The Remedy 147
1
THE CASE STATED
The student of American sociology will find the year 1894 marked by a
pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and
outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common,
that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon
the humane sentiments of the people of our land.
Beginning with the emancipation of the Negro, the inevitable result of
unbribled power exercised for two and a half centuries, by the white man
over the Negro, began to show itself in acts of conscienceless outlawry.
During the slave regime, the Southern white man owned the Negro body and
soul. It was to his interest to dwarf the soul and preserve the body.
Vested with unlimited power over his slave, to subject him to any and all
kinds of physical punishment, the white man was still restrained from such
punishment as tended to injure the slave by abating his physical powers
and thereby reducing his financial worth. While slaves were scourged
mercilessly, and in countless cases inhumanly treated in other respects,
still the white owner rarely permitted his anger to go so far as to take a
life, which would entail upon him a loss of several hundred dollars. The
slave was rarely killed, he was too valuable; it was easier and quite as
effective, for discipline or revenge, to sell him "Down South."
But Emancipation came and the vested interests of the white man in the
Negro's body were lost. The white man had no right to scourge the
emancipated Negro, still less has he a right to kill him. But the Southern
white people had been educated so long in that school of practice, in
which might makes right, that they disdained to draw strict lines of
action in dealing with the Negro. In slave times the Negro was kept
subservient and submissive by the frequency and severity of the scourging,
but, with freedom, a new system of intimidation came into vogue; the Negro
was not only whipped and scourged; he was killed.
Not all nor nearly all of the murders done by white men, during the past
thirty years in the South, have come to light, but the statistics as
gathered and preserved by white men, and which have not been questioned,
show that during these years more than ten thousand Negroes have been
killed in cold blood, without the formality of judicial trial and legal
execution. And yet, as evidence of the absolute impunity with which the
white man dares to kill a Negro, the same record shows that during all
these years, and for all these murders only three white men have been
tried, convicted, and executed. As no white man has been lynched for the
murder of colored people, these three executions are the only instances of
the death penalty being visited upon white men for murdering Negroes.
Naturally enough the commission of these crimes began to tell upon the
public conscience, and the Southern white man, as a tribute to the
nineteenth-century civilization, was in a manner compelled to give excuses
for his barbarism. His excuses have adapted themselves to the emergency,
and are aptly outlined by that greatest of all Negroes, Frederick
Douglass, in an article of recent date, in which he shows that there have
been three distinct eras of Southern barbarism, to account for which three
distinct excuses have been made.
The first excuse given to the civilized world for the murder of
unoffending Negroes was the necessity of the white man to repress and
stamp out alleged "race riots." For years immediately succeeding the war
there was an appalling slaughter of colored people, and the wires usually
conveyed to northern people and the world the intelligence, first, that an
insurrection was being planned by Negroes, which, a few hours later, would
prove to have been vigorously resisted by white men, and controlled with a
resulting loss of several killed and wounded. It was always a remarkable
feature in these insurrections and riots that only Negroes were killed
during the rioting, and that all the white men escaped unharmed.
From 1865 to 1872, hundreds of colored men and women were mercilessly
murdered and the almost invariable reason assigned was that they met their
death by being alleged participants in an insurrection or riot. But this
story at last wore itself out. No insurrection ever materialized; no
Negro rioter was ever apprehended and proven guilty, and no dynamite ever
recorded the black man's protest against oppression and wrong. It was too
much to ask thoughtful people to believe this transparent story, and the
southern white people at last made up their minds that some other excuse
must be had.
Then came the second excuse, which had its birth during the turbulent
times of reconstruction. By an amendment to the Constitution the Negro was
given the right of franchise, and, theoretically at least, his ballot
became his invaluable emblem of citizenship. In a government "of the
people, for the people, and by the people," the Negro's vote became an
important factor in all matters of state and national politics. But this
did not last long. The southern white man would not consider that the
Negro had any right which a white man was bound to respect, and the idea
of a republican form of government in the southern states grew into
general contempt. It was maintained that "This is a white man's
government," and regardless of numbers the white man should rule. "No
Negro domination" became the new legend on the sanguinary banner of the
sunny South, and under it rode the Ku Klux Klan, the Regulators, and the
lawless mobs, which for any cause chose to murder one man or a dozen as
suited their purpose best. It was a long, gory campaign; the blood chills
and the heart almost loses faith in Christianity when one thinks of Yazoo,
Hamburg, Edgefield, Copiah, and the countless massacres of defenseless
Negroes, whose only crime was the attempt to exercise their right to vote.
But it was a bootless strife for colored people. The government which had
made the Negro a citizen found itself unable to protect him. It gave him
the right to vote, but denied him the protection which should have
maintained that right. Scourged from his home; hunted through the swamps;
hung by midnight raiders, and openly murdered in the light of day, the
Negro clung to his right of franchise with a heroism which would have
wrung admiration from the hearts of savages. He believed that in that
small white ballot there was a subtle something which stood for manhood as
well as citizenship, and thousands of brave black men went to their
graves, exemplifying the one by dying for the other.
The white man's victory soon became complete by fraud, violence,
intimidation and murder. The franchise vouchsafed to the Negro grew to be
a "barren ideality," and regardless of numbers, the colored people found
themselves voiceless in the councils of those whose duty it was to rule.
With no longer the fear of "Negro Domination" before their eyes, the
white man's second excuse became valueless. With the Southern governments
all subverted and the Negro actually eliminated from all participation in
state and national elections, there could be no longer an excuse for
killing Negroes to prevent "Negro Domination."
Brutality still continued; Negroes were whipped, scourged, exiled, shot
and hung whenever and wherever it pleased the white man so to treat them,
and as the civilized world with increasing persistency held the white
people of the South to account for its outlawry, the murderers invented
the third excuse--that Negroes had to be killed to avenge their assaults
upon women. There could be framed no possible excuse more harmful to the
Negro and more unanswerable if true in its sufficiency for the white man.
Humanity abhors the assailant of womanhood, and this charge upon the Negro
at once placed him beyond the pale of human sympathy. With such unanimity,
earnestness and apparent candor was this charge made and reiterated that
the world has accepted the story that the Negro is a monster which the
Southern white man has painted him. And today, the Christian world feels,
that while lynching is a crime, and lawlessness and anarchy the certain
precursors of a nation's fall, it can not by word or deed, extend sympathy
or help to a race of outlaws, who might mistake their plea for justice and
deem it an excuse for their continued wrongs.
The Negro has suffered much and is willing to suffer more. He recognizes
that the wrongs of two centuries can not be righted in a day, and he tries
to bear his burden with patience for today and be hopeful for tomorrow.
But there comes a time when the veriest worm will turn, and the Negro
feels today that after all the work he has done, all the sacrifices he has
made, and all the suffering he has endured, if he did not, now, defend his
name and manhood from this vile accusation, he would be unworthy even of
the contempt of mankind. It is to this charge he now feels he must make
answer.
If the Southern people in defense of their lawlessness, would tell the
truth and admit that colored men and women are lynched for almost any
offense, from murder to a misdemeanor, there would not now be the
necessity for this defense. But when they intentionally, maliciously and
constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods by the words
of legislators, preachers, governors and bishops, then the Negro must give
to the world his side of the awful story.
A word as to the charge itself. In considering the third reason assigned
by the Southern white people for the butchery of blacks, the question must
be asked, what the white man means when he charges the black man with
rape. Does he mean the crime which the statutes of the civilized states
describe as such? Not by any means. With the Southern white man, any
mesalliance existing between a white woman and a colored man is a
sufficient foundation for the charge of rape. The Southern white man says
that it is impossible for a voluntary alliance to exist between a white
woman and a colored man, and therefore, the fact of an alliance is a proof
of force. In numerous instances where colored men have have been lynched
on the charge of rape, it was positively known at the time of lynching,
and indisputably proven after the victim's death, that the relationship
sustained between the man and woman was voluntary and clandestine, and
that in no court of law could even the charge of assault have been
successfully maintained.
It was for the assertion of this fact, in the defense of her own race,
that the writer hereof became an exile; her property destroyed and her
return to her home forbidden under penalty of death, for writing the
following editorial which was printed in her paper, the _Free Speech,_ in
Memphis, Tenn., May 21,1892:
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 threadbare 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.
But threats cannot suppress the truth, and while the Negro suffers the
soul deformity, resultant from two and a half centuries of slavery, he is
no more guilty of this vilest of all vile charges than the white man who
would blacken his name.
During all the years of slavery, no such charge was ever made, not even
during the dark days of the rebellion, when the white man, following the
fortunes of war went to do battle for the maintenance of slavery. While
the master was away fighting to forge the fetters upon the slave, he left
his wife and children with no protectors save the Negroes themselves. And
yet during those years of trust and peril, no Negro proved recreant to his
trust and no white man returned to a home that had been dispoiled.
Likewise during the period of alleged "insurrection," and alarming "race
riots," it never occurred to the white man, that his wife and children
were in danger of assault. Nor in the Reconstruction era, when the hue and
cry was against "Negro Domination," was there ever a thought that the
domination would ever contaminate a fireside or strike to death the virtue
of womanhood. It must appear strange indeed, to every thoughtful and
candid man, that more than a quarter of a century elapsed before the Negro
began to show signs of such infamous degeneration.
In his remarkable apology for lynching, Bishop Haygood, of Georgia, says:
"No race, not the most savage, tolerates the rape of woman, but it may be
said without reflection upon any other people that the Southern people are
now and always have been most sensitive concerning the honor of their
women--their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters." It is not the purpose
of this defense to say one word against the white women of the South. Such
need not be said, but it is their misfortune that the chivalrous white men
of that section, in order to escape the deserved execration of the
civilized world, should shield themselves by their cowardly and infamously
false excuse, and call into question that very honor about which their
distinguished priestly apologist claims they are most sensitive. To
justify their own barbarism they assume a chivalry which they do not
possess. True chivalry respects all womanhood, and no one who reads the
record, as it is written in the faces of the million mulattoes in the
South, will for a minute conceive that the southern white man had a very
chivalrous regard for the honor due the women of his own race or respect
for the womanhood which circumstances placed in his power. That chivalry
which is "most sensitive concerning the honor of women" can hope for but
little respect from the civilized world, when it confines itself entirely
to the women who happen to be white. Virtue knows no color line, and the
chivalry which depends upon complexion of skin and texture of hair can
command no honest respect.
When emancipation came to the Negroes, there arose in the northern part of
the United States an almost divine sentiment among the noblest, purest
and best white women of the North, who felt called to a mission to educate
and Christianize the millions of southern exslaves. From every nook and
corner of the North, brave young white women answered that call and left
their cultured homes, their happy associations and their lives of ease,
and with heroic determination went to the South to carry light and truth
to the benighted blacks. It was a heroism no less than that which calls
for volunteers for India, Africa and the Isles of the sea. To educate
their unfortunate charges; to teach them the Christian virtues and to
inspire in them the moral sentiments manifest in their own lives, these
young women braved dangers whose record reads more like fiction than fact.
They became social outlaws in the South. The peculiar sensitiveness of the
southern white men for women, never shed its protecting influence about
them. No friendly word from their own race cheered them in their work; no
hospitable doors gave them the companionship like that from which they had
come. No chivalrous white man doffed his hat in honor or respect. They
were "Nigger teachers"--unpardonable offenders in the social ethics of the
South, and were insulted, persecuted and ostracised, not by Negroes, but
by the white manhood which boasts of its chivalry toward women.
And yet these northern women worked on, year after year, unselfishly, with
a heroism which amounted almost to martyrdom. Threading their way through
dense forests, working in schoolhouse, in the cabin and in the church,
thrown at all times and in all places among the unfortunate and lowly
Negroes, whom they had come to find and to serve, these northern women,
thousands and thousands of them, have spent more than a quarter of a
century in giving to the colored people their splendid lessons for home
and heart and soul. Without protection, save that which innocence gives to
every good woman, they went about their work, fearing no assault and
suffering none. Their chivalrous protectors were hundreds of miles away in
their northern homes, and yet they never feared any "great dark-faced
mobs," they dared night or day to "go beyond their own roof trees." They
never complained of assaults, and no mob was ever called into existence to
avenge crimes against them. Before the world adjudges the Negro a moral
monster, a vicious assailant of womanhood and a menace to the sacred
precincts of home, the colored people ask the consideration of the silent
record of gratitude, respect, protection and devotion of the millions of
the race in the South, to the thousands of northern white women who have
served as teachers and missionaries since the war.
The Negro may not have known what chivalry was, but he knew enough to
preserve inviolate the womanhood of the South which was entrusted to his
hands during the war. The finer sensibilities of his soul may have been
crushed out by years of slavery, but his heart was full of gratitude to
the white women of the North, who blessed his home and inspired his soul
in all these years of freedom. Faithful to his trust in both of these
instances, he should now have the impartial ear of the civilized world,
when he dares to speak for himself as against the infamy wherewith he
stands charged.
It is his regret, that, in his own defense, he must disclose to the world
that degree of dehumanizing brutality which fixes upon America the blot of
a national crime. Whatever faults and failings other nations may have in
their dealings with their own subjects or with other people, no other
civilized nation stands condemned before the world with a series of crimes
so peculiarly national. It becomes a painful duty of the Negro to
reproduce a record which shows that a large portion of the American people
avow anarchy, condone murder and defy the contempt of civilization. These
pages are written in no spirit of vindictiveness, for all who give the
subject consideration must concede that far too serious is the condition
of that civilized government in which the spirit of unrestrained outlawry
constantly increases in violence, and casts its blight over a continually
growing area of territory. We plead not for the colored people alone, but
for all victims of the terrible injustice which puts men and women to
death without form of law. During the year 1894, there were 132 persons
executed in the United States by due form of law, while in the same year,
197 persons were put to death by mobs who gave the victims no opportunity
to make a lawful defense. No comment need be made upon a condition of
public sentiment responsible for such alarming results.
The purpose of the pages which follow shall be to give the record which
has been made, not by colored men, but that which is the result of
compilations made by white men, of reports sent over the civilized world
by white men in the South. Out of their own mouths shall the murderers be
condemned. For a number of years the _Chicago Tribune_, admittedly one of
the leading journals of America, has made a specialty of the compilation
of statistics touching upon lynching. The data compiled by that journal
and published to the world January 1, 1894, up to the present time has not
been disputed. In order to be safe from the charge of exaggeration, the
incidents hereinafter reported have been confined to those vouched for by
the Tribune.
2
LYNCH-LAW STATISTICS
From the record published in the _Chicago Tribune_, January 1, 1894, the
following computation of lynching statistics is made referring only to the
colored victims of Lynch Law during the year 1893:
ARSON
Sept. 15, Paul Hill, Carrollton, Ala.; Sept. 15, Paul Archer, Carrollton,
Ala.; Sept. 15, William Archer, Carrollton, Ala.; Sept. 15, Emma Fair,
Carrollton, Ala.
SUSPECTED ROBBERY
Dec. 23, unknown negro, Fannin, Miss.
ASSAULT
Dec. 25, Calvin Thomas, near Brainbridge, Ga.
ATTEMPTED ASSAULT
Dec. 28, Tillman Green, Columbia, La.
INCENDIARISM
Jan. 26, Patrick Wells, Quincy, Fla.; Feb. 9, Frank Harrell, Dickery,
Miss.; Feb. 9, William Filder, Dickery, Miss.
ATTEMPTED RAPE
Feb. 21, Richard Mays, Springville, Mo.; Aug. 14, Dug Hazleton,
Carrollton, Ga.; Sept. 1, Judge McNeil, Cadiz, Ky.; Sept. 11, Frank Smith,
Newton, Miss.; Sept. 16, William Jackson, Nevada, Mo.; Sept. 19, Riley
Gulley, Pine Apple, Ala.; Oct. 9, John Davis, Shorterville, Ala.; Nov. 8,
Robert Kennedy, Spartansburg, S.C.
BURGLARY
Feb. 16, Richard Forman, Granada, Miss.
WIFE BEATING
Oct. 14, David Jackson, Covington, La.
ATTEMPTED MURDER
Sept. 21, Thomas Smith, Roanoke, Va.
ATTEMPTED ROBBERY
Dec. 12, four unknown negroes, near Selma, Ala.
RACE PREJUDICE
Jan. 30, Thomas Carr, Kosciusko, Miss.; Feb. 7, William Butler, Hickory
Creek, Texas; Aug. 27, Charles Tart, Lyons Station, Miss.; Dec. 7, Robert
Greenwood, Cross county, Ark.; July 14, Allen Butler, Lawrenceville, Ill.
THIEVES
Oct. 24, two unknown negroes, Knox Point, La.
ALLEGED BARN BURNING
Nov. 4, Edward Wagner, Lynchburg, Va.; Nov. 4, William Wagner, Lynchburg,
Va.; Nov. 4, Samuel Motlow, Lynchburg, Va.; Nov. 4, Eliza Motlow,
Lynchburg, Va.
ALLEGED MURDER
Jan. 21, Robert Landry, St. James Parish, La.; Jan. 21, Chicken George,
St. James Parish, La.; Jan. 21, Richard Davis, St. James Parish, La.; Dec.
8, Benjamin Menter, Berlin, Ala.; Dec. 8, Robert Wilkins, Berlin, Ala.;
Dec. 8, Joseph Gevhens, Berlin, Ala.
ALLEGED COMPLICITY IN MURDER
Sept. 16, Valsin Julian, Jefferson Parish, La.; Sept. 16, Basil Julian,
Jefferson Parish, La.; Sept. 16, Paul Julian, Jefferson Parish, La.; Sept.
16, John Willis, Jefferson Parish, La.
MURDER
June 29, Samuel Thorp, Savannah, Ga.; June 29, George S. Riechen,
Waynesboro, Ga.; June 30, Joseph Bird, Wilberton, I.T.; July 1, James
Lamar, Darien, Ga.; July 28, Henry Miller, Dallas, Texas; July 28, Ada
Hiers, Walterboro, S.C.; July 28, Alexander Brown, Bastrop, Texas; July
30, W.G. Jamison, Quincy, Ill.; Sept. 1, John Ferguson, Lawrens, S.C.;
Sept. 1, Oscar Johnston, Berkeley, S.C.; Sept. 1, Henry Ewing, Berkeley,
S.C.; Sept. 8, William Smith, Camden, Ark.; Sept. 15, Staples Green,
Livingston, Ala.; Sept. 29, Hiram Jacobs, Mount Vernon, Ga.; Sept. 29,
Lucien Mannet, Mount Vernon, Ga.; Sept. 29, Hire Bevington, Mount Vernon,
Ga.; Sept. 29, Weldon Gordon, Mount Vernon, Ga.; Sept. 29, Parse
Strickland, Mount Vernon, Ga.; Oct. 20, William Dalton, Cartersville, Ga.;
Oct. 27, M.B. Taylor, Wise Court House, Va.; Oct. 27, Isaac Williams,
Madison, Ga.; Nov. 10, Miller Davis, Center Point, Ark.; Nov. 14, John
Johnston, Auburn, N.Y.
Sept. 27, Calvin Stewart, Langley, S.C.; Sept. 29, Henry Coleman, Denton,
La.; Oct. 18, William Richards, Summerfield, Ga.; Oct. 18, James Dickson,
Summerfield, Ga.; Oct. 27, Edward Jenkins, Clayton county, Ga.; Nov. 9,
Henry Boggs, Fort White, Fla.; Nov. 14, three unknown negroes, Lake City
Junction, Fla.; Nov. 14, D.T. Nelson, Varney, Ark.; Nov. 29, Newton Jones,
Baxley, Ga.; Dec. 2, Lucius Holt, Concord, Ga.; Dec. 10, two unknown
negroes, Richmond, Ala.; July 12, Henry Fleming, Columbus, Miss.; July 17,
unknown negro, Briar Field, Ala.; July 18, Meredith Lewis, Roseland, La.
July 29, Edward Bill, Dresden, Tenn.; Aug. 1, Henry Reynolds, Montgomery,
Tenn.; Aug. 9, unknown negro, McCreery, Ark.; Aug. 12, unknown negro,
Brantford, Fla.; Aug. 18, Charles Walton, Morganfield, Ky; Aug. 21,
Charles Tait, near Memphis, Tenn.; Aug. 28, Leonard Taylor, New Castle,
Ky; Sept. 8, Benjamin Jackson, Quincy, Miss.; Sept. 14, John Williams,
Jackson, Tenn.
SELF-DEFENSE
July 30, unknown negro, Wingo, Ky.
POISONING WELLS
Aug. 18, two unknown negroes, Franklin Parish, La.
ALLEGED WELL POISONING
Sept. 15, Benjamin Jackson, Jackson, Miss.; Sept. 15, Mahala Jackson,
Jackson, Miss.; Sept. 15, Louisa Carter, Jackson, Miss.; Sept. 15, W.A.
Haley, Jackson, Miss.; Sept. 16, Rufus Bigley, Jackson, Miss.
INSULTING WHITES
Feb. 18, John Hughes, Moberly, Mo.; June 2, Isaac Lincoln, Fort Madison,
S.C.
MURDEROUS ASSAULT
April 20, Daniel Adams, Selina, Kan.
NO OFFENSE
July 21, Charles Martin, Shelby Co., Tenn.; July 30, William Steen, Paris,
Miss.; Aug. 31, unknown negro, Yarborough, Tex.; Sept. 30, unknown negro,
Houston, Tex.; Dec. 28, Mack Segars, Brantley, Ala.
ALLEGED RAPE
July 7, Charles T. Miller, Bardwell, Ky.; Aug. 10, Daniel Lewis, Waycross,
Ga.; Aug. 10, James Taylor, Waycross, Ga.; Aug. 10, John Chambers,
Waycross, Ga.
ALLEGED STOCK POISONING
Dec. 16, Henry G. Givens, Nebro, Ky.
SUSPECTED MURDER
Dec. 23, Sloan Allen, West Mississippi.
SUSPICION OF RAPE
Feb. 14, Andy Blount, Chattanooga, Tenn.
TURNING STATE'S EVIDENCE
Dec. 19, William Ferguson, Adele, Ga.
RAPE
Jan. 19, James Williams, Pickens Co., Ala.; Feb. 11, unknown negro, Forest
Hill, Tenn.; Feb. 26, Joseph Hayne, or Paine, Jellico, Tenn.; Nov. 1,
Abner Anthony, Hot Springs, Va.; Nov. 1, Thomas Hill, Spring Place, Ga.;
April 24, John Peterson, Denmark, S.C.; May 6, Samuel Gaillard, ----,
S.C.; May 10, Haywood Banks, or Marksdale, Columbia, S.C.; May 12, Israel
Halliway, Napoleonville, La.; May 12, unknown negro, Wytheville, Va.; May
31, John Wallace, Jefferson Springs, Ark.; June 3, Samuel Bush, Decatur,
Ill.; June 8, L.C. Dumas, Gleason, Tenn.; June 13, William Shorter,
Winchester, Va.; June 14, George Williams, near Waco, Tex.; June 24,
Daniel Edwards, Selina or Selma, Ala.; June 27, Ernest Murphy, Daleville,
Ala.; July 6, unknown negro, Poplar Head, La.; July 6, unknown negro,
Poplar Head, La.; July 12, Robert Larkin, Oscola, Tex.; July 17, Warren
Dean, Stone Creek, Ga.; July 21, unknown negro, Brantford, Fla.; July 17,
John Cotton, Connersville, Ark.; July 22, Lee Walker, New Albany, Miss.;
July 26, ---- Handy, Suansea, S.C.; July 30, William Thompson, Columbia,
S.C.; July 28, Isaac Harper, Calera, Ala.; July 30, Thomas Preston,
Columbia, S.C.; July 30, Handy Kaigler, Columbia, S.C.; Aug. 13, Monroe
Smith, Springfield, Ala.; Aug. 19, negro tramp, near Paducah, Ky.; Aug.
21, John Nilson, near Leavenworth, Kan.; Aug. 23, Jacob Davis, Green Wood,
S.C.; Sept. 2, William Arkinson, McKenney, Ky.; Sept. 16, unknown negro,
Centerville, Ala.; Sept. 16, Jessie Mitchell, Amelia C.H., Va.; Sept. 25,
Perry Bratcher, New Boston, Tex.; Oct. 9, William Lacey, Jasper, Ala.;
Oct. 22, John Gamble, Pikesville, Tenn.
OFFENSES CHARGED ARE AS FOLLOWS
Rape, 39; attempted rape, 8; alleged rape, 4; suspicion of rape, 1;
murder, 44; alleged murder, 6; alleged complicity in murder, 4; murderous
assault, 1; attempted murder, 1; attempted robbery, 4; arson, 4;
incendiarism, 3; alleged stock poisoning, 1; poisoning wells, 2; alleged
poisoning wells, 5; burglary, 1; wife beating, 1; self-defense, 1;
suspected robbery, 1; assault and battery, 1; insulting whites, 2;
malpractice, 1; alleged barn burning, 4; stealing, 2; unknown offense, 4;
no offense, 1; race prejudice, 4; total, 159.
LYNCHINGS BY STATES
Alabama, 25; Arkansas, 7; Florida, 7; Georgia, 24; Indian Territory, 1;
Illinois, 3; Kansas, 2; Kentucky, 8; Louisiana, 18; Mississippi, 17;
Missouri, 3; New York, 1; South Carolina, 15; Tennessee, 10; Texas, 8;
Virginia, 10.
RECORD FOR THE YEAR 1892
While it is intended that the record here presented shall include
specially the lynchings of 1893, it will not be amiss to give the record
for the year preceding. The facts contended for will always appear
manifest--that not one-third of the victims lynched were charged with
rape, and further that the charges made embraced a range of offenses from
murders to misdemeanors.
In 1892 there were 241 persons lynched. The entire number is divided among
the following states:
Alabama, 22; Arkansas, 25; California, 3; Florida, 11; Georgia, 17; Idaho,
8; Illinois, 1; Kansas, 3; Kentucky, 9; Louisiana, 29; Maryland, 1;
Mississippi, 16; Missouri, 6; Montana, 4; New York, 1; North Carolina, 5;
North Dakota, 1; Ohio, 3; South Carolina, 5; Tennessee, 28; Texas, 15;
Virginia, 7; West Virginia, 5; Wyoming, 9; Arizona Territory, 3; Oklahoma,
2.
Of this number 160 were of Negro descent. Four of them were lynched in New
York, Ohio and Kansas; the remainder were murdered in the South. Five of
this number were females. The charges for which they were lynched cover a
wide range. They are as follows:
Rape, 46; murder, 58; rioting, 3; race prejudice, 6; no cause given, 4;
incendiarism, 6; robbery, 6; assault and battery, 1; attempted rape, 11;
suspected robbery, 4; larceny, 1; self-defense, 1; insulting women, 2;
desperadoes, 6; fraud, 1; attempted murder, 2; no offense stated, boy and
girl, 2.
In the case of the boy and girl above referred to, their father, named
Hastings, was accused of the murder of a white man; his fourteen-year-old
daughter and sixteen-year-old son were hanged and their bodies filled with
bullets, then the father was also lynched. This was in November, 1892, at
Jonesville, Louisiana.
3
LYNCHING IMBECILES
_(An Arkansas Butchery)_
The only excuse which capital punishment attempts to find is upon the
theory that the criminal is past the power of reformation and his life is
a constant menace to the community. If, however, he is mentally
unbalanced, irresponsible for his acts, there can be no more inhuman act
conceived of than the wilful sacrifice of his life. So thoroughly is that
principle grounded in the law, that all civilized society surrounds human
life with a safeguard, which prevents the execution of a criminal who is
insane, even if sane at the time of his criminal act. Should he become
insane after its commission the law steps in and protects him during the
period of his insanity. But Lynch Law has no such regard for human life.
Assuming for itself an absolute supremacy over the law of the land, it has
time and again dyed its hands in the blood of men who were imbeciles. Two
or three noteworthy cases will suffice to show with what inhuman ferocity
irresponsible men have been put to death by this system of injustice.
An instance occurred during the year 1892 in Arkansas, a report of which
is given in full in the _Arkansas Democrat_, published at Little Rock, in
that state, on the eleventh day of February of that year. The paper
mentioned is perhaps one of the leading weeklies in that state and the
account given in detail has every mark of a careful and conscientious
investigation. The victims of this tragedy were a colored man, named Hamp
Biscoe, his wife and a thirteen-year-old son. Hamp Biscoe, it appears, was
a hard working, thrifty farmer, who lived near England, Arkansas, upon a
small farm with his family. The investigation of the tragedy was
conducted by a resident of Arkansas named R.B. Caries, a white man, who
furnished the account to the _Arkansas Democrat_ over his own signature.
He says the original trouble which led to the lynching was a quarrel
between Biscoe and a white man about a debt. About six years after Biscoe
preempted his land, a white man made a demand of $100 upon him for
services in showing him the land and making the sale. Biscoe denied the
service and refused to pay the demand. The white man, however, brought
suit, obtained judgment for the hundred dollars and Biscoe's farm was sold
to pay the judgment.
The suit, judgment and subsequent legal proceedings appear to have driven
Biscoe almost crazy and brooding over his wrongs he grew to be a confirmed
imbecile. He would allow but few men, white or colored, to come upon his
place, as he suspected every stranger to be planning to steal his farm. A
week preceding the tragedy, a white man named Venable, whose farm adjoined
Biscoe's, let down the fence and proceeded to drive through Biscoe's
field. The latter saw him; grew very excited, cursed him and drove him
from his farm with bitter oaths and violent threats. Venable went away and
secured a warrant for Biscoe's arrest. This warrant was placed in the
hands of a constable named John Ford, who took a colored deputy and two
white men out to Biscoe's farm to make the arrest. When they arrived at
the house Biscoe refused to be arrested and warned them he would shoot if
they persisted in their attempt to arrest him. The warning was unheeded by
Ford, who entered upon the premises, when Biscoe, true to his word, fired
upon him. The load tore a part of his clothes from his body, one shot
going through his arm and entering his breast. After he had fallen, Ford
drew his revolver and shot Biscoe in the head and his wife through the
arm. The Negro deputy then began firing and struck Biscoe in the small of
the back. Ford's wound was not dangerous and in a few days he was able to
be around again. Biscoe, however, was so severely shot that he was unable
to stand after the firing was over.
Two other white men hearing the exchange of shots went to the rescue of
the officers, forced open the door of Biscoe's cabin and arrested him, his
wife and thirteen-year-old son, and took them, together with a babe at the
breast, to a small frame house near the depot and put them under guard.
The subsequent proceedings were briefly told by Mr. Carlee in the columns
of the _Arkansas Democrat_ above mentioned, from whose account the
following excerpt is taken:
It was rumored here that the Negroes were to be lynched that night, but
I do not think it was generally credited, as it was not believed that
Ford was greatly hurt and the Negro was held to be fatally injured and
crazy at that. But that night, about 8 o'clock, a party of perhaps
twelve or fifteen men, a number of whom were known to the guards, came
to the house and told the Negro guards they would take care of the
prisoners now, and for them to leave; as they did not obey at once they
were persuaded to leave with words that did not admit of delay.
The woman began to cry and said, "You intend to kill us to get our
money." They told her to hush (she was heavy with child and had a child
at her breast) as they intended to give her a nice present. The guards
heard no more, but hastened to a Negro church near by and urged the
preacher to go up and stop the mob. A few minutes after, the shooting
began, perhaps about forty shots being fired. The white men then left
rapidly and the Negroes went to the house. Hamp Biscoe and his wife were
killed, the baby had a slight wound across the upper lip; the boy was
still alive and lived until after midnight, talking rationally and
telling who did the shooting.
He said when they came in and shot his father, he attempted to run out
of doors and a young man shot him in the bowels and that he fell. He saw
another man shoot his mother and a taller young man, whom he did not
know, shoot his father. After they had killed them, the young man who
had shot his mother pulled off her stockings and took $220 in currency
that she had hid there. The men then came to the door where the boy was
lying and one of them turned him over and put his pistol to his breast
and shot him again. This is the story the dying boy told as near as I
can get it. It is quite singular that the guards and those who had
conversed with him were not required to testify. The woman was known to
have the money as she had exposed it that day. She also had $36 in
silver, which the plunderer of the body did not get. The Negro was
undoubtedly insane and had been for several years. The citizens of this
community condemn the murder and have no sympathy with it. The Negro was
a well-to-do farmer, but had become crazed because he was convinced some
plot had been made to steal his land and only a few days ago declared
that he expected to die in defense of his home in a short time and he
did not care how soon. The killing of a woman with the child at her
breast and in her condition, and also a young boy, was extremely brutal.
As for Hamp Biscoe he was dangerous and should long have been confined
in the insane asylum. Such were the facts as near as I can get them and
you can use them as you see fit, but I would prefer you would suppress
the names charged by the Negroes with the killing.
Perhaps the civilized world will think, that with all these facts laid
before the public, by a writer who signs his name to his communication, in
a land where grand juries are sworn to investigate, where judges and
juries are sworn to administer the law and sheriffs are paid to execute
the decrees of the courts, and where, in fact, every instrument of
civilization is supposed to work for the common good of all citizens, that
this matter was duly investigated, the criminals apprehended and the
punishment meted out to the murderers. But this is a mistake; nothing of
the kind was done or attempted. Six months after the publication, above
referred to, an investigator, writing to find out what had been done in
the matter, received the following reply:
OFFICE OF
S.S. GLOVER,
SHERIFF AND COLLECTOR,
LONOKE COUNTY.
Lonoke, Ark., 9-12-1892
Geo. Washington, Esq.,
Chicago, Ill.
DEAR SIR:--The parties who killed Hamp Briscoe February the ninth, have
never been arrested. The parties are still in the county. It was done by
some of the citizens, and those who know will not tell.
S.S. GLOVER, Sheriff
Thus acts the mob with the victim of its fury, conscious that it will
never be called to an account. Not only is this true, but the moral
support of those who are chosen by the people to execute the law, is
frequently given to the support of lawlessness and mob violence. The press
and even the pulpit, in the main either by silence or open apology, have
condoned and encouraged this state of anarchy.
TORTURED AND BURNED IN TEXAS
Never In the history of civilization has any Christian people stooped to
such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which
characterized the people of Paris, Texas, and adjacent communities on the
first of February, 1893. The cause of this awful outbreak of human passion
was the murder of a four-year-old child, daughter of a man named Vance.
This man, Vance, had been a police officer in Paris for years, and was
known to be a man of bad temper, overbearing manner and given to harshly
treating the prisoners under his care. He had arrested Smith and, it is
said, cruelly mistreated him. Whether or not the murder of his child was
an art of fiendish revenge, it has not been shown, but many persons who
know of the incident have suggested that the secret of the attack on the
child lay in a desire for revenge against its father.
In the same town there lived a Negro, named Henry Smith, a well-known
character, a kind of roustabout, who was generally considered a harmless,
weak-minded fellow, not capable of doing any important work, but
sufficiently able to do chores and odd jobs around the houses of the white
people who cared to employ him. A few days before the final tragedy, this
man, Smith, was accused of murdering Myrtle Vance. The crime of murder was
of itself bad enough, and to prove that against Smith would have been
amply sufficient in Texas to have committed him to the gallows, but the
finding of the child so exasperated the father and his friends, that they
at once shamefully exaggerated the facts and declared that the babe had
been ruthlessly assaulted and then killed. The truth was bad enough, but
the white people of the community made it a point to exaggerate every
detail of the awful affair, and to inflame the public mind so that nothing
less than immediate and violent death would satisfy the populace. As a
matter of fact, the child was not brutally assaulted as the world has been
told in excuse for the awful barbarism of that day. Persons who saw the
child after its death, have stated, under the most solemn pledge to truth,
that there was no evidence of such an assault as was published at that
time, only a slight abrasion and discoloration was noticeable and that
mostly about the neck. In spite of this fact, so eminent a man as Bishop
Haygood deliberately and, it must also appear, maliciously falsified the
fact by stating that the child was torn limb from limb, or to quote his
own words, "First outraged with demoniacal cruelty and then taken by her
heels and torn asunder in the mad wantonness of gorilla ferocity."
Nothing is farther from the truth than that statement. It is a
coldblooded, deliberate, brutal falsehood which this Christian(?) Bishop
uses to bolster up the infamous plea that the people of Paris were driven
to insanity by learning that the little child had been viciously
assaulted, choked to death, and then torn to pieces by a demon in human
form. It was a brutal murder, but no more brutal than hundreds of murders
which occur in this country, and which have been equalled every year in
fiendishness and brutality, and for which the death penalty is prescribed
by law and inflicted only after the person has been legally adjudged
guilty of the crime. Those who knew Smith, believe that Vance had at some
time given him cause to seek revenge and that this fearful crime was the
outgrowth of his attempt to avenge himself of some real or fancied wrong.
That the murderer was known as an imbecile, had no effect whatever upon
the people who thirsted for his blood. They determined to make an example
of him and proceeded to carry out their purpose with unspeakably greater
ferocity than that which characterized the half-crazy object of their
revenge.
For a day or so after the child was found in the woods, Smith remained in
the vicinity as if nothing had happened, and when finally becoming aware
that he was suspected, he made an attempt to escape. He was apprehended,
however, not far from the scene of his crime and the news flashed across
the country that the white Christian people of Paris, Texas and the
communities thereabout had deliberately determined to lay aside all forms
of law and inaugurate an entirely new form of punishment for the murder.
They absolutely refused to make any inquiry as to the sanity or insanity
of their prisoner, but set the day and hour when in the presence of
assembled thousands they put their helpless victim to the stake, tortured
him, and then burned him to death for the delectation and satisfaction of
Christian people.
Lest it might be charged that any description of the deeds of that day are
exaggerated, a white man's description which was published in the white
journals of this country is used. The _New York Sun_ of February 2, 1893,
contains an account, from which we make the following excerpt:
PARIS, Tex., Feb. 1, 1893.--Henry Smith, the negro ravisher of
four-year-old Myrtle Vance, has expiated in part his awful crime by
death at the stake. Ever since the perpetration of his awful crime this
city and the entire surrounding country has been in a wild frenzy of
excitement. When the news came last night that he had been captured at
Hope, Ark., that he had been identified by B.B. Sturgeon, James T.
Hicks, and many other of the Paris searching party, the city was wild
with joy over the apprehension of the brute. Hundreds of people poured
into the city from the adjoining country and the word passed from lip
to lip that the punishment of the fiend should fit the crime that death
by fire was the penalty Smith should pay for the most atrocious murder
and terrible outrage in Texas history. Curious and sympathizing alike,
they came on train and wagons, on horse, and on foot to see if the frail
mind of a man could think of a way to sufficiently punish the
perpetrator of so terrible a crime. Whisky shops were closed, unruly
mobs were dispersed, schools were dismissed by a proclamation from the
mayor, and everything was done in a business-like manner.
MEETING OF CITIZENS
About 2 o'clock Friday a mass meeting was called at the courthouse and
captains appointed to search for the child. She was found mangled beyond
recognition, covered with leaves and brush as above mentioned. As soon as
it was learned upon the recovery of the body that the crime was so
atrocious the whole town turned out in the chase. The railroads put up
bulletins offering free transportation to all who would join in the
search. Posses went in every direction, and not a stone was left unturned.
Smith was tracked to Detroit on foot, where he jumped on a freight train
and left for his old home in Hempstead county, Arkansas. To this county he
was tracked and yesterday captured at Clow, a flag station on the Arkansas
& Louisiana railway about twenty miles north of Hope. Upon being
questioned the fiend denied everything, but upon being stripped for
examination his undergarments were seen to be spattered with blood and a
part of his shirt was torn off. He was kept under heavy guard at Hope last
night, and later on confessed the crime.
This morning he was brought through Texarkana, where 5,000 people awaited
the train, anxious to see a man who had received the fate of Ed. Coy. At
that place speeches were made by prominent Paris citizens, who asked that
the prisoner be not molested by Texarkana people, but that the guard be
allowed to deliver him up to the outraged and indignant citizens of Paris.
Along the road the train gathered strength from the various towns, the
people crowded upon the platforms and tops of coaches anxious to see the
lynching and the negro who was soon to be delivered to an infuriated mob.
BURNED AT THE STAKE
Arriving here at 12 o'clock the train was met by a surging mass of
humanity 10,000 strong. The negro was placed upon a carnival float in
mockery of a king upon his throne, and, followed by an immense crowd, was
escorted through the city so that all might see the most inhuman monster
known in current history. The line of march was up Main Street to the
square, around the square down Clarksville street to Church Street, thence
to the open prairies about 300 yards from the Texas & Pacific depot. Here
Smith was placed upon a scaffold, six feet square and ten feet high,
securely bound, within the view of all beholders. Here the victim was
tortured for fifty minutes by red-hot iron brands thrust against his
quivering body. Commencing at the feet the brands were placed against him
inch by inch until they were thrust against the face. Then, being
apparently dead, kerosene was poured upon him, cottonseed hulls placed
beneath him and set on fire. In less time than it takes to relate it, the
tortured man was wafted beyond the grave to another fire, hotter and more
terrible than the one just experienced.
Curiosity seekers have carried away already all that was left of the
memorable event, even to pieces of charcoal. The cause of the crime was
that Henry Vance when a deputy policeman, in the course of his duty was
called to arrest Henry Smith for being drunk and disorderly. The Negro was
unruly, and Vance was forced to use his club. The Negro swore vengeance,
and several times assaulted Vance. In his greed for revenge, last
Thursday, he grabbed up the little girl and committed the crime. The
father is prostrated with grief and the mother now lies at death's door,
but she has lived to see the slayer of her innocent babe suffer the most
horrible death that could be conceived.
TORTURE BEYOND DESCRIPTION
Words to describe the awful torture inflicted upon Smith cannot be found.
The Negro, for a long time after starting on the journey to Paris, did not
realize his plight. At last when he was told that he must die by slow
torture he begged for protection. His agony was awful. He pleaded and
writhed in bodily and mental pain. Scarcely had the train reached Paris
than this torture commenced. His clothes were torn off piecemeal and
scattered in the crowd, people catching the shreds and putting them away
as mementos. The child's father, her brother, and two uncles then gathered
about the Negro as he lay fastened to the torture platform and thrust hot
irons into his quivering flesh. It was horrible--the man dying by slow
torture in the midst of smoke from his own burning flesh. Every groan from
the fiend, every contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed
crowd of 10,000 persons. The mass of beings 600 yards in diameter, the
scaffold being the center. After burning the feet and legs, the hot
irons--plenty of fresh ones being at hand--were rolled up and down Smith's
stomach, back, and arms. Then the eyes were burned out and irons were
thrust down his throat.
The men of the Vance family having wreaked vengeance, the crowd piled all
kinds of combustible stuff around the scaffold, poured oil on it and set
it afire. The Negro rolled and tossed out of the mass, only to be pushed
back by the people nearest him. He tossed out again, and was roped and
pulled back. Hundreds of people turned away, but the vast crowd still
looked calmly on. People were here from every part of this section. They
came from Dallas, Fort Worth, Sherman, Denison, Bonham, Texarkana, Fort
Smith, Ark., and a party of fifteen came from Hempstead county, Arkansas,
where he was captured. Every train that came in was loaded to its utmost
capacity, and there were demands at many points for special trains to
bring the people here to see the unparalleled punishment for an
unparalleled crime. When the news of the burning went over the country
like wildfire, at every country town anvils boomed forth the announcement.
SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN AN ASYLUM
It may not be amiss in connection with this awful affair, in proof of our
assertion that Smith was an imbecile, to give the testimony of a
well-known colored minister, who lived at Paris, Texas, at the time of the
lynching. He was a witness of the awful scenes there enacted, and
attempted, in the name of God and humanity, to interfere in the programme.
He barely escaped with his life, was driven out of the city and became an
exile because of his actions. Reverend King was in New York about the
middle of February, and he was there interviewed for a daily paper for
that city, and we quote his account as an eye witness of the affair. Said
he:
I was ridden out of Paris on a rail because I was the only man in Lamar
county to raise my voice against the lynching of Smith. I opposed the
illegal measures before the arrival of Henry Smith as a prisoner, and I
was warned that I might meet his fate if I was not careful; but the
sense of justice made me bold, and when I saw the poor wretch trembling
with fear, and got so near him that I could hear his teeth chatter, I
determined to stand by him to the last.
I hated him for his crime, but two crimes do not make a virtue; and in
the brief conversation I had with Smith I was more firmly convinced than
ever that he was irresponsible.
I had known Smith for years, and there were times when Smith was out of
his head for weeks. Two years ago I made an effort to have him put in an
asylum, but the white people were trying to fasten the murder of a young
colored girl upon him, and would not listen. For days before the murder
of the little Vance girl, Smith was out of his head and dangerous. He
had just undergone an attack of delirium tremens and was in no condition
to be allowed at large. He realized his condition, for I spoke with him
not three weeks ago, and in answer to my exhortations, he promised to
reform. The next time I saw him was on the day of his execution.
"Drink did it! drink did it," he sobbed. Then bowing his face in his
hands, he asked: "Is it true, did I kill her? Oh, my God, my God!" For a
moment he seemed to forget the awful fate that awaited him, and his body
swayed to and fro with grief. Some one seized me by the shoulder and
hurled me back, and Smith fell writhing to the ground in terror as four
men seized his arms to drag him to the float on which he was to be
exhibited before he was finally burned at the stake.
I followed the procession and wept aloud as I saw little children of my
own race follow the unfortunate man and taunt him with jeers. Even at
the stake, children of both sexes and colors gathered in groups, and
when the father of the murdered child raised the hissing iron with which
he was about to torture the helpless victim, the children became as
frantic as the grown people and struggled forward to obtain places of
advantage.
It was terrible. One little tot scarcely older than little Myrtle Vance
clapped her baby hands as her father held her on his shoulders above the
heads of the people.
"For God's sake," I shouted, "send the children home."
"No, no," shouted a hundred maddened voices; "let them learn a lesson."
I love children, but as I looked about the little faces distorted with
passion and the bloodshot eyes of the cruel parents who held them high
in their arms, I thanked God that I have none of my own.
As the hot iron sank deep into poor Henry's flesh a hideous yell rent
the air, and, with a sound as terrible as the cry, of lost souls on
judgment day, 20,000 maddened people took up the victim's cry of agony
and a prolonged howl of maddened glee rent the air.
No one was himself now. Every man, woman and child in that awful crowd
was worked up to a greater frenzy than that which actuated Smith's
horrible crime. The people were capable of any new atrocity now, and as
Smith's yells became more and more frequent, it was difficult to hold
the crowd back, so anxious were the savages to participate in the
sickening tortures.
For half an hour I tried to pray as the beads of agony rolled down my
forehead and bathed my face.
For an instant a hush spread over the people. I could stand no more, and
with a superhuman effort dashed through the compact mass of humanity and
stood at the foot of the burning scaffold.
"In the name of God," I cried, "I command you to cease this torture."
The heavy butt of a Winchester rifle descended on my head and I fell to
the ground. Rough hands seized me and angry men bore me away, and I was
thankful.
At the outskirts of the crowd I was attacked again, and then several
men, no doubt glad to get away from the fearful place, escorted me to my
home, where I was allowed to take a small amount of clothing. A jeering
crowd gathered without, and when I appeared at the door ready hands
seized me and I was placed upon a rail, and, with curses and oaths,
taken to the railway station and placed upon a train. As the train moved
out some one thrust a roll of bills into my hand and said, "God bless
you, but it was no use."
When asked if he should ever return to Paris, Mr. King said: "I shall
never go south again. The impressions of that awful day will stay with me
forever."
LYNCHING OF INNOCENT MEN
(Lynched on Account of Relationship)
If no other reason appealed to the sober sense of the American people to
check the growth of Lynch Law, the absolute unreliability and recklessness
of the mob in inflicting punishment for crimes done, should do so. Several
instances of this spirit have occurred in the year past. In Louisiana,
near New Orleans, in July, 1893, Roselius Julian, a colored man, shot and
killed a white judge, named Victor Estopinal. The cause of the shooting
has never been definitely ascertained. It is claimed that the Negro
resented an insult to his wife, and the killing of the white man was an
act of a Negro (who dared) to defend his home. The judge was killed in the
court house, and Julian, heavily armed, made his escape to the swamps near
the city. He has never been apprehended, nor has any information ever been
gleaned as to his whereabouts. A mob determined to secure the fugitive
murderer and burn him alive. The swamps were hunted through and through in
vain, when, being unable to wreak their revenge upon the murderer, the mob
turned its attention to his unfortunate relatives. Dispatches from New
Orleans, dated September 19, 1893, described the affair as follows:
Posses were immediately organized and the surrounding country was
scoured, but the search was fruitless so far as the real criminal was
concerned. The mother, three brothers and two sisters of the Negro were
arrested yesterday at the Black Ridge in the rear of the city by the
police and taken to the little jail on Judge Estopinal's place about
Southport, because of the belief that they were succoring the fugitive.
About 11 o'clock twenty-five men, some armed with rifles and shotguns,
came up to the jail. They unlocked the door and held a conference among
themselves as to what they should do. Some were in favor of hanging the
five, while others insisted that only two of the brothers should be
strung up. This was finally agreed to, and the two doomed negroes were
hurried to a pasture one hundred yards distant, and there asked to take
their last chance of saving their lives by making a confession, but the
Negroes made no reply. They were then told to kneel down and pray. One
did so, the other remained standing, but both prayed fervently. The
taller Negro was then hoisted up. The shorter Negro stood gazing at the
horrible death of his brother without flinching. Five minutes later he
was also hanged. The mob decided to take the remaining brother out to
Camp Parapet and hang him there. The other two were to be taken out and
flogged, with an order to get out of the parish in less than half an
hour. The third brother, Paul, was taken out to the camp, which is about
a mile distant in the interior, and there he was hanged to a tree.
Another young man, who was in no way related to Julian, who perhaps did
not even know the man and who was entirely innocent of any offense in
connection therewith, was murdered by the same mob. The same paper says:
During the search for Julian on Saturday one branch of the posse visited
the house of a Negro family in the neighborhood of Camp Parapet, and
failing to find the object of their search, tried to induce John Willis,
a young Negro, to disclose the whereabouts of Julian. He refused to do
so, or could not do so, and was kicked to death by the gang.
AN INDIANA CASE
Almost equal to the ferocity of the mob which killed the three brothers,
Julian and the unoffending, John Willis, because of the murder of Judge
Estopinal, was the action of a mob near Vincennes, Ind. In this case a
wealthy colored man, named Allen Butler, who was well known in the
community, and enjoyed the confidence and respect of the entire country,
was made the victim of a mob and hung because his son had become unduly
intimate with a white girl who was a servant around his house. There was
no pretense that the facts were otherwise than as here stated. The woman
lived at Butler's house as a servant, and she and Butler's son fell in
love with each other, and later it was found that the girl was in a
delicate condition. It was claimed, but with how much truth no one has
ever been able to tell, that the father had procured an abortion, or
himself had operated on the girl, and that she had left the house to go
back to her home. It was never claimed that the father was in any way
responsible for the action of his son, but the authorities procured the
arrest of both father and son, and at the preliminary examination the
father gave bail to appear before the Grand Jury when it should convene.
On the same night, however, the mob took the matter in hand and with the
intention of hanging the son. It assembled near Sumner, while the boy, who
had been unable to give bail, was lodged in jail at Lawrenceville. As it
was impossible to reach Lawrenceville and hang the son, the leaders of the
mob concluded they would go to Butler's house and hang him. Butler was
found at his home, taken out by the mob and hung to a tree. This was in
the lawabiding state of Indiana, which furnished the United States its
last president and which claims all the honor, pride and glory of northern
civilization. None of the leaders of the mob were apprehended, and no
steps whatever were taken to bring the murderers to justice.
KILLED FOR HIS STEPFATHER'S CRIME
An account has been given of the cremation of Henry Smith, at Paris,
Texas, for the murder of the infant child of a man named Vance. It would
appear that human ferocity was not sated when it vented itself upon a
human being by burning his eyes out, by thrusting a red-hot iron down his
throat, and then by burning his body to ashes. Henry Smith, the victim of
these savage orgies, was beyond all the power of torture, but a few miles
outside of Paris, some members of the community concluded that it would be
proper to kill a stepson named William Butler as a partial penalty for the
original crime. This young man, against whom no word has ever been said,
and who was in fact an orderly, peaceable boy, had been watched with the
severest scrutiny by members of the mob who believed he knew something of
the whereabouts of Smith. He declared from the very first that he did not
know where his stepfather was, which statement was well proven to be a
fact after the discovery of Smith in Arkansas, whence he had fled through
swamps and woods and unfrequented places. Yet Butler was apprehended,
placed under arrest, and on the night of February 6, taken out on Hickory
Creek, five miles southeast of Paris, and hung for his stepfather's crime.
After his body was suspended in the air, the mob filled it with bullets.
LYNCHED BECAUSE THE JURY ACQUITTED HIM
The entire system of the judiciary of this country is in the hands of
white people. To this add the fact of the inherent prejudice against
colored people, and it will be clearly seen that a white jury is certain
to find a Negro prisoner guilty if there is the least evidence to warrant
such a finding.
Meredith Lewis was arrested in Roseland, La., in July of last year. A
white jury found him not guilty of the crime of murder wherewith he stood
charged. This did not suit the mob. A few nights after the verdict was
rendered, and he declared to be innocent, a mob gathered in his vicinity
and went to his house. He was called, and suspecting nothing, went
outside. He was seized and hurried off to a convenient spot and hanged by
the neck until he was dead for the murder of a woman of which the jury had
said he was innocent.
LYNCHED AS A SCAPEGOAT
Wednesday, July 5, about 10 o'clock in the morning, a terrible crime was
committed within four miles of Wickliffe, Ky. Two girls, Mary and Ruby
Ray, were found murdered a short distance from their home. The news of
this terrible cowardly murder of two helpless young girls spread like wild
fire, and searching parties scoured the territory surrounding Wickliffe
and Bardwell. Two of the searching party, the Clark brothers, saw a man
enter the Dupoyster cornfield; they got their guns and fired at the
fleeing figure, but without effect; he got away, but they said he was a
white man or nearly so. The search continued all day without effect, save
the arrest of two or three strange Negroes. A bloodhound was brought from
the penitentiary and put on the trail which he followed from the scene of
the murder to the river and into the boat of a fisherman named Gordon.
Gordon stated that he had ferried one man and only one across the river
about about half past six the evening of July 5; that his passenger sat in
front of him, and he was a white man or a very bright mulatto, who could
not be told from a white man. The bloodhound was put across the river in
the boat, and he struck a trail again at Bird's Point on the Missouri
side, ran about three hundred yards to the cottage of a white farmer named
Grant and there lay down refusing to go further.
Thursday morning a brakesman on a freight train going out of Sikeston,
Mo., discovered a Negro stealing a ride; he ordered him off and had hot
words which terminated in a fight. The brakesman had the Negro arrested.
When arrested, between 11 and 12 o'clock, he had on a dark woolen shirt,
light pants and coat, and no vest. He had twelve dollars in paper, two
silver dollars and ninety-five cents in change; he had also four rings in
his pockets, a knife and a razor which were rusted and stained. The
Sikeston authorities immediately jumped to the conclusion that this man
was the murderer for whom the Kentuckians across the river were searching.
They telegraphed to Bardwell that their prisoner had on no coat, but wore
a blue vest and pants which would perhaps correspond with the coat found
at the scene of the murder, and that the names of the murdered girls were
in the rings found in his possession.
As soon as this news was received, the sheriffs of Ballard and Carlisle
counties and a posse(?) of thirty well-armed and determined Kentuckians,
who had pledged their word the prisoner should be taken back to the scene
of the supposed crime, to be executed there if proved to be the guilty
man, chartered a train and at nine o'clock Thursday night started for
Sikeston. Arriving there two hours later, the sheriff at Sikeston, who had
no warrant for the prisoner's arrest and detention, delivered him into the
hands of the mob without authority for so doing, and accompanied them to
Bird's Point. The prisoner gave his name as Miller, his home at
Springfield, and said he had never been in Kentucky in his life, but the
sheriff turned him over to the mob to be taken to Wickliffe, that Frank
Gordon, the fisherman, who had put a man across the river might identify
him.
In other words, the protection of the law was withdrawn from C.J. Miller,
and he was given to a mob by this sheriff at Sikeston, who knew that the
prisoner's life depended on one man's word. After an altercation with the
train men, who wanted another $50 for taking the train back to Bird's
Point, the crowd arrived there at three o'clock, Friday morning. Here was
anchored _The Three States_, a ferryboat plying between Wickliffe, Ky,
Cairo, Ill., and Bird's Point, Mo. This boat left Cairo at twelve o'clock,
Thursday, with nearly three hundred of Cairo's best(?) citizens and thirty
kegs of beer on board. This was consumed while the crowd and the
bloodhound waited for the prisoner.
When the prisoner was on board _The Three States_ the dog was turned
loose, and after moving aimlessly around, followed the crowd to where
Miller sat handcuffed and there stopped. The crowd closed in on the pair
and insisted that the brute had identified him because of that action.
When the boat reached Wickliffe, Gordon, the fisherman, was called on to
say whether the prisoner was the man he ferried over the river the day of
the murder.
[Illustration: Lynching of C.J. Miller, at Bardwell, Kentucky, July 7,
1893.]
The sheriff of Ballard County informed him, sternly that if the prisoner
was not the man, he (the fisherman) would be held responsible as knowing
who the guilty man was. Gordon stated before, that the man he ferried
across was a white man or a bright colored man; Miller was a dark brown
skinned man, with kinky hair, "neither yellow nor black," says the _Cairo
Evening Telegram_ of Friday, July 7. The fisherman went up to Miller from
behind, looked at him without speaking for fully five minutes, then slowly
said, "Yes, that's the man I crossed over." This was about six o'clock,
Friday morning, and the crowd wished to hang Miller then and there. But
Mr. Ray, the father of the girls, insisted that he be taken to Bardwell,
the county seat of Ballard, and twelve miles inland. He said he thought a
white man committed the crime, and that he was not satisfied that was the
man. They took him to Bardwell and at ten o'clock, this same excited,
unauthorized mob undertook to determine Miller's guilt. One of the Clark
brothers who shot at a fleeing man in the Dupoyster cornfield, said the
prisoner was the same man; the other said he was not, but the testimony of
the first was accepted. A colored woman who had said she gave breakfast to
a colored man clad in a blue flannel suit the morning of the murder, said
positively that she had never seen Miller before. The gold rings found in
his possession had no names in them, as had been asserted, and Mr. Ray
said they did not belong to his daughters. Meantime a funeral pyre for the
purpose of burning Miller to death had been erected in the center of the
village. While the crowd swayed by passion was clamoring that he be burnt,
Miller stepped forward and made the following statement: "My name is
C.J. Miller. I am from Springfield, Ill.; my wife lives at 716 N. 2d
Street. I am here among you today, looked upon as one of the most brutal
men before the people. I stand here surrounded by men who are excited, men
who are not willing to let the law take its course, and as far as the
crime is concerned, I have committed no crime, and certainly no crime
gross enough to deprive me of my life and liberty to walk upon the green
earth."
A telegram was sent to the chief of the police at Springfield, Ill.,
asking if one C.J. Miller lived there. An answer in the negative was
returned. A few hours after, it was ascertained that a man named Miller,
and his wife, did live at the number the prisoner gave in his speech, but
the information came to Bardwell too late to do the prisoner any good.
Miller was taken to jail, every stitch of clothing literally torn from his
body and examined again. On the lower left side of the bosom of his shirt
was found a dark reddish spot about the size of a dime. Miller said it was
paint which he had gotten on him at Jefferson Barracks. This spot was only
on the right side, and could not be seen from the under side at all, thus
showing it had not gone through the cloth as blood or any liquid substance
would do.
Chief-of-Police Mahaney, of Cairo, Ill., was with the prisoner, and he
took his knife and scraped at the spot, particles of which came off in his
hand. Miller told them to take his clothes to any expert, and if the spot
was shown to be blood, they might do anything they wished with him. They
took his clothes away and were gone some time. After a while they were
brought back and thrown into the cell without a word. It is needless to
say that if the spot had been found to be blood, that fact would have been
announced, and the shirt retained as evidence. Meanwhile numbers of rough,
drunken men crowded into the cell and tried to force a confession of the
deed from the prisoner's lips. He refused to talk save to reiterate his
innocence. To Mr. Mahaney, who talked seriously and kindly to him, telling
him the mob meant to burn and torture him at three o'clock, Miller said:
"Burning and torture here lasts but a little while, but if I die with a
lie on my soul, I shall be tortured forever. I am innocent." For more than
three hours, all sorts of pressure in the way of threats, abuse and
urging, was brought to bear to force him to confess to the murder and thus
justify the mob in its deed of murder. Miller remained firm; but as the
hour drew near, and the crowd became more impatient, he asked for a
priest. As none could be procured, he then asked for a Methodist minister,
who came, prayed with the doomed man, baptized him and exhorted Miller to
confess. To keep up the flagging spirits of the dense crowd around the
jail, the rumor went out more than once, that Miller had confessed. But
the solemn assurance of the minister, chief-of-police, and leading
editor--who were with Miller all along--is that this rumor is absolutely
false.
At three o'clock the mob rushed to the jail to secure the prisoner. Mr.
Ray had changed his mind about the promised burning; he was still in doubt
as to the prisoner's guilt. He again addressed the crowd to that effect,
urging them not to burn Miller, and the mob heeded him so far, that they
compromised on hanging instead of burning, which was agreed to by Mr. Ray.
There was a loud yell, and a rush was made for the prisoner. He was
stripped naked, his clothing literally torn from his body, and his shirt
was tied around his loins. Some one declared the rope was a "white man's
death," and a log-chain, nearly a hundred feet in length, weighing over
one hundred pounds, was placed round Miller's neck and body, and he was
led and dragged through the streets of the village in that condition
followed by thousands of people. He fainted from exhaustion several times,
but was supported to the platform where they first intended burning him.
The chain was hooked around his neck, a man climbed the telegraph pole and
the other end of the chain was passed up to him and made fast to the
cross-arm. Others brought a long forked stick which Miller was made to
straddle. By this means he was raised several feet from the ground and
then let fall. The first fall broke his neck, but he was raised in this
way and let fall a second time. Numberless shots were fired into the
dangling body, for most of that crowd were heavily armed, and had been
drinking all day.
Miller's body hung thus exposed from three to five o'clock, during which
time, several photographs of him as he hung dangling at the end of the
chain were taken, and his toes and fingers were cut off. His body was
taken down, placed on the platform, the torch applied, and in a few
moments there was nothing left of C.J. Miller save a few bones and ashes.
Thus perished another of the many victims of Lynch Law, but it is the
honest and sober belief of many who witnessed the scene that an innocent
man has been barbarously and shockingly put to death in the glare of the
nineteenth-century civilization, by those who profess to believe in
Christianity, law and order.
5
LYNCHED FOR ANYTHING OR NOTHING
(_Lynched for Wife Beating_)
In nearly all communities wife beating is punishable with a fine, and in
no community is it made a felony. Dave Jackson, of Abita, La., was a
colored man who had beaten his wife. He had not killed her, nor seriously
wounded her, but as Louisiana lynchers had not filled out their quota of
crimes, his case was deemed of sufficient importance to apply the method
of that barbarous people. He was in the custody of the officials, but the
mob went to the jail and took him out in front of the prison and hanged
him by the neck until he was dead. This was in Nov. 1893.
HANGED FOR STEALING HOGS
Details are very meagre of a lynching which occurred near Knox Point, La.,
on the twenty-fourth of October, 1893. Upon one point, however, there was
no uncertainty, and that is, that the persons lynched were Negroes. It was
claimed that they had been stealing hogs, but even this claim had not been
subjected to the investigation of a court. That matter was not considered
necessary. A few of the neighbors who had lost hogs suspected these men
were responsible for their loss, and made up their minds to furnish an
example for others to be warned by. The two men were secured by a mob and
hanged.
LYNCHED FOR NO OFFENSE
Perhaps the most characteristic feature of this record of lynch law for
the year 1893, is the remarkable fact that five human beings were lynched
and that the matter was considered of so little importance that the
powerful press bureaus of the country did not consider the matter of
enough importance to ascertain the causes for which they were hanged. It
tells the world, with perhaps greater emphasis than any other feature of
the record, that Lynch Law has become so common in the United States that
the finding of the dead body of a Negro, suspended between heaven and
earth to the limb of a tree, is of so slight importance that neither the
civil authorities nor press agencies consider the matter worth
investigating. July 21, in Shelby County, Tenn., a colored man by the name
of Charles Martin was lynched. July 30, at Paris, Mo., a colored man named
William Steen shared the same fate. December 28, Mack Segars was announced
to have been lynched at Brantley, Alabama. August 31, at Yarborough,
Texas, and on September 19, at Houston, a colored man was found lynched,
but so little attention was paid to the matter that not only was no record
made as to why these last two men were lynched, but even their names were
not given. The dispatches simply stated that an unknown Negro was found
lynched in each case.
There are friends of humanity who feel their souls shrink from any
compromise with murder, but whose deep and abiding reverence for womanhood
causes them to hesitate in giving their support to this crusade against
Lynch Law, out of fear that they may encourage the miscreants whose deeds
are worse than murder. But to these friends it must appear certain that
these five men could not have been guilty of any terrible crime. They were
simply lynched by parties of men who had it in their power to kill them,
and who chose to avenge some fancied wrong by murder, rather than submit
their grievances to court.
LYNCHED BECAUSE THEY WERE SAUCY
At Moberly, Mo., February 18 and at Fort Madison, S.C., June 2, both in
1892, a record was made in the line of lynching which should certainly
appeal to every humanitarian who has any regard for the sacredness of
human life. John Hughes, of Moberly, and Isaac Lincoln, of Fort Madison,
and Will Lewis in Tullahoma, Tenn., suffered death for no more serious
charge than that they "were saucy to white people." In the days of slavery
it was held to be a very serious matter for a colored person to fail to
yield the sidewalk at the demand of a white person, and it will not be
surprising to find some evidence of this intolerance existing in the days
of freedom. But the most that could be expected as a penalty for acting or
speaking saucily to a white person would be a slight physical chastisement
to make the Negro "know his place" or an arrest and fine. But Missouri,
Tennessee and South Carolina chose to make precedents in their cases and
as a result both men, after being charged with their offense and
apprehended, were taken by a mob and lynched. The civil authorities, who
in either case would have been very quick to satisfy the aggrieved white
people had they complained and brought the prisoners to court, by imposing
proper penalty upon them, did not feel it their duty to make any
investigation after the Negroes were killed. They were dead and out of the
way and as no one would be called upon to render an account for their
taking off, the matter was dismissed from the public mind.
LYNCHED FOR A QUARREL
One of the most notable instances of lynching for the year 1893, occurred
about the twentieth of September. It was notable for the fact that the
mayor of the city exerted every available power to protect the victim of
the lynching from the mob. In his splendid endeavor to uphold the law, the
mayor called out the troops, and the result was a deadly fight between the
militia and mob, nine of the mob being killed. The trouble occurred at
Roanoke, Va. It is frequently claimed that lynchings occur only in
sparsely settled districts, and, in fact, it is a favorite plea of
governors and reverend apologists to couple two arrant falsehoods, stating
that lynchings occur only because of assaults upon white women, and that
these assaults occur and the lynchings follow in thinly inhabited
districts where the power of the law is entirely inadequate to meet the
emergency. This Roanoke case is a double refutation, for it not only
disproves the alleged charge that the Negro assaulted a white woman, as
was telegraphed all over the country at the time, but it also shows
conclusively that even in one of the largest cities of the old state of
Virginia, one of the original thirteen colonies, which prides itself of
being the mother of presidents, it was possible for a lynching to occur in
broad daylight under circumstances of revolting savagery.
When the news first came from Roanoke of the contemplated lynching, it was
stated that a big burly Negro had assaulted a white woman, that he had
been apprehended and that the citizens were determined to summarily
dispose of his case. Mayor Trout was a man who believed in maintaining the
majesty of the law, and who at once gave notice that no lynching would be
permitted in Roanoke, and that the Negro, whose name was Smith, being in
the custody of the law, should be dealt with according to law; but the mob
did not pay any attention to the brave words of the mayor. It evidently
thought that it was only another case of swagger, such as frequently
characterizes lynching episodes. Mayor Trout, finding immense crowds
gathering about the city, and fearing an attempt to lynch Smith, called
out the militia and stationed them at the jail.
It was known that the woman refused to accuse Smith of assaulting her, and
that his offense consisted in quarreling with her about the change of
money in a transaction in which he bought something from her market booth.
Both parties lost their temper, and the result was a row from which Smith
had to make his escape. At once the old cry was sounded that the woman had
been assaulted, and in a few hours all the town was wild with people
thirsting for the assailant's blood. The further incidents of that day may
well be told by a dispatch from Roanoke under date of the twenty-first of
September and published in the _Chicago Record_. It says:
It is claimed by members of the military company that they frequently
warned the mob to keep away from the jail, under penalty of being shot.
Capt. Bird told them he was under orders to protect the prisoner whose
life the mob so eagerly sought, and come what may he would not allow him
to be taken by the mob. To this the crowd replied with hoots and
derisive jeers. The rioters appeared to become frenzied at the
determined stand taken by the men and Captain Bird, and finally a crowd
of excited men made a rush for the side door of the jail. The captain
directed his men to drive the would-be lynchers back.
At this moment the mob opened fire on the soldiers. This appeared for a
moment to startle the captain and his men. But it was only for a moment.
Then he coolly gave the command: "Ready! aim! fire!" The company obeyed
to the instant, and poured a volley of bullets into that part of the
mob which was trying to batter down the side door of the jail.
The rioters fell back before the fire of the militia, leaving one man
writhing in the agonies of death at the doorstep. There was a lull for a
moment. Then the word was quickly passed through the throng in front of
the jail and down the street that a man was killed. Then there was an
awful rush toward the little band of soldiers. Excited men were yelling
like demons.
The fight became general, and ere it was ended nine men were dead and
more than forty wounded.
This stubborn stand on behalf of law and order disconcerted the crowd and
it fell back in disorder. It did not long remain inactive but assembled
again for a second assault. Having only a small band of militia, and
knowing they would be absolutely at the mercy of the thousands who were
gathering to wreak vengeance upon them, the mayor ordered them to disperse
and go to their homes, and he himself, having been wounded, was quietly
conveyed out of the city.
The next day the mob grew in numbers and its rage increased in its
intensity. There was no longer any doubt that Smith, innocent as he was of
any crime, would be killed, for with the mayor out of the city and the
governor of the state using no effort to control the mob, it was only a
question of a few hours when the assault would be repeated and its victim
put to death. All this happened as per programme. The description of that
morning's carnival appeared in the paper above quoted and reads as
follows:
A squad of twenty men took the negro Smith from three policemen just
before five o'clock this morning and hanged him to a hickory limb on
Ninth Avenue, in the residence section of the city. They riddled his
body with bullets and put a placard on it saying: "This is Mayor Trout's
friend." A coroner's jury of Bismel was summoned and viewed the body and
rendered a verdict of death at the hands of unknown men. Thousands of
persons visited the scene of the lynching between daylight and eight
o'clock when the body was cut down. After the jury had completed its
work the body was placed in the hands of officers, who were unable to
keep back the mob. Three hundred men tried to drag the body through the
streets of the town, but the Rev. Dr. Campbell of the First Presbyterian
church and Capt. R.B. Moorman, with pleas and by force prevented them.
Capt. Moorman hired a wagon and the body was put in it. It was then
conveyed to the bank of the Roanoke, about two miles from the scene of
the lynching. Here the body was dragged from the wagon by ropes for
about 200 yards and burned. Piles of dry brushwood were brought, and the
body was placed upon it, and more brushwood piled on the body, leaving
only the head bare. The whole pile was then saturated with coal oil and
a match was applied. The body was consumed within an hour. The cremation
was witnessed by several thousand people. At one time the mob threatened
to burn the Negro in Mayor Trout's yard.
Thus did the people of Roanoke, Va., add this measure of proof to maintain
our contention that it is only necessary to charge a Negro with a crime in
order to secure his certain death. It was well known in the city before he
was killed that he had not assaulted the woman with whom he had had the
trouble, but he dared to have an altercation with a white woman, and he
must pay the penalty. For an offense which would not in any civilized
community have brought upon him a punishment greater than a fine of a few
dollars, this unfortunate Negro was hung, shot and burned.
SUSPECTED, INNOCENT AND LYNCHED
Five persons, Benjamin Jackson, his wife, Mahala Jackson, his
mother-in-law, Lou Carter, Rufus Bigley, were lynched near Quincy, Miss.,
the charge against them being suspicion of well poisoning. It appears from
the newspaper dispatches at that time that a family by the name of
Woodruff was taken ill in September of 1892. As a result of their illness
one or more of the family are said to have died, though that matter is not
stated definitely. It was suspected that the cause of their illness was
the existence of poison in the water, some miscreant having placed poison
in the well. Suspicion pointed to a colored man named Benjamin Jackson who
was at once arrested. With him also were arrested his wife and
mother-in-law and all were held on the same charge.
The matter came up for judicial investigation, but as might have been
expected, the white people concluded it was unnecessary to wait the result
of the investigation--that it was preferable to hang the accused first and
try him afterward. By this method of procedure, the desired result was
always obtained--the accused was hanged. Accordingly Benjamin Jackson was
taken from the officers by a crowd of about two hundred people, while the
inquest was being held, and hanged. After the killing of Jackson, the
inquest was continued to ascertain the possible connection of the other
persons charged with the crime. Against the wife and mother-in-law of the
unfortunate man there was not the slightest evidence and the coroner's
jury was fair enough to give them their liberty. They were declared
innocent and returned to their homes. But this did not protect the women
from the demands of the Christian white people of that section of the
country. In any other land and with any other people, the fact that these
two accused persons were women would have pleaded in their favor for
protection and fair play, but that had no weight with the Mississippi
Christians nor the further fact that a jury of white men had declared them
innocent. The hanging of one victim on an unproven charge did not begin to
satisfy the mob in its bloodthirsty demands and the result was that even
after the women had been discharged, they were at once taken in charge by
a mob, which hung them by the neck until they were dead.
Still the mob was not satisfied. During the coroner's investigation the
name of a fourth person, Rufus Bigley, was mentioned. He was acquainted
with the Jacksons and that fact, together with some testimony adduced at
the inquest, prompted the mob to decide that he should die also. Search
was at once made for him and the next day he was apprehended. He was not
given over into the hands of the civil authorities for trial nor did the
coroner's inquest find that he was guilty, but the mob was quite
sufficient in itself. After finding Bigley, he was strung up to a tree and
his body left hanging, where it was found next day. It may be remarked
here in passing that this instance of the moral degradation of the people
of Mississippi did not excite any interest in the public at large.
American Christianity heard of this awful affair and read of its details
and neither press nor pulpit gave the matter more than a passing comment.
Had it occurred in the wilds of interior Africa, there would have been an
outcry from the humane people of this country against the savagery which
would so mercilessly put men and women to death. But it was an evidence of
American civilization to be passed by unnoticed, to be denied or condoned
as the requirements of any future emergency might determine.
LYNCHED FOR AN ATTEMPTED ASSAULT
With only a little more aggravation than that of Smith who quarreled at
Roanoke with the market woman, was the assault which operated as the
incentive to a most brutal lynching in Memphis, Tenn. Memphis is one of
the queen cities of the south, with a population of about seventy thousand
souls--easily one of the twenty largest, most progressive and wealthiest
cities of the United States. And yet in its streets there occurred a scene
of shocking savagery which would have disgraced the Congo. No woman was
harmed, no serious indignity suffered. Two women driving to town in a
wagon, were suddenly accosted by Lee Walker. He claimed that he demanded
something to eat. The women claimed that he attempted to assault them.
They gave such an alarm that he ran away. At once the dispatches spread
over the entire country that a big, burly Negro had brutally assaulted two
women. Crowds began to search for the alleged fiend. While hunting him
they shot another Negro dead in his tracks for refusing to stop when
ordered to do so. After a few days Lee Walker was found, and put in jail
in Memphis until the mob there was ready for him.
The _Memphis Commercial_ of Sunday, July 23, contains a full account of
the tragedy from which the following extracts are made:
At 12 o'clock last night, Lee Walker, who attempted to outrage Miss
Mollie McCadden, last Tuesday morning, was taken from the county jail
and hanged to a telegraph pole just north of the prison. All day rumors
were afloat that with nightfall an attack would be made upon the jail,
and as everyone anticipated that a vigorous resistance would be made, a
conflict between the mob and the authorities was feared.
At 10 o'clock Capt. O'Haver, Sergt. Horan and several patrolmen were on
hand, but they could do nothing with the crowd. An attack by the mob was
made on the door in the south wall, and it yielded. Sheriff McLendon and
several of his men threw themselves into the breach, but two or three of
the storming party shoved by. They were seized by the police, but were
not subdued, the officers refraining from using their clubs. The entire
mob might at first have been dispersed by ten policemen who would use
their clubs, but the sheriff insisted that no violence be done.
The mob got an iron rail and used it as a battering ram against the
lobby doors. Sheriff McLendon tried to stop them, and some one of the
mob knocked him down with a chair. Still he counseled moderation and
would not order his deputies and the police to disperse the crowd by
force. The pacific policy of the sheriff impressed the mob with the idea
that the officers were afraid, or at least would do them no harm, and
they redoubled their efforts, urged on by a big switchman. At 12 o'clock
the door of the prison was broken in with a rail.
As soon as the rapist was brought out of the door calls were heard for a
rope; then someone shouted, "Burn him!" But there was no time to make a
fire. When Walker got into the lobby a dozen of the men began beating
and stabbing him. He was half dragged, half carried to the corner of
Front Street and the alley between Sycamore and Mill, and hung to a
telegraph pole.
Walker made a desperate resistance. Two men entered his cell first and
ordered him to come forth. He refused, and they failing to drag him out,
others entered. He scratched and bit his assailants, wounding several of
them severely with his teeth. The mob retaliated by striking and cutting
him with fists and knives. When he reached the steps leading down to the
door he made another stand and was stabbed again and again. By the time
he reached the lobby his power to resist was gone, and he was shoved
along through the mob of yelling, cursing men and boys, who beat, spat
upon and slashed the wretch-like demon. One of the leaders of the mob
fell, and the crowd walked ruthlessly over him. He was badly hurt--a
jawbone fractured and internal injuries inflicted. After the lynching
friends took charge of him.
The mob proceeded north on Front Street with the victim, stopping at
Sycamore Street to get a rope from a grocery. "Take him to the iron
bridge on Main Street," yelled several men. The men who had hold of the
Negro were in a hurry to finish the job, however, and when they reached
the telephone pole at the corner of Front Street and the first alley
north of Sycamore they stopped. A hastily improvised noose was slipped
over the Negro's head, and several young men mounted a pile of lumber
near the pole and threw the rope over one of the iron stepping pins. The
Negro was lifted up until his feet were three feet above the ground, the
rope was made taut, and a corpse dangled in midair. A big fellow who
helped lead the mob pulled the Negro's legs until his neck cracked. The
wretch's clothes had been torn off, and, as he swung, the man who pulled
his legs mutilated the corpse.
One or two knife cuts, more or less, made little difference in the
appearance of the dead rapist, however, for before the rope was around
his neck his skin was cut almost to ribbons. One pistol shot was fired
while the corpse was hanging. A dozen voices protested against the use
of firearms, and there was no more shooting. The body was permitted to
hang for half an hour, then it was cut down and the rope divided among
those who lingered around the scene of the tragedy. Then it was
suggested that the corpse be burned, and it was done. The entire
performance, from the assault on the jail to the burning of the dead
Negro was witnessed by a score or so of policemen and as many deputy
sheriffs, but not a hand was lifted to stop the proceedings after the
jail door yielded.
As the body hung to the telegraph pole, blood streaming down from the
knife wounds in his neck, his hips and lower part of his legs also
slashed with knives, the crowd hurled expletives at him, swung the body
so that it was dashed against the pole, and, so far from the ghastly
sight proving trying to the nerves, the crowd looked on with
complaisance, if not with real pleasure. The Negro died hard. The neck
was not broken, as the body was drawn up without being given a fall, and
death came by strangulation. For fully ten minutes after he was strung
up the chest heaved occasionally, and there were convulsive movements of
the limbs. Finally he was pronounced dead, and a few minutes later
Detective Richardson climbed on a pile of staves and cut the rope. The
body fell in a ghastly heap, and the crowd laughed at the sound and
crowded around the prostrate body, a few kicking the inanimate carcass.
Detective Richardson, who is also a deputy coroner, then proceeded to
impanel the following jury of inquest: J.S. Moody, A.C. Waldran, B.J.
Childs, J.N. House, Nelson Bills, T.L. Smith, and A. Newhouse. After
viewing the body the inquest was adjourned without any testimony being
taken until 9 o'clock this morning. The jury will meet at the coroner's
office, 51 Beale Street, upstairs, and decide on a verdict. If no
witnesses are forthcoming, the jury will be able to arrive at a verdict
just the same, as all members of it saw the lynching. Then someone
raised the cry of "Burn him!" It was quickly taken up and soon resounded
from a hundred throats. Detective Richardson, for a long time,
single-handed, stood the crowd off. He talked and begged the men not to
bring disgrace on the city by burning the body, arguing that all the
vengeance possible had been wrought.
While this was going on a small crowd was busy starting a fire in the
middle of the street. The material was handy. Some bundles of staves
were taken from the adjoining lumber yard for kindling. Heavier wood was
obtained from the same source, and coal oil from a neighboring grocery.
Then the cries of "Burn him! Burn him!" were redoubled.
Half a dozen men seized the naked body. The crowd cheered. They marched
to the fire, and giving the body a swing, it was landed in the middle of
the fire. There was a cry for more wood, as the fire had begun to die
owing to the long delay. Willing hands procured the wood, and it was
piled up on the Negro, almost, for a time, obscuring him from view. The
head was in plain view, as also were the limbs, and one arm which stood
out high above the body, the elbow crooked, held in that position by a
stick of wood. In a few moments the hands began to swell, then came
great blisters over all the exposed parts of the body; then in places
the flesh was burned away and the bones began to show through. It was a
horrible sight, one which, perhaps, none there had ever witnessed
before. It proved too much for a large part of the crowd and the
majority of the mob left very shortly after the burning began.
But a large number stayed, and were not a bit set back by the sight of a
human body being burned to ashes. Two or three white women, accompanied
by their escorts, pushed to the front to obtain an unobstructed view,
and looked on with astonishing coolness and nonchalance. One man and
woman brought a little girl, not over twelve years old, apparently their
daughter, to view a scene which was calculated to drive sleep from the
child's eyes for many nights, if not to produce a permanent injury to
her nervous system. The comments of the crowd were varied. Some remarked
on the efficacy of this style of cure for rapists, others rejoiced that
men's wives and daughters were now safe from this wretch. Some laughed
as the flesh cracked and blistered, and while a large number pronounced
the burning of a dead body as a useless episode, not in all that throng
was a word of sympathy heard for the wretch himself.