his own family went West, +and has never returned. As soon as Mrs. Marshall was able to travel she +was sent away in deep disgrace. Her husband died within the year of a +broken heart. + +Ebenzer Fowler, the wealthiest colored man in Issaquena County, Miss., was +shot down on the street in Mayersville, January 30, 1885, just before dark +by an armed body of white men who filled his body with bullets. They +charged him with writing a note to a white woman of the place, which they +intercepted and which proved there was an intimacy existing between them. + +Hundreds of such cases might be cited, but enough have been given to prove +the assertion that there are white women in the South who love the +Afro-American's company even as there are white men notorious for their +preference for Afro-American women. + +There is hardly a town in the South which has not an instance of the kind +which is well known, and hence the assertion is reiterated that "nobody in +the South believes the old thread bare lie that negro men rape white +women." Hence there is a growing demand among Afro-Americans that the +guilt or innocence of parties accused of rape be fully established. They +know the men of the section of the country who refuse this are not so +desirous of punishing rapists as they pretend. The utterances of the +leading white men show that with them it is not the crime but the _class_. +Bishop Fitzgerald has become apologist for lynchers of the rapists of +_white_ women only. Governor Tillman, of South Carolina, in the month of +June, standing under the tree in Barnwell, S.C., on which eight +Afro-Americans were hung last year, declared that he would lead a mob to +lynch a _negro_ who raped a _white_ woman. So say the pulpits, officials +and newspapers of the South. But when the victim is a colored woman it is +different. + +Last winter in Baltimore, Md., three white ruffians assaulted a Miss +Camphor, a young Afro-American girl, while out walking with a young man of +her own race. They held her escort and outraged the girl. It was a deed +dastardly enough to arouse Southern blood, which gives its horror of rape +as excuse for lawlessness, but she was an Afro-American. The case went to +the courts, an Afro-American lawyer defended the men and they were +acquitted. + +In Nashville, Tenn., there is a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged a +little Afro-American girl, and, from the physical injuries received, she +has been ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and is +now a detective in that city. In the same city, last May, a white man +outraged an Afro-American girl in a drug store. He was arrested, and +released on bail at the trial. It was rumored that five hundred +Afro-Americans had organized to lynch him. Two hundred and fifty white +citizens armed themselves with Winchesters and guarded him. A cannon was +placed in front of his home, and the Buchanan Rifles (State Militia) +ordered to the scene for his protection. The Afro-American mob did not +materialize. Only two weeks before Eph. Grizzard, who had only been +_charged_ with rape upon a white woman, had been taken from the jail, with +Governor Buchanan and the police and militia standing by, dragged through +the streets in broad daylight, knives plunged into him at every step, and +with every fiendish cruelty a frenzied mob could devise, he was at last +swung out on the bridge with hands cut to pieces as he tried to climb up +the stanchions. A naked, bloody example of the blood-thirstiness of the +nineteenth-century civilization of the Athens of the South! No cannon or +military was called out in his defense. He dared to visit a white woman. + +At the very moment these civilized whites were announcing their +determination "to protect their wives and daughters," by murdering +Grizzard, a white man was in the same jail for raping eight-year-old +Maggie Reese, an Afro-American girl. He was not harmed. The "honor" of +grown women who were glad enough to be supported by the Grizzard boys and +Ed Coy, as long as the liaison was not known, needed protection; they were +white. The outrage upon helpless childhood needed no avenging in this +case; she was black. + +A white man in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, two months ago inflicted such +injuries upon another Afro-American child that she died. He was not +punished, but an attempt was made in the same town in the month of June to +lynch an Afro-American who visited a white woman. + +In Memphis, Tenn., in the month of June, Ellerton L. Dorr, who is the +husband of Russell Hancock's widow, was arrested for attempted rape on +Mattie Cole, a neighbors cook; he was only prevented from accomplishing +his purpose, by the appearance of Mattie's employer. Dorr's friends say he +was drunk and not responsible for his actions. The grand jury refused to +indict him and he was discharged. + + + + +3 _The_ NEW CRY + + +The appeal of Southern whites to Northern sympathy and sanction, the +adroit, insiduous plea made by Bishop Fitzgerald for suspension of +judgment because those "who condemn lynching express no sympathy for the +_white_ woman in the case," falls to the ground in the light of the +foregoing. + +From this exposition of the race issue in lynch law, the whole matter is +explained by the well-known opposition growing out of slavery to the +progress of the race. This is crystalized in the oft-repeated slogan: +"This is a white man's country and the white man must rule." The South +resented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and the +Civil Rights Law. The raids of the Ku-Klux and White Liners to subvert +reconstruction government, the Hamburg and Ellerton, S.C., the Copiah +County, Miss., and the Layfayette Parish, La., massacres were excused as +the natural resentment of intelligence against government by ignorance. + +Honest white men practically conceded the necessity of intelligence +murdering ignorance to correct the mistake of the general government, and +the race was left to the tender mercies of the solid South. Thoughtful +Afro-Americans with the strong arm of the government withdrawn and with +the hope to stop such wholesale massacres urged the race to sacrifice its +political rights for sake of peace. They honestly believed the race should +fit itself for government, and when that should be done, the objection to +race participation in politics would be removed. + +But the sacrifice did not remove the trouble, nor move the South to +justice. One by one the Southern States have legally(?) disfranchised the +Afro-American, and since the repeal of the Civil Rights Bill nearly every +Southern State has passed separate car laws with a penalty against their +infringement. The race regardless of advancement is penned into filthy, +stifling partitions cut off from smoking cars. All this while, although +the political cause has been removed, the butcheries of black men at +Barnwell, S.C., Carrolton, Miss., Waycross, Ga., and Memphis, Tenn., have +gone on; also the flaying alive of a man in Kentucky, the burning of one +in Arkansas, the hanging of a fifteen-year-old girl in Louisiana, a woman +in Jackson, Tenn., and one in Hollendale, Miss., until the dark and bloody +record of the South shows 728 Afro-Americans lynched during the past eight +years. Not fifty of these were for political causes; the rest were for all +manner of accusations from that of rape of white women, to the case of the +boy Will Lewis who was hanged at Tullahoma, Tenn., last year for being +drunk and "sassy" to white folks. + +These statistics compiled by the _Chicago Tribune_ were given the first of +this year (1892). Since then, not less than one hundred and fifty have +been known to have met violent death at the hands of cruel bloodthirsty +mobs during the past nine months. + +To palliate this record (which grows worse as the Afro-American becomes +intelligent) and excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stained +the history of a country, the South is shielding itself behind the +plausible screen of defending the honor of its women. This, too, in the +face of the fact that only _one-third_ of the 728 victims to mobs have +been _charged_ with rape, to say nothing of those of that one-third who +were innocent of the charge. A white correspondent of the _Baltimore Sun_ +declares that the Afro-American who was lynched in Chestertown, Md., in +May for assault on a white girl was innocent; that the deed was done by a +white man who had since disappeared. The girl herself maintained that her +assailant was a white man. When that poor Afro-American was murdered, the +whites excused their refusal of a trial on the ground that they wished to +spare the white girl the mortification of having to testify in court. + +This cry has had its effect. It has closed the heart, stifled the +conscience, warped the judgment and hushed the voice of press and pulpit +on the subject of lynch law throughout this "land of liberty." Men who +stand high in the esteem of the public for Christian character, for moral +and physical courage, for devotion to the principles of equal and exact +justice to all, and for great sagacity, stand as cowards who fear to open +their mouths before this great outrage. They do not see that by their +tacit encouragement, their silent acquiescence, the black shadow of +lawlessness in the form of lynch law is spreading its wings over the whole +country. + +Men who, like Governor Tillman, start the ball of lynch law rolling for a +certain crime, are powerless to stop it when drunken or criminal white +toughs feel like hanging an Afro-American on any pretext. + +Even to the better class of Afro-Americans the crime of rape is so +revolting they have too often taken the white man's word and given lynch +law neither the investigation nor condemnation it deserved. + +They forget that a concession of the right to lynch a man for a certain +crime, not only concedes the right to lynch any person for any crime, but +(so frequently is the cry of rape now raised) it is in a fair way to stamp +us a race of rapists and desperadoes. They have gone on hoping and +believing that general education and financial strength would solve the +difficulty, and are devoting their energies to the accumulation of both. + +The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the +Afro-American. It has left the out-of-the-way places where ignorance +prevails, has thrown off the mask and with this new cry stalks in broad +daylight in large cities, the centers of civilization, and is encouraged +by the "leading citizens" and the press. + + + + +4 _The_ MALICIOUS _and_ UNTRUTHFUL WHITE PRESS + + +The _Daily Commercial_ and _Evening Scimitar_ of Memphis, Tenn., are owned +by leading business men of that city, and yet, in spite of the fact that +there had been no white woman in Memphis outraged by an Afro-American, and +that Memphis possessed a thrifty law-abiding, property-owning class of +Afro-Americans the _Commercial_ of May 17, under the head of "More Rapes, +More Lynchings" gave utterance to the following: + + The lynching of three Negro scoundrels reported in our dispatches from + Anniston, Ala., for a brutal outrage committed upon a white woman will + be a text for much comment on "Southern barbarism" by Northern + newspapers; but we fancy it will hardly prove effective for campaign + purposes among intelligent people. The frequency of these lynchings + calls attention to the frequency of the crimes which causes lynching. + The "Southern barbarism" which deserves the serious attention of all + people North and South, is the barbarism which preys upon weak and + defenseless women. Nothing but the most prompt, speedy and extreme + punishment can hold in check the horrible and beastial propensities of + the Negro race. There is a strange similarity about a number of cases of + this character which have lately occurred. + + In each case the crime was deliberately planned and perpetrated by + several Negroes. They watched for an opportunity when the women were + left without a protector. It was not a sudden yielding to a fit of + passion, but the consummation of a devilish purpose which has been + seeking and waiting for the opportunity. This feature of the crime not + only makes it the most fiendishly brutal, but it adds to the terror of + the situation in the thinly settled country communities. No man can + leave his family at night without the dread that some roving Negro + ruffian is watching and waiting for this opportunity. The swift + punishment which invariably follows these horrible crimes doubtless acts + as a deterring effect upon the Negroes in that immediate neighborhood + for a short time. But the lesson is not widely learned nor long + remembered. Then such crimes, equally atrocious, have happened in quick + succession, one in Tennessee, one in Arkansas, and one in Alabama. The + facts of the crime appear to appeal more to the Negro's lustful + imagination than the facts of the punishment do to his fears. He sets + aside all fear of death in any form when opportunity is found for the + gratification of his bestial desires. + + There is small reason to hope for any change for the better. The + commission of this crime grows more frequent every year. The generation + of Negroes which have grown up since the war have lost in large measure + the traditional and wholesome awe of the white race which kept the + Negroes in subjection, even when their masters were in the army, and + their families left unprotected except by the slaves themselves. There + is no longer a restraint upon the brute passion of the Negro. + + What is to be done? The crime of rape is always horrible, but the + Southern man there is nothing which so fills the soul with horror, + loathing and fury as the outraging of a white woman by a Negro. It is + the race question in the ugliest, vilest, most dangerous aspect. The + Negro as a political factor can be controlled. But neither laws nor + lynchings can subdue his lusts. Sooner or later it will force a crisis. + We do not know in what form it will come. + +In its issue of June 4, the _Memphis Evening Scimitar_ gives the following +excuse for lynch law: + + Aside from the violation of white women by Negroes, which is the + outcropping of a bestial perversion of instinct, the chief cause of + trouble between the races in the South is the Negro's lack of manners. + In the state of slavery he learned politeness from association with + white people, who took pains to teach him. Since the emancipation came + and the tie of mutual interest and regard between master and servant was + broken, the Negro has drifted away into a state which is neither freedom + nor bondage. Lacking the proper inspiration of the one and the + restraining force of the other he has taken up the idea that boorish + insolence is independence, and the exercise of a decent degree of + breeding toward white people is identical with servile submission. In + consequence of the prevalence of this notion there are many Negroes who + use every opportunity to make themselves offensive, particularly when + they think it can be done with impunity. + + We have had too many instances right here in Memphis to doubt this, and + our experience is not exceptional. _The white people won't stand this + sort of thing, and whether they be insulted as individuals are as a + race, the response will be prompt and effectual._ The bloody riot of + 1866, in which so many Negroes perished, was brought on principally by + the outrageous conduct of the blacks toward the whites on the streets. + It is also a remarkable and discouraging fact that the majority of such + scoundrels are Negroes who have received educational advantages at the + hands of the white taxpayers. They have got just enough of learning to + make them realize how hopelessly their race is behind the other in + everything that makes a great people, and they attempt to "get even" by + insolence, which is ever the resentment of inferiors. There are + well-bred Negroes among us, and it is truly unfortunate that they should + have to pay, even in part, the penalty of the offenses committed by the + baser sort, but this is the way of the world. The innocent must suffer + for the guilty. If the Negroes as a people possessed a hundredth part of + the self-respect which is evidenced by the courteous bearing of some + that the _Scimitar_ could name, the friction between the races would be + reduced to a minimum. It will not do to beg the question by pleading + that many white men are also stirring up strife. The Caucasian + blackguard simply obeys the promptings of a depraved disposition, and he + is seldom deliberately rough or offensive toward strangers or + unprotected women. + + The Negro tough, on the contrary, is given to just that kind of + offending, and he almost invariably singles out white people as his + victims. + +On March 9, 1892, there were lynched in this same city three of the best +specimens of young since-the-war Afro-American manhood. They were +peaceful, law-abiding citizens and energetic business men. + +They believed the problem was to be solved by eschewing politics and +putting money in the purse. They owned a flourishing grocery business in a +thickly populated suburb of Memphis, and a white man named Barrett had one +on the opposite corner. After a personal difficulty which Barrett sought +by going into the "People's Grocery" drawing a pistol and was thrashed by +Calvin McDowell, he (Barrett) threatened to "clean them out." These men +were a mile beyond the city limits and police protection; hearing that +Barrett's crowd was coming to attack them Saturday night, they mustered +forces, and prepared to defend themselves against the attack. + +When Barrett came he led a _posse_ of officers, twelve in number, who +afterward claimed to be hunting a man for whom they had a warrant. That +twelve men in citizen's clothes should think it necessary to go in the +night to hunt one man who had never before been arrested, or made any +record as a criminal has never been explained. When they entered the back +door the young men thought the threatened attack was on, and fired into +them. Three of the officers were wounded, and when the _defending_ party +found it was officers of the law upon whom they had fired, they ceased and +got away. + +Thirty-one men were arrested and thrown in jail as "conspirators," +although they all declared more than once they did not know they were +firing on officers. Excitement was at fever beat until the morning papers, +two days after, announced that the wounded deputy sheriffs were out of +danger. This hindered rather than helped the plans of the whites. There +was no law on the statute books which would execute an Afro-American for +wounding a white man, but the "unwritten law" did. Three of these men, the +president, the manager and clerk of the grocery--"the leaders of the +conspiracy"--were secretly taken from jail and lynched in a shockingly +brutal manner. "The Negroes are getting too independent," they say, "we +must teach them a lesson." + +What lesson? The lesson of subordination. "Kill the leaders and it will +cow the Negro who dares to shoot a white man, even in self-defense." + +Although the race was wild over the outrage, the mockery of law and +justice which disarmed men and locked them up in jails where they could be +easily and safely reached by the mob--- the Afro-American ministers, +newspapers and leaders counselled obedience to the law which did not +protect them. + +Their counsel was heeded and not a hand was uplifted to resent the +outrage; following the advice of the _Free Speech_, people left the city +in great numbers. + +The dailies and associated press reports heralded these men to the country +as "toughs," and "Negro desperadoes who kept a low dive." This same press +service printed that the Negro who was lynched at Indianola, Miss., in +May, had outraged the sheriff's eight-year-old daughter. The girl was more +than eighteen years old, and was found by her father in this man's room, +who was a servant on the place. + +Not content with misrepresenting the race, the mob-spirit was not to be +satisfied until the paper which was doing all it could to counteract this +impression was silenced. The colored people were resenting their bad +treatment in a way to make itself felt, yet gave the mob no excuse for +further murder, until the appearance of the editorial which is construed +as a reflection on the "honor" of the Southern white women. It is not half +so libelous as that of the _Commercial_ which appeared four days before, +and which has been given in these pages. They would have lynched the +manager of the _Free Speech_ for exercising the right of free speech if +they had found him as quickly as they would have hung a rapist, and glad +of the excuse to do so. The owners were ordered not to return, the _Free +Speech_ was suspended with as little compunction as the business of the +"People's Grocery" broken up and the proprietors murdered. + + + + +5 _The_ SOUTH'S POSITION + + +Henry W. Grady in his well-remembered speeches in New England and New York +pictured the Afro-American as incapable of self-government. Through him +and other leading men the cry of the South to the country has been "Hands +off! Leave us to solve our problem." To the Afro-American the South says, +"the white man must and will rule." There is little difference between the +Antebellum South and the New South. + +Her white citizens are wedded to any method however revolting, any measure +however extreme, for the subjugation of the young manhood of the race. +They have cheated him out of his ballot, deprived him of civil rights or +redress therefor in the civil courts, robbed him of the fruits of his +labor, and are still murdering, burning and lynching him. + +The result is a growing disregard of human life. Lynch law has spread its +insiduous influence till men in New York State, Pennsylvania and on the +free Western plains feel they can take the law in their own hands with +impunity, especially where an Afro-American is concerned. The South is +brutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the very +foundation of government, law and order, are imperilled. + +Public sentiment has had a slight "reaction" though not sufficient to stop +the crusade of lawlessness and lynching. The spirit of christianity of the +great M.E. Church was aroused to the frequent and revolting crimes against +a weak people, enough to pass strong condemnatory resolutions at its +General Conference in Omaha last May. The spirit of justice of the grand +old party asserted itself sufficiently to secure a denunciation of the +wrongs, and a feeble declaration of the belief in human rights in the +Republican platform at Minneapolis, June 7. Some of the great dailies and +weeklies have swung into line declaring that lynch law must go. The +President of the United States issued a proclamation that it be not +tolerated in the territories over which he has jurisdiction. Governor +Northern and Chief Justice Bleckley of Georgia have proclaimed against it. +The citizens of Chattanooga, Tenn., have set a worthy example in that they +not only condemn lynch law, but her public men demanded a trial for Weems, +the accused rapist, and guarded him while the trial was in progress. The +trial only lasted ten minutes, and Weems chose to plead guilty and accept +twenty-one years sentence, than invite the certain death which awaited him +outside that cordon of police if he had told the truth and shown the +letters he had from the white woman in the case. + +Col. A.S. Colyar, of Nashville, Tenn., is so overcome with the horrible +state of affairs that he addressed the following earnest letter to the +_Nashville American_. + + Nothing since I have been a reading man has so impressed me with the + decay of manhood among the people of Tennessee as the dastardly + submission to the mob reign. We have reached the unprecedented low + level; the awful criminal depravity of substituting the mob for the + court and jury, of giving up the jail keys to the mob whenever they are + demanded. We do it in the largest cities and in the country towns; we do + it in midday; we do it after full, not to say formal, notice, and so + thoroughly and generally is it acquiesced in that the murderers have + discarded the formula of masks. They go into the town where everybody + knows them, sometimes under the gaze of the governor, in the presence of + the courts, in the presence of the sheriff and his deputies, in the + presence of the entire police force, take out the prisoner, take his + life, often with fiendish glee, and often with acts of cruelty and + barbarism which impress the reader with a degeneracy rapidly approaching + savage life. That the State is disgraced but faintly expresses the + humiliation which has settled upon the once proud people of Tennessee. + The State, in its majesty, through its organized life, for which the + people pay liberally, makes but one record, but one note, and that a + criminal falsehood, "was hung by persons to the jury unknown." The + murder at Shelbyville is only a verification of what every intelligent + man knew would come, because with a mob a rumor is as good as a proof. + +These efforts brought forth apologies and a short halt, but the lynching +mania was raged again through the past three months with unabated fury. + +The strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severe +punishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy public +sentiment demands and sustains such action. + +The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remain +silent on the perpetration of such outrages, are particeps criminis, +accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty with +the actual lawbreakers who would not persist if they did not know that +neither the law nor militia would be employed against them. + + + + +6 SELF-HELP + + +In the creation of this healthier public sentiment, the Afro-American can +do for himself what no one else can do for him. The world looks on with +wonder that we have conceded so much and remain law-abiding under such +great outrage and provocation. + +To Northern capital and Afro-American labor the South owes its +rehabilitation. If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. The +Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. A thorough knowledge and +judicious exercise of this power in lynching localities could many times +effect a bloodless revolution. The white man's dollar is his god, and to +stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities. + +The Afro-Americans of Memphis denounced the lynching of three of their +best citizens, and urged and waited for the authorities to act in the +matter and bring the lynchers to justice. No attempt was made to do so, +and the black men left the city by thousands, bringing about great +stagnation in every branch of business. Those who remained so injured the +business of the street car company by staying off the cars, that the +superintendent, manager and treasurer called personally on the editor of +the _Free Speech_, asked them to urge our people to give them their +patronage again. Other business men became alarmed over the situation and +the _Free Speech_ was run away that the colored people might be more +easily controlled. A meeting of white citizens in June, three months after +the lynching, passed resolutions for the first time, condemning it. _But +they did not punish the lynchers._ Every one of them was known by name, +because they had been selected to do the dirty work, by some of the very +citizens who passed these resolutions. Memphis is fast losing her black +population, who proclaim as they go that there is no protection for the +life and property of any Afro-American citizen in Memphis who is not a +slave. + +The Afro-American citizens of Kentucky, whose intellectual and financial +improvement has been phenomenal, have never had a separate car law until +now. Delegations and petitions poured into the Legislature against it, yet +the bill passed and the Jim Crow Car of Kentucky is a legalized +institution. Will the great mass of Negroes continue to patronize the +railroad? A special from Covington, Ky., says: + +Covington, June 13.--The railroads of the State are beginning to feel very +markedly, the effects of the separate coach bill recently passed by the +Legislature. No class of people in the State have so many and so largely +attended excursions as the blacks. All these have been abandoned, and +regular travel is reduced to a minimum. A competent authority says the +loss to the various roads will reach $1,000,000 this year. + +A call to a State Conference in Lexington, Ky., last June had delegates +from every county in the State. Those delegates, the ministers, teachers, +heads of secret and others orders, and the head of every family should +pass the word around for every member of the race in Kentucky to stay oil +railroads unless obliged to ride. If they did so, and their advice was +followed persistently the convention would not need to petition the +Legislature to repeal the law or raise money to file a suit. The railroad +corporations would be so effected they would in self-defense lobby to have +the separate car law repealed. On the other hand, as long as the railroads +can get Afro-American excursions they will always have plenty of money to +fight all the suits brought against them. They will be aided in so doing +by the same partisan public sentiment which passed the law. White men +passed the law, and white judges and juries would pass upon the suits +against the law, and render judgment in line with their prejudices and in +deference to the greater financial power. + +The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than all +the appeals ever made to his conscience. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is +to be gained by a further sacrifice of manhood and self-respect. By the +right exercise of his power as the industrial factor of the South, the +Afro-American can demand and secure his rights, the punishment of +lynchers, and a fair trial for accused rapists. + +Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the +proposed lynching did _not_ occur, was where the men armed themselves in +Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times an +Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and +used it in self-defense. + +The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, +is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black +home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to +give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as +great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he +will have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more the +Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the +more he is insulted, outraged and lynched. + +The assertion has been substantiated throughout these pages that the press +contains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the most +necessary things for the race to do is to get these facts before the +public. The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator +to compare with the press. + +The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth, and +they lack means to employ agents and detectives to get at the facts. The +race must rally a mighty host to the support of their journals, and thus +enable them to do much in the way of investigation. + +A lynching occurred at Port Jarvis, N.Y., the first week in June. A white +and colored man were implicated in the assault upon a white girl. It was +charged that the white man paid the colored boy to make the assault, which +he did on the public highway in broad day time, and was lynched. This, too +was done by "parties unknown." The white man in the case still lives. He +was imprisoned and promises to fight the case on trial. At the preliminary +examination, it developed that he had been a suitor of the girl's. She had +repulsed and refused him, yet had given him money, and he had sent +threatening letters demanding more. + +The day before this examination she was so wrought up, she left home and +wandered miles away. When found she said she did so because she was afraid +of the man's testimony. Why should she be afraid of the prisoner! Why +should she yield to his demands for money if not to prevent him exposing +something he knew! It seems explainable only on the hypothesis that a +_liaison_ existed between the colored boy and the girl, and the white man +knew of it. The press is singularly silent. Has it a motive? We owe it to +ourselves to find out. + +The story comes from Larned, Kansas, Oct. 1, that a young white lady held +at bay until daylight, without alarming any one in the house, "a burly +Negro" who entered her room and bed. The "burly Negro" was promptly +lynched without investigation or examination of inconsistant stories. + +A house was found burned down near Montgomery, Ala., in Monroe County, +Oct. 13, a few weeks ago; also the burned bodies of the owners and melted +piles of gold and silver. + +These discoveries led to the conclusion that the awful crime was not +prompted by motives of robbery. The suggestion of the whites was that +"brutal lust was the incentive, and as there are nearly 200 Negroes living +within a radius of five miles of the place the conclusion was inevitable +that some of them were the perpetrators." + +Upon this "suggestion" probably made by the real criminal, the mob acted +upon the "conclusion" and arrested ten Afro-Americans, four of whom, they +tell the world, confessed to the deed of murdering Richard L. Johnson and +outraging his daughter, Jeanette. These four men, Berrell Jones, Moses +Johnson, Jim and John Packer, none of them twenty-five years of age, upon +this conclusion, were taken from jail, hanged, shot, and burned while yet +alive the night of Oct. 12. The same report says Mr. Johnson was on the +best of terms with his Negro tenants. + +The race thus outraged must find out the facts of this awful hurling of +men into eternity on supposition, and give them to the indifferent and +apathetic country. We feel this to be a garbled report, but how can we +prove it? + +Near Vicksburg, Miss., a murder was committed by a gang of burglars. Of +course it must have been done by Negroes, and Negroes were arrested for +it. It is believed that two men, Smith Tooley and John Adams belonged to a +gang controlled by white men and, fearing exposure, on the night of July +4, they were hanged in the Court House yard by those interested in +silencing them. Robberies since committed in the same vicinity have been +known to be by white men who had their faces blackened. We strongly +believe in the innocence of these murdered men, but we have no proof. No +other news goes out to the world save that which stamps us as a race of +cutthroats, robbers and lustful wild beasts. So great is Southern hate and +prejudice, they legally(?) hung poor little thirteen-year-old Mildrey +Brown at Columbia, S.C., Oct. 7, on the circumstantial evidence that she +poisoned a white infant. If her guilt had been proven unmistakably, had +she been white, Mildrey Brown would never have been hung. + +The country would have been aroused and South Carolina disgraced forever +for such a crime. The Afro-American himself did not know as he should have +known as his journals should be in a position to have him know and act. + +Nothing is more definitely settled than he must act for himself. I have +shown how he may employ the boycott, emigration and the press, and I feel +that by a combination of all these agencies can be effectually stamped out +lynch law, that last relic of barbarism and slavery. "The gods help those +who help themselves." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Southern Horrors, by Ida B. 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