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 If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain.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."