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.