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Afro-Americans with the strong arm of the government withdrawn and with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.