The rope that was used to hang the Negro, and also that which was used

to lead him from the jail, were eagerly sought by relic hunters. They

almost fought for a chance to cut off a piece of rope, and in an

incredibly short time both ropes had disappeared and were scattered in

the pockets of the crowd in sections of from an inch to six inches long.

Others of the relic hunters remained until the ashes cooled to obtain

such ghastly relics as the teeth, nails, and bits of charred skin of the

immolated victim of his own lust. After burning the body the mob tied a

rope around the charred trunk and dragged it down Main Street to the

courthouse, where it was hanged to a center pole. The rope broke and the

corpse dropped with a thud, but it was again hoisted, the charred legs

barely touching the ground. The teeth were knocked out and the

fingernails cut off as souvenirs. The crowd made so much noise that the

police interfered. Undertaker Walsh was telephoned for, who took

charge of the body and carried it to his establishment, where it will be

prepared for burial in the potter's field today.

[Illustration: Scene of lynching at Clanton, Alabama, August 1891.]

[Illustration: Facsimile of back of photograph. W.R. MARTIN, Traveling

Photographer. (Handwritten: This S.O.B. was hung at Clanton Ala. Friday

Aug 21st/91 for murdering a little boy in cold blood for 35¢ in cash. He

is a good specimen of your "Black Christian hung by White Heathens"

[illegible] of the Committee.)]

A prelude to this exhibition of nineteenth-century barbarism was the

following telegram received by the _Chicago Inter Ocean_, at 2 o'clock,

Saturday afternoon--ten hours before the lynching:

MEMPHIS TENN., July 22, To _Inter-Ocean_, Chicago.

Lee Walker, colored man, accused of raping white women, in jail here,

will be taken out and burned by whites tonight. Can you send Miss Ida

Wells to write it up? Answer. R.M. Martin, with _Public Ledger_.

The _Public Ledger_ is one of the oldest evening daily papers in Memphis,

and this telegram shows that the intentions of the mob were well known

long before they were executed. The personnel of the mob is given by the

_Memphis Appeal-Avalanche_. It says, "At first it seemed as if a crowd of

roughs were the principals, but as it increased in size, men in all walks

of life figured as leaders, although the majority were young men."

This was the punishment meted out to a Negro, charged, not with rape, but

attempted assault, and without any proof as to his guilt, for the women

were not given a chance to identify him. It was only a little less

horrible than the burning alive of Henry Smith, at Paris, Texas, February

1, 1893, or that of Edward Coy, in Texarkana, Texas, February 20, 1892.

Both were charged with assault on white women, and both were tied to the

stake and burned while yet alive, in the presence of ten thousand persons.

In the case of Coy, the white woman in the case applied the match, even

while the victim protested his innocence.

The cut which is here given is the exact reproduction of the photograph

taken at the scene of the lynching at Clanton, Alabama, August, 1891. The

cause for which the man was hanged is given in the words of the mob which

were written on the back of the photograph, and they are also given. This

photograph was sent to Judge A.W. Tourgee, of Mayville, N.Y.

In some of these cases the mob affects to believe in the Negro's guilt.

The world is told that the white woman in the case identifies him, or the

prisoner "confesses." But in the lynching which took place in Barnwell

County, South Carolina, April 24, 1893, the mob's victim, John Peterson,

escaped and placed himself under Governor Tillman's protection; not only

did he declare his innocence, but offered to prove an alibi, by white

witnesses. Before his witnesses could be brought, the mob arrived at the

Governor's mansion and demanded the prisoner. He was given up, and

although the white woman in the case said he was not the man, he was

hanged twenty-four hours after, and over a thousand bullets fired into his

body, on the declaration that "a crime had been committed and someone had

to hang for it."

6

HISTORY OF SOME CASES OF RAPE

It has been claimed that the Southern white women have been slandered

because, in defending the Negro race from the charge that all colored men,

who are lynched, only pay penalty for assaulting women. It is certain that

lynching mobs have not only refused to give the Negro a chance to defend

himself, but have killed their victim with a full knowledge that the

relationship of the alleged assailant with the woman who accused him, was

voluntary and clandestine. As a matter of fact, one of the prime causes of

the Lynch Law agitation has been a necessity for defending the Negro from

this awful charge against him. This defense has been necessary because the

apologists for outlawry insist that in no case has the accusing woman been

a willing consort of her paramour, who is lynched because overtaken in

wrong. It is well known, however, that such is the case. In July of this

year, 1894, John Paul Bocock, a Southern white man living in New York, and

assistant editor of the _New York Tribune_, took occasion to defy the

publication of any instance where the lynched Negro was the victim of a

white woman's falsehood. Such cases are not rare, but the press and people

conversant with the facts, almost invariably suppress them.

The _New York Sun_ of July 30,1894, contained a synopsis of interviews

with leading congressmen and editors of the South. Speaker Crisp, of the

House of Representatives, who was recently a Judge of the Supreme Court of

Georgia, led in declaring that lynching seldom or never took place, save

for vile crime against women and children. Dr. Hass, editor of the leading

organ of the Methodist Church South, published in its columns that it was

his belief that more than three hundred women had been assaulted by Negro

men within three months. When asked to prove his charges, or give a single

case upon which his "belief" was founded, he said that he could do so, but

the details were unfit for publication. No other evidence but his "belief"

could be adduced to substantiate this grave charge, yet Bishop Haygood, in

the _Forum_ of October, 1893, quotes this "belief" in apology for

lynching, and voluntarily adds: "It is my opinion that this is an

underestimate." The "opinion" of this man, based upon a "belief," had

greater weight coming from a man who has posed as a friend to "Our Brother

in Black," and was accepted as authority. An interview of Miss Frances E.

Willard, the great apostle of temperance, the daughter of abolitionists

and a personal friend and helper of many individual colored people, has

been quoted in support of the utterance of this calumny against a weak and

defenseless race. In the _New York Voice_ of October 23, 1890, after a

tour in the South, where she was told all these things by the "best white

people," she said: "The grogshop is the Negro's center of power. Better

whisky and more of it is the rallying cry of great, dark-faced mobs. The

colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grogshop is its

center of power. The safety of woman, of childhood, the home, is menaced

in a thousand localities at this moment, so that men dare not go beyond

the sight of their own roof-tree."

These charges so often reiterated, have had the effect of fastening the

odium upon the race of a peculiar propensity for this foul crime. The

Negro is thus forced to a defense of his good name, and this chapter will

be devoted to the history of some of the cases where assault upon white

women by Negroes is charged. He is not the aggressor in this fight, but

the situation demands that the facts be given, and they will speak for

themselves. Of the 1,115 Negro men, women and children hanged, shot and

roasted alive from January 1, 1882, to January 1, 1894, inclusive, only

348 of that number were charged with rape. Nearly 700 of these persons

were lynched for any other reason which could be manufactured by a mob

wishing to indulge in a lynching bee.

A WHITE WOMAN'S FALSEHOOD

The _Cleveland, Ohio, Gazette_, January 16, 1892, gives an account of one

of these cases of "rape."

Mrs. J.C. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an

Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in

1888, stumping the state for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the

kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried to

drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her,

and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible

condition. She did not know the man, but could identify him. She

subsequently pointed out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested,

and, being in Ohio, was granted a trial.

The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went

to Mrs. Underwood's residence at her invitation and was criminally

intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against the

sworn testimony of a minister's wife, a lady of the highest

respectability. He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary,

December 14, 1888, for fifteen years. Sometime afterwards the woman's

remorse led her to confess to her husband that the man was innocent. These

are her words: "I met Offett at the postoffice. It was raining. He was

polite to me, and as I had several bundles in my arms he offered to carry

them home for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I

invited him to call on me. He called, bringing chestnuts and candy for the

children. By this means we got them to leave us alone in the room. Then I

sat on his lap. He made a proposal to me and I readily consented. Why I

did so I do not know, but that I did is true. He visited me several times

after that and each time I was indiscreet. I did not care after the first

time. In fact I could not have resisted, and had no desire to resist."

When asked by her husband why she told him she had been outraged, she

said: "I had several reasons for telling you. One was the neighbors saw

the fellow here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a loathsome

disease, and still another was that I feared I might give birth to a Negro

baby. I hoped to save my reputation by telling you a deliberate lie." Her

husband, horrified by the confession, had Offett, who had already served

four years, released and secured a divorce.

There have been many such cases throughout the South, with the difference

that the Southern white men in insensate fury wreak their vengeance

without intervention of law upon the Negro who consorts with their women.

TRIED TO MANUFACTURE AN OUTRAGE

The _Memphis (Tenn.) Ledger_, of June 8, 1892, has the following:

If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl, seventeen years of age,

who is now at the city hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about

her disgrace there would be some very nauseating details in the story of

her life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal

fearful depravity or the evidence of a rank outrage. She will not

divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her

disgrace, and in fact says it is a matter in which there can be no

interest to the outside world. She came to Memphis nearly three months

ago, and was taken in at the Woman's Refuge in the southern part of the

city. She remained there until a few weeks ago when the child was born.

The ladies in charge of the Refuge were horrified. The girl was at once

sent to the city hospital, where she has been since May 30. She is a

country girl. She came to Memphis from her father's farm, a short

distance from Hernando, Miss. Just when she left there she would not

say. In fact she says she came to Memphis from Arkansas, and says her

home is in that state. She is rather good looking, has blue eyes, a low

forehead and dark red hair. The ladies at the Woman's Refuge do not know

anything about the girl further than what they learned when she was an

inmate of the institution; and she would not tell much. When the child

was born an attempt was made to get the girl to reveal the name of the

Negro who had disgraced her, she obstinately refused and it was

impossible to elicit any information from her on the subject.

Note the wording: "The truth might reveal fearful depravity or rank

outrage." If it had been a white child or if Lillie Bailey had told a

pitiful story of Negro outrage, it would have been a case of woman's

weakness or assault and she could have remained at the Woman's Refuge. But

a Negro child and to withhold its father's name and thus prevent the

killing of another Negro "rapist" was a case of "fearful depravity." Had

she revealed the father's name, he would have been lynched and his taking

off charged to an assault upon a white woman.

BURNED ALIVE FOR ADULTERY

In Texarkana, Arkansas, Edward Coy was accused of assaulting a white

woman. The press dispatches of February 18, 1892, told in detail how he

was tied to a tree, the flesh cut from his body by men and boys, and after

coal oil was poured over him, the woman he had assaulted gladly set fire

to him, and 15,000 persons saw him burn to death. October 1, the _Chicago

Inter Ocean_ contained the following account of that horror from the pen

of the "Bystander" Judge Albion W. Tourgee--as the result of his

investigations:

1. The woman who was paraded as victim of violence was of bad character;

her husband was a drunkard and a gambler.

2. She was publicly reported and generally known to have been criminally

intimate with Coy for more than a year previous.

3. She was compelled by threats, if not by violence, to make the charge

against the victim.

4. When she came to apply the match Coy asked her if she would burn him

after they had "been sweethearting" so long.

5. A large majority of the "superior" white men prominent in the affair

are the reputed fathers of mulatto children.

These are not pleasant facts, but they are illustrative of the vital

phase of the so-called race question, which should properly be

designated an earnest inquiry as to the best methods by which religion,

science, law and political power may be employed to excuse injustice,

barbarity and crime done to a people because of race and color. There

can be no possible belief that these people were inspired by any

consuming zeal to vindicate God's law against miscegenationists of the

most practical sort. The woman was a willing partner in the victim's

guilt, and being of the "superior" race must naturally have been more

guilty.

NOT IDENTIFIED BUT LYNCHED

February 11, 1893, there occurred in Shelby County, Tennessee, the fourth

Negro lynching within fifteen months. The three first were lynched in the

city of Memphis for firing on white men in self-defense. This Negro,

Richard Neal, was lynched a few miles from the city limits, and the

following is taken from the _Memphis (Tenn.) Scimitar_:

As the _Scimitar_ stated on Saturday the Negro, Richard Neal, who raped

Mrs. Jack White near Forest Hill, in this county, was lynched by a mob

of about 200 white citizens of the neighborhood. Sheriff McLendon,

accompanied by Deputies Perkins, App and Harvey and a _Scimitar_

reporter, arrived on the scene of the execution about 3:30 in the

afternoon. The body was suspended from the first limb of a post oak tree

by a new quarter-inch grass rope. A hangman's knot, evidently tied by an

expert, fitted snugly under the left ear of the corpse, and a new hame

string pinioned the victim's arms behind him. His legs were not tied.

The body was perfectly limber when the Sheriff's posse cut it down and

retained enough heat to warm the feet of Deputy Perkins, whose road cart

was converted into a hearse. On arriving with the body at Forest Hill

the Sheriff made a bargain with a stalwart young man with a blonde

mustache and deep blue eyes, who told the _Scimitar_ reporter that he

was the leader of the mob, to haul the body to Germantown for $3.

When within half-a-mile of Germantown the Sheriff and posse were

overtaken by Squire McDonald of Collierville, who had come down to hold

the inquest. The Squire had his jury with him, and it was agreed for the

convenience of all parties that he should proceed with the corpse to

Germantown and conduct the inquiry as to the cause of death. He did so,

and a verdict of death from hanging by parties unknown was returned in

due form.

The execution of Neal was done deliberately and by the best people of

the Collierville, Germantown and Forest Hill neighborhoods, without

passion or exhibition of anger.

He was arrested on Friday about ten o'clock, by Constable Bob Cash, who

carried him before Mrs. White. She said: "I think he is the man. I am

almost certain of it. If he isn't the man he is exactly like him."

The Negro's coat was torn also, and there were other circumstances

against him. The committee returned and made its report, and the

chairman put the question of guilt or innocence to a vote.

All who thought the proof strong enough to warrant execution were

invited to cross over to the other side of the road. Everybody but four

or five negroes crossed over.

The committee then placed Neal on a mule with his arms tied behind him,

and proceeded to the scene of the crime, followed by the mob. The rope,

with a noose already prepared, was tied to the limb nearest the spot

where the unpardonable sin was committed, and the doomed man's mule was

brought to a standstill beneath it.

Then Neal confessed. He said he was the right man, but denied that he

used force or threats to accomplish his purpose. It was a matter of

purchase, he claimed, and said the price paid was twenty-five cents. He

warned the colored men present to beware of white women and resist

temptation, for to yield to their blandishments or to the passions of

men, meant death.

While he was speaking, Mrs. White came from her home and calling

Constable Cash to one side, asked if he could not save the Negro's life.

The reply was, "No," and Mrs. White returned to the house.

When all was in readiness, the husband of Neal's victim leaped upon the

mule's back and adjusted the rope around the Negro's neck. No cap was

used, and Neal showed no fear, nor did he beg for mercy. The mule was

struck with a whip and bounded out from under Neal, leaving him

suspended in the air with his feet about three feet from the ground.

DELIVERED TO THE MOB BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE STATE

John Peterson, near Denmark, S.C., was suspected of rape, but escaped,

went to Columbia, and placed himself under Gov. Tillman's protection,

declaring he too could prove an alibi by white witnesses. A white reporter

hearing his declaration volunteered to find these witnesses, and

telegraphed the governor that he would be in Columbia with them on Monday.

In the meantime the mob at Denmark, learning Peterson's whereabouts, went

to the governor and demanded the prisoner. Gov. Tillman, who had during

his canvass for reelection the year before, declared that he would lead a

mob to lynch a Negro that assaulted a white woman, gave Peterson up to the

mob. He was taken back to Denmark, and the white girl in the case as

positively declared that he was not the man. But the verdict of the mob

was that "the crime had been committed and somebody had to hang for it,

and if he, Peterson, was not guilty of that he was of some other crime,"

and he was hung, and his body riddled with 1,000 bullets.

LYNCHED AS A WARNING

Alabama furnishes a case in point. A colored man named Daniel Edwards,

lived near Selma, Alabama, and worked for a family of a farmer near that

place. This resulted in an intimacy between the young man and a daughter

of the householder, which finally developed in the disgrace of the girl.

After the birth of the child, the mother disclosed the fact that Edwards

was its father. The relationship had been sustained for more than a year,

and yet this colored man was apprehended, thrown into jail from whence he

was taken by a mob of one hundred neighbors and hung to a tree and his

body riddled with bullets. A dispatch which describes the lynching, ends

as follows. "Upon his back was found pinned this morning the following:

'Warning to all Negroes that are too intimate with white girls. This the

work of one hundred best citizens of the South Side.'"

There can be no doubt from the announcement made by this "one hundred best

citizens" that they understood full well the character of the relationship

which existed between Edwards and the girl, but when the dispatches were

sent out, describing the affair, it was claimed that Edwards was lynched

for rape.

SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH

In a county in Mississippi during the month of July the Associated Press

dispatches sent out a report that the sheriff's eight-year-old daughter

had been assaulted by a big, black, burly brute who had been promptly

lynched. The facts which have since been investigated show that the girl

was more than eighteen years old and that she was discovered by her father

in this young man's room who was a servant on the place. But these facts

the Associated Press has not given to the world, nor did the same agency

acquaint the world with the fact that a Negro youth who was lynched in

Tuscumbia, Ala., the same year on the same charge told the white girl who

accused him before the mob, that he had met her in the woods often by

appointment. There is a young mulatto in one of the State prisons of the

South today who is there by charge of a young white woman to screen

herself. He is a college graduate and had been corresponding with, and

clandestinely visiting her until he was surprised and run out of her room

en deshabille by her father. He was put in prison in another town to save

his life from the mob and his lawyer advised that it were better to save

his life by pleading guilty to charges made and being sentenced for years,

than to attempt a defense by exhibiting the letters written him by this

girl. In the latter event, the mob would surely murder him, while there

was a chance for his life by adopting the former course. Names, places and

dates are not given for the same reason.

The excuse has come to be so safe, it is not surprising that a

Philadelphia girl, beautiful and well educated, and of good family, should

make a confession published in all the daily papers of that city October,

1894, that she had been stealing for some time, and that to cover one of

her thefts, she had said she had been bound and gagged in her father's

house by a colored man, and money stolen therefrom by him. Had this been

done in many localities, it would only have been necessary for her to

"identify" the first Negro in that vicinity, to have brought about another

lynching bee.

A VILE SLANDER WITH SCANT RETRACTION

The following published in the _Cleveland (Ohio) Leader_ of Oct. 23, 1894,

only emphasizes our demand that a fair trial shall be given those accused

of crime, and the protection of the law be extended until time for a

defense be granted.

The sensational story sent out last night from Hicksville that a Negro

had outraged a little four-year-old girl proves to be a base canard. The

correspondents who went into the details should have taken the pains to

investigate, and the officials should have known more of the matter

before they gave out such grossly exaggerated information.

The Negro, Charles O'Neil, had been working for a couple of women and,

it seems, had worked all winter without being remunerated. There is a

little girl, and the girl's mother and grandmother evidently started the

story with idea of frightening the Negro out of the country and thus

balancing accounts. The town was considerably wrought up and for a time

things looked serious. The accused had a preliminary hearing today and

not an iota of evidence was produced to indicate that such a crime had

been committed, or that he had even attempted such an outrage. The

village marshal was frightened nearly out of his wits and did little to

quiet the excitement last night.

The affair was an outrage on the Negro, at the expense of innocent

childhood, a brainless fabrication from start to finish.

The original story was sent throughout this country and England, but the

_Cleveland Leader_, so far as known, is the only journal which has

published these facts in refutation of the slander so often published

against the race. Not only is it true that many of the alleged cases of

rape against the Negro, are like the foregoing, but the same crime

committed by white men against Negro women and girls, is never punished by

mob or the law. A leading journal in South Carolina openly said some

months ago that "it is not the same thing for a white man to assault a

colored woman as for a colored man to assault a white woman, because the

colored woman had no finer feelings nor virtue to be outraged!" Yet

colored women have always had far more reason to complain of white men in

this respect than ever white women have had of Negroes.

ILLINOIS HAS A LYNCHING

In the month of June, 1893, the proud commonwealth of Illinois joined the

ranks of Lynching States. Illinois, which gave to the world the immortal

heroes, Lincoln, Grant and Logan, trailed its banner of justice in the

dust--dyed its hands red in the blood of a man not proven guilty of crime.

June 3,1893, the country about Decatur, one of the largest cities of the

state was startled with the cry that a white woman had been assaulted by a

colored tramp. Three days later a colored man named Samuel Bush was

arrested and put in jail. A white man testified that Bush, on the day of

the assault, asked him where he could get a drink and he pointed to the

house where the farmer's wife was subsequently said to have been

assaulted. Bush said he went to the well but did not go near the house,

and did not assault the woman. After he was arrested the alleged victim

did not see him to identify him--he was presumed to be guilty.

The citizens determined to kill him. The mob gathered, went to the jail,

met with no resistance, took the suspected man, dragged him out tearing

every stitch of clothing from his body, then hanged him to a telegraph

pole. The grand jury refused to indict the lynchers though the names of

over twenty persons who were leaders in the mob were well known. In fact

twenty-two persons were indicted, but the grand jurors and the prosecuting

attorney disagreed as to the form of the indictments, which caused the

jurors to change their minds. All indictments were reconsidered and the

matter was dropped. Not one of the dozens of men prominent in that murder

have suffered a whit more inconvenience for the butchery of that man, than

they would have suffered for shooting a dog.

COLOR LINE JUSTICE

In Baltimore, Maryland, a gang of white ruffians assaulted a respectable

colored girl who was out walking with a young man of her own race. They

held her escort and outraged the girl. It was a deed dastardly enough to

arouse Southern blood, which gives its horror of rape as excuse for

lawlessness, but she was a colored woman. The case went to the courts and

they were acquitted.

In Nashville, Tennessee, there was a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged

a little colored girl, and from the physical injuries received she was

ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and is now a

detective in that city. In the same city, last May, a white man outraged a

colored girl in a drug store. He was arrested and released on bail at the

trial. It was rumored that five hundred colored men had organized to lynch

him. Two hundred and fifty white citizens armed themselves with

Winchesters and guarded him. A cannon was placed in front of his home, and

the Buchanan Rifles (State Militia) ordered to the scene for his

protection. The colored mob did not show up. Only two weeks before, Eph.

Grizzard, who had only been charged with rape upon a white woman, had been

taken from the jail, with Governor Buchanan and the police and militia

standing by, dragged through the streets in broad daylight, knives plunged

into him at every step, and with every fiendish cruelty that a frenzied

mob could devise, he was at last swung out on the bridge with hands cut to

pieces as he tried to climb up the stanchions. A naked, bloody example of

the bloodthirstiness of the nineteenth-century civilization of the Athens

of the South! No cannon nor military were called out in his defense. He

dared to visit a white woman.

At the very moment when these civilized whites were announcing their

determination "to protect their wives and daughters," by murdering

Grizzard, a white man was in the same jail for raping eight-year-old

Maggie Reese, a colored girl. He was not harmed. The "honor" of grown

women who were glad enough to be supported by the Grizzard boys and Ed.

Coy, as long as the liaison was not known, needed protection; they were

white. The outrage upon helpless childhood needed no avenging in this

case; she was black.

A white man in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, two months after inflicted

such injuries upon another colored girl that she died. He was not

punished, but an attempt was made in the same town in the month of June to

lynch a colored man who visited a white woman.

In Memphis, Tennessee, in the month of June, Ellerton L. Dorr, who is the

husband of Russell Hancock's widow, was arrested for attempted rape on

Mattie Cole, a neighbor's cook; he was only prevented from accomplishing

his purpose by the appearance of Mattie's employer. Dorr's friends say he

was drunk and, not responsible for his actions. The grand jury refused to

indict him and he was discharged.

In Tallahassee, Florida, a colored girl, Charlotte Gilliam, was assaulted

by white men. Her father went to have a warrant for their arrest issued,

but the judge refused to issue it.

In Bowling Green, Virginia, Moses Christopher, a colored lad, was charged

with assault, September 10. He was indicted, tried, convicted and

sentenced to death in one day. In the same state at Danville, two weeks

before--August 29, Thomas J. Penn, a white man, committed a criminal

assault upon Lina Hanna, a twelve-year-old colored girl, but he has not

been tried, certainly not killed either by the law or the mob.

In Surrey county, Virginia, C.L. Brock, a white man, criminally assaulted

a ten-year-old colored girl, and threatened to kill her if she told.

Notwithstanding, she confessed to her aunt, Mrs. Alice Bates, and the

white brute added further crime by killing Mrs. Bates when she upbraided

him about his crime upon her niece. He emptied the contents of his

revolver into her body as she lay. Brock has never been apprehended, and

no effort has been made to do so by the legal authorities.

But even when punishment is meted out by law to white villians for this

horrible crime, it is seldom or never that capital punishment is invoked.

Two cases just clipped from the daily papers will suffice to show how this

crime is punished when committed by white offenders and black.

LOUISVILLE, KY., October 19.--Smith Young, colored, was today sentenced to

be hanged. Young criminally assaulted a six-year-old child about six

months ago.

Jacques Blucher, the Pontiac Frenchman who was arrested at that place for

a criminal assault on his daughter Fanny on July 29 last, pleaded nolo

contendere when placed on trial at East Greenwich, near Providence, R.I.,

Tuesday, and was sentenced to five years in State Prison.

Charles Wilson was convicted of assault upon seven-year-old Mamie Keys in

Philadelphia, in October, and sentenced to ten years in prison. He was

white. Indianapolis courts sentenced a white man in September to eight

years in prison for assault upon a twelve-year-old white girl.

April 24, 1893, a lynching was set for Denmark, S.C., on the charge of

rape. A white girl accused a Negro of assault, and the mob was about to

lynch him. A few hours before the lynching three reputable white men rode

into the town and solemnly testified that the accused Negro was at work

with them 25 miles away on the day and at the hour the crime had been

committed. He was accordingly set free. A white person's word is taken as

absolutely for as against a Negro.

7

THE CRUSADE JUSTIFIED

_(Appeal from America to the World_)

It has been urged in criticism of the movement appealing to the English

people for sympathy and support in our crusade against Lynch Law that our

action was unpatriotic, vindictive and useless. It is not a part of the

plan of this pamphlet to make any defense for that crusade nor to indict

any apology for the motives which led to the presentation of the facts of

American lynchings to the world at large. To those who are not willfully

blind and unjustly critical, the record of more than a thousand lynchings

in ten years is enough to justify any peaceable movement tending to

ameliorate the conditions which led to this unprecedented slaughter of

human beings.

If America would not hear the cry of men, women and children whose dying

groans ascended to heaven praying for relief, not only for them but for

others who might soon be treated as they, then certainly no fair-minded

person can charge disloyalty to those who make an appeal to the

civilization of the world for such sympathy and help as it is possible to

extend. If stating the facts of these lynchings, as they appeared from

time to time in the white newspapers of America--the news gathered by

white correspondents, compiled by white press bureaus and disseminated

among white people--shows any vindictiveness, then the mind which so

charges is not amenable to argument.

But it is the desire of this pamphlet to urge that the crusade started and

thus far continued has not been useless, but has been blessed with the

most salutary results. The many evidences of the good results can not here

be mentioned, but the thoughtful student of the situation can himself

find ample proof. There need not here be mentioned the fact that for the

first time since lynching began, has there been any occasion for the

governors of the several states to speak out in reference to these crimes

against law and order.

No matter how heinous the act of the lynchers may have been, it was

discussed only for a day or so and then dismissed from the attention of

the public. In one or two instances the governor has called attention to

the crime, but the civil processes entirely failed to bring the murderers

to justice. Since the crusade against lynching was started, however,

governors of states, newspapers, senators and representatives and bishops

of churches have all been compelled to take cognizance of the prevalence

of this crime and to speak in one way or another in the defense of the

charge against this barbarism in the United States. This has not been

because there was any latent spirit of justice voluntarily asserting

itself, especially in those who do the lynching, but because the entire

American people now feel, both North and South, that they are objects in

the gaze of the civilized world and that for every lynching humanity asks

that America render its account to civilization and itself.

AWFUL BARBARISM IGNORED

Much has been said during the months of September and October of 1894

about the lynching of six colered men who on suspicion of incendiarism

were made the victims of a most barbarous massacre.

They were arrested, one by one, by officers of the law; they were

handcuffed and chained together and by the officers of the law loaded in a

wagon and deliberately driven into an ambush where a mob of lynchers

awaited them. At the time and upon the chosen spot, in the darkness of the

night and far removed from the habitation of any human soul, the wagon was

halted and the mob fired upon the six manacled men, shooting them to death

as no humane person would have shot dogs. Chained together as they were,

in their awful struggles after the first volley, the victims tumbled out

of the wagon upon the ground and there in the mud, struggling in their

death throes, the victims were made the target of the murderous shotguns,

which fired into the writhing, struggling, dying mass of humanity, until

every spark of life was gone. Then the officers of the law who had them in

charge, drove away to give the alarm and to tell the world that they had

been waylaid and their prisoners forcibly taken from them and killed.

It has been claimed that the prompt, vigorous and highly commendable steps

of the governor of the State of Tennessee and the judge having

jurisdiction over the crime, and of the citizens of Memphis generally, was

the natural revolt of the humane conscience in that section of the

country, and the determination of honest and honorable men to rid the

community of such men as those who were guilty of this terrible massacre.

It has further been claimed that this vigorous uprising of the people and

this most commendably prompt action of the civil authorities, is ample

proof that the American people will not tolerate the lynching of innocent

men, and that in cases where brutal lynchings have not been promptly dealt

with, the crimes on the part of the victims were such as to put them

outside the pale of humanity and that the world considered their death a

necessary sacrifice for the good of all.

But this line of argument can in no possible way be truthfully sustained.

The lynching of the six men in 1894, barbarous as it was, was in no way

more barbarous than took nothing more than a passing notice. It was only

the other lynchings which preceded it, and of which the public fact that

the attention of the civilized world has been called to lynching in

America which made the people of Tennessee feel the absolute necessity for

a prompt, vigorous and just arraignment of all the murderers connected

with that crime. Lynching is no longer "Our Problem," it is the problem of

the civilized world, and Tennessee could not afford to refuse the legal

measures which Christianity demands shall be used for the punishment of

crime.

MEMPHIS THEN AND NOW

Only two years prior to the massacre of the six men near Memphis, that

same city took part in a massacre in every way as bloody and brutal as

that of September last. It was the murder of three young colored men and

who were known to be among the most honorable, reliable, worthy and

peaceable colored citizens of the community. All of them were engaged in

the mercantile business, being members of a corporation which conducted a

large grocery store, and one of the three being a letter carrier in the

employ of the government. These three men were arrested for resisting an

attack of a mob upon their store, in which melee none of the assailants,

who had armed themselves for their devilish deeds by securing court

processes, were killed or even seriously injured. But these three men were

put in jail, and on three or four nights after their incarceration a mob

of less than a dozen men, by collusion with the civil authorities, entered

the jail, took the three men from the custody of the law and shot them to

death. Memphis knew of this awful crime, knew then and knows today who the

men were who committed it, and yet not the first step was ever taken to

apprehend the guilty wretches who walk the streets today with the brand of

murder upon their foreheads, but as safe from harm as the most upright

citizen of that community. Memphis would have been just as calm and

complacent and self-satisfied over the murder of the six colored men in

1894 as it was over these three colored men in 1892, had it not recognized

the fact that to escape the brand of barbarism it had not only to speak

its denunciation but to act vigorously in vindication of its name.

AN ALABAMA HORROR IGNORED

A further instance of this absolute disregard of every principle of

justice and the indifference to the barbarism of Lynch Law may be cited

here, and is furnished by white residents in the city of Carrolton,

Alabama. Several cases of arson had been discovered, and in their search

for the guilty parties, suspicion was found to rest upon three men and a

woman. The four suspects were Paul Hill, Paul Archer, William Archer, his

brother, and a woman named Emma Fair. The prisoners were apprehended,

earnestly asserted their innocence, but went to jail without making any

resistance. They claimed that they could easily prove their innocence upon

trial.

One would suspect that the civilization which defends itself against the

barbarisms of Lynch Law by stating that it lynches human beings only when

they are guilty of awful attacks upon women and children, would have been

very careful to have given these four prisoners, who were simply charged

with arson, a fair trial, to which they were entitled upon every principle

of law and humanity. Especially would this seem to be the case when if is

considered that one of the prisoners charged was a woman, and if the

nineteenth century has shown any advancement upon any lines of human

action, it is preeminently shown in its reverence, respect and protection

of its womanhood. But the people of Alabama failed to have any regard for

womanhood whatever.

The three men and the woman were put in jail to await trial. A few days

later it was rumored that they were to be subjects of Lynch Law, and, sure

enough, at night a mob of lynchers went to the jail, not to avenge any

awful crime against womanhood, but to kill four people who had been

suspected of setting a house on fire. They were caged in their cells,

helpless and defenseless; they were at the mercy of civilized white

Americans, who, armed with shotguns, were there to maintain the majesty of

American law. And most effectively was their duty done by these splendid

representatives of Governor Fishback's brave and honorable white

southerners, who resent "outside interference." They lined themselves up

in the most effective manner and poured volley after volley into the

bodies of their helpless, pleading victims, who in their bolted prison

cells could do nothing but suffer and die. Then these lynchers went

quietly away and the bodies of the woman and three men were taken out and

buried with as little ceremony as men would bury hogs.

No one will say that the massacre near Memphis in 1894 was any worse than

this bloody crime of Alabama in 1892. The details of this shocking affair

were given to the public by the press, but public sentiment was not moved

to action in the least; it was only a matter of a day's notice and then

went to swell the list of murders which stand charged against the noble,

Christian people of Alabama.

AMERICA AWAKENED

But there is now an awakened conscience throughout the land, and Lynch Law

can not flourish in the future as it has in the past. The close of the

year 1894 witnessed an aroused interest, an assertative humane principle

which must tend to the extirpation of that crime. The awful butchery last

mentioned failed to excite more than a passing comment In 1894, but far

different is it today. Gov. Jones, of Alabama, in 1893 dared to speak out

against the rule of the mob in no uncertain terms. His address indicated a

most helpful result of the present agitation. In face of the many denials

of the outrages on the one hand and apologies for lynchers on the other,

Gov. Jones admits the awful lawlessness charged and refuses to join in

the infamous plea made to condone the crime. No stronger nor more

effective words have been said than those following from Gov. Jones.

While the ability of the state to deal with open revolts against the

supremacy of its laws has been ably demonstrated, I regret that

deplorable acts of violence have been perpetrated, in at least four

instances, within the past two years by mobs, whose sudden work and

quick dispersions rendered it impossible to protect their victims.

Within the past two years nine prisoners, who were either in jail or in

the custody of the officers, have been taken from them without

resistance, and put to death. There was doubt of the guilt of the

defendants in most of these cases, and few of them were charged with

capital offenses. None of them involved the crime of rape. The largest

rewards allowed by law were offered for the apprehension of the

offenders, and officers were charged to a vigilant performance of their

duties, and aided in some instances by the services of skilled

detectives; but not a single arrest has been made and the grand juries

in these counties have returned no bills of indictment. This would

indicate either that local public sentiment approved these acts of

violence or was too weak to punish them, or that the officers charged

with that duty were in some way lacking in their performance. The evil

cannot be cured or remedied by silence as to its existence. Unchecked,

it will continue until it becomes a reproach to our good name, and a

menace to our prosperity and peace; and it behooves you to exhaust all

remedies within your power to find better preventives for such crimes.

A FRIENDLY WARNING

From England comes a friendly voice which must give to every patriotic

citizen food for earnese thought. Writing from London, to the _Chicago

Inter Ocean_, Nov. 25, 1894, the distinguished compiler of our last

census, Hon. Robert P. Porter, gives the American people a most

interesting review of the antilynching crusade in England, submitting

editorial opinions from all sections of England and Scotland, showing the

consensus of British opinion on this subject. It hardly need be said, that

without exception, the current of English thought deprecates the rule of

mob law, and the conscience of England is shocked by the revelation made

during the present crusade. In his letter Mr. Porter says:

While some English journals have joined certain American journals in

ridiculing the well-meaning people who have formed the antilynching

committee, there is a deep under current on this subject which is

injuring the Southern States far more than those who have not been drawn

into the question of English investment for the South as I have can

surmise. This feeling is by no means all sentiment. An Englishman whose

word and active cooperation could send a million sterling to any

legitimate Southern enterprise said the other day: "I will not invest a

farthing in States where these horrors occur. I have no particular

sympathy with the antilynching committee, but such outrages indicate to

my mind that where life is held to be of such little value there is even

less assurance that the laws will protect property. As I understand it

the States, not the national government, control in such matters, and

where those laws are strongest there is the best field for British

capital."

Probably the most bitter attack on the antilynching committee has come

from the _London Times_. Those Southern Governors who had their bombastic

letters published in the _Times_, with favorable editorial comment, may

have had their laugh at the antilynchers here too soon. A few days ago, in

commenting on an interesting communication from Richard H. Edmonds, editor

of the _Manufacturer's Record_, setting forth the industrial advantages of

the Southern States, which was published in its columns, the _Times_ says:

Without in any way countenancing the impertinence of "antilynching"

committee, we may say that a state of things in which the killing of

Negroes by bloodthirsty mobs is an incident of not unfrequent occurrence

is not conducive to success in industry. Its existence, however, is a

serious obstacle to the success of the South in industry; for even now

Negro labor, which means at best inefficient labor, must be largely

relied on there, and its efficiency must be still further diminished by

spasmodic terrorism.

Those interested in the development of the resources of the Southern

States, and no one in proportion to his means has shown more faith in

the progress of the South than the writer of this article, must take

hold of this matter earnestly and intelligently. Sneering at the

antilynching committee will do no good. Back of them, in fact, if not in

form, is the public opinion of Great Britain. Even the _Times_ cannot

deny this. It may not be generally known in the United States, but while

the Southern and some of the Northern newspapers are making a target of

Miss Wells, the young colored woman who started this English movement,

and cracking their jokes at the expense of Miss Florence Balgarnie, who,

as honorable secretary, conducts the committee's correspondence, the

strongest sort of sentiment is really at the back of the movement. Here

we have crystallized every phase of political opinion. Extreme Unionists

like the Duke of Argyll and advanced home rulers such as Justin

McCarthy; Thomas Burt, the labor leader; Herbert Burrows, the Socialist,

and Tom Mann, representing all phases of the Labor party, are

cooperating with conservatives like Sir T. Eldon Gorst. But the real

strength of this committee is not visible to the casual observer. As a

matter of fact it represents many of the leading and most powerful

British journals. A.E. Fletcher is editor of the _London Daily

Chronicle_; P.W. Clayden is prominent in the counsels of the _London

Daily News_; Professor James Stuart is Gladstone's great friend and

editor of the _London Star_, William Byles is editor and proprietor of

the _Bradford Observer_, Sir Hugh Gilzen Reid is a leading Birmingham

editor; in short, this committee has secured if not the leading editors,

certainly important and warm friends, representing the Manchester

Guardian, the _Leeds Mercury_, the _Plymouth Western News, Newcastle

Leader_, the _London Daily Graphic_, the _Westminster Gazette_, the

_London Echo_, a host of minor papers all over the kingdom, and

practically the entire religious press of the kingdom.

The greatest victory for the antilynchers comes this morning in the

publication in the _London Times_ of William Lloyd Garrison's letter.

This letter will have immense effect here. It may have been printed in

full in the United States, but nevertheless I will quote a paragraph

which will strengthen the antilynchers greatly in their crusade here:

A year ago the South derided and resented Northern protests; today it

listens, explains and apologizes for its uncovered cruelties. Surely a

great triumph for a little woman to accomplish! It is the power of truth

simply and unreservedly spoken, for her language was inadequate to

describe the horrors exposed.

If the Southern states are wise, and I say this with the earnestness of a

friend and one who has built a home in the mountain regions of the South

and thrown his lot in with them, they will not only listen, but stop

lawlessness of all kinds. If they do, and thus secure the confidence of

Englishmen, we may in the next decade realize some of the hopes for the

new South we have so fondly cherished.

8

MISS WILLARD'S ATTITUDE

No class of American citizens stands in greater need of the humane and

thoughtful consideration of all sections of our country than do the

colored people, nor does any class exceed us in the measure of grateful

regard for acts of kindly interest in our behalf. It is, therefore, to us,

a matter of keen regret that a Christian organization, so large and

influential as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, should refuse to

give its sympathy and support to our oppressed people who ask no further

favor than the promotion of public sentiment which shall guarantee to

every person accused of crime the safeguard of a fair and impartial trial,

and protection from butchery by brutal mobs. Accustomed as we are to the

indifference and apathy of Christian people, we would bear this instance

of ill fortune in silence, had not Miss Willard gone out of her way to

antagonize the cause so dear to our hearts by including in her Annual

Address to the W.C.T.U. Convention at Cleveland, November 5, 1894, a

studied, unjust and wholly unwarranted attack upon our work.

In her address Miss Willard said:

The zeal for her race of Miss Ida B. Wells, a bright young colored

woman, has, it seems to me, clouded her perception as to who were her

friends and well-wishers in all high-minded and legitimate efforts to

banish the abomination of lynching and torture from the land of the free

and the home of the brave. It is my firm belief that in the statements

made by Miss Wells concerning white women having taken the initiative

in nameless acts between the races she has put an imputation upon half

the white race in this country that is unjust, and, save in the rarest

exceptional instances, wholly without foundation. This is the unanimous

opinion of the most disinterested and observant leaders of opinion whom

I have consulted on the subject, and I do not fear to say that the

laudable efforts she is making are greatly handicapped by statements of

this kind, nor to urge her as a friend and well-wisher to banish from

her vocabulary all such allusions as a source of weakness to the cause

she has at heart.

This paragraph, brief as it is, contains two statements which have not the

slightest foundation in fact. At no time, nor in any place, have I made

statements "concerning white women having taken the initiative in nameless

acts between the races." Further, at no time, or place nor under any

circumstance, have I directly or inferentially "put an imputation upon

half the white race in this country" and I challenge this "friend and

well-wisher" to give proof of the truth of her charge. Miss Willard

protests against lynching in one paragraph and then, in the next,

deliberately misrepresents my position in order that she may criticise a

movement, whose only purpose is to protect our oppressed race from

vindictive slander and Lynch Law.

What I have said and what I now repeat--in answer to her first charge--is,

that colored men have been lynched for assault upon women, when the facts

were plain that the relationship between the victim lynched and the

alleged victim of his assault was voluntary, clandestine and illicit. For

that very reason we maintain, that, in every section of our land, the

accused should have a fair, impartial trial, so that a man who is colored

shall not be hanged for an offense, which, if he were white, would not be

adjudged a crime. Facts cited in another chapter--"History of Some Cases

of Rape"--amply maintain this position. The publication of these facts in

defense of the good name of the race casts no "imputation upon half the

white race in this country" and no such imputation can be inferred except

by persons deliberately determined to be unjust.

But this is not the only injury which this cause has suffered at the hands

of our "friend and well-wisher." It has been said that the Women's

Christian Temperance Union, the most powerful organization of women in

America, was misrepresented by me while I was in England. Miss Willard was

in England at the time and knowing that no such misrepresentation came to

her notice, she has permitted that impression to become fixed and

widespread, when a word from her would have made the facts plain.

I never at any time or place or in any way misrepresented that

organization. When asked what concerted action had been taken by churches

and great moral agencies in America to put down Lynch Law, I was compelled

in truth to say that no such action had occurred, that pulpit, press and

moral agencies in the main were silent and for reasons known to

themselves, ignored the awful conditions which to the English people

appeared so abhorent. Then the question was asked what the great moral

reformers like Miss Frances Willard and Mr. Moody had done to suppress

Lynch Law and again I answered nothing. That Mr. Moody had never said a

word against lynching in any of his trips to the South, or in the North

either, so far as was known, and that Miss Willard's only public utterance

on the situation had condoned lynching and other unjust practices of the

South against the Negro. When proof of these statements was demanded, I

sent a letter containing a copy of the _New York Voice_, Oct. 23,1890, in

which appeared Miss Willard's own words of wholesale slander against the

colored race and condonation of Southern white people's outrages against

us. My letter in part reads as follows:

But Miss Willard, the great temperance leader, went even further in

putting the seal of her approval upon the southerners' method of dealing

with the Negro. In October, 1890, the Women's Christian Temperance Union

held its national meeting at Atlanta, Georgia. It was the first time in

the history of the organization that it had gone south for a national

meeting, and met the southerners in their own homes. They were welcomed

with open arms. The governor of the state and the legislature gave

special audiences in the halls of state legislation to the temperance

workers. They set out to capture the northerners to their way of seeing

things, and without troubling to hear the Negro side of the question,

these temperance people accepted the white man's story of the problem

with which he had to deal. State organizers were appointed that year,

who had gone through the southern states since then, but in obedience to

southern prejudices have confined their work to white persons only. It

is only after Negroes are in prison for crimes that efforts of these

temperance women are exerted without regard to "race, color, or previous

condition." No "ounce of prevention" is used in their case; they are

black, and if these women went among the Negroes for this work, the

whites would not receive them. Except here and there, are found no

temperance workers of the Negro race; "the great dark-faced mobs" are

left the easy prey of the saloonkeepers.

There was pending in the National Congress at this time a Federal

Election Bill, the object being to give the National Government control

of the national elections in the several states. Had this bill become a

law, the Negro, whose vote has been systematically suppressed since 1875

in the southern states, would have had the protection of the National

Government, and his vote counted. The South would have been no longer

"solid"; the Southerners saw that the balance of power which they

unlawfully held in the House of Representatives and the Electoral

College, based on the Negro population, would be wrested from them. So

they nick-named the pending elections law the "Force Bill"--probably

because it would force them to disgorge their ill-gotten political

gains--and defeated it. While it was being discussed, the question was

submitted to Miss Willard: "What do you think of the race problem and

the Force Bill?"

Said Miss Willard: "Now, as to the 'race problem' in its minified,

current meaning, I am a true lover of the southern people--have spoken

and worked in, perhaps, 200 of their towns and cities; have been taken

into their love and confidence at scores of hospitable firesides; have

heard them pour out their hearts in the splendid frankness of their

impetuous natures. And I have said to them at such times: 'When I go

North there will be wafted to you no word from pen or voice that is not

loyal to what we are saying here and now.' Going South, a woman, a

temperance woman, and a Northern temperance woman--three great barriers

to their good will yonder--I was received by them with a confidence that

was one of the most delightful surprises of my life. I think we have

wronged the South, though we did not mean to do so. The reason was, in

part, that we had irreparably wronged ourselves by putting no safeguards

on the ballot box at the North that would sift out alien illiterates.

They rule our cities today; the saloon is their palace, and the toddy

stick their sceptre. It is not fair that they should vote, nor is it

fair that a plantation Negro, who can neither read nor write, whose

ideas are bounded by the fence of his own field and the price of his own

mule, should be entrusted with the ballot. We ought to have put an

educational test upon that ballot from the first. The Anglo-Saxon race

will never submit to be dominated by the Negro so long as his altitude

reaches no higher than the personal liberty of the saloon, and the power

of appreciating the amount of liquor that a dollar will buy. New England

would no more submit to this than South Carolina. 'Better whisky and

more of it' has been the rallying cry of great dark-faced mobs in the

Southern localities where local option was snowed under by the colored

vote. Temperance has no enemy like that, for it is unreasoning and

unreasonable. Tonight it promises in a great congregation to vote for

temperance at the polls tomorrow; but tomorrow twenty-five cents changes

that vote in favor of the liquor-seller.

"I pity the southerners, and I believe the great mass of them are as

conscientious and kindly intentioned toward the colored man as an equal

number of white church-members of the North. Would-be demagogues lead

the colored people to destruction. Half-drunken white roughs murder them

at the polls, or intimidate them so that they do not vote. But the

better class of people must not be blamed for this, and a more

thoroughly American population than the Christian people of the South

does not exist. They have the traditions, the kindness, the probity, the

courage of our forefathers. The problem on their hands is immeasurable.

The colored race multiplies like the locusts of Egypt. The grog-shop is

its center of power. 'The safety of woman, of childhood, of the home, is

menaced in a thousand localities at this moment, so that the men dare

not go beyond the sight of their own roof-tree.' How little we know of

all this, seated in comfort and affluence here at the North, descanting

upon the rights of every man to cast one vote and have it fairly

counted; that well-worn shibboleth invoked once more to dodge a living

issue.

"The fact is that illiterate colored men will not vote at the South

until the white population chooses to have them do so; and under similar

conditions they would not at the North." Here we have Miss Willard's

words in full, condoning fraud, violence, murder, at the ballot box;

rapine, shooting, hanging and burning; for all these things are done and

being done now by the Southern white people. She does not stop there,

but goes a step further to aid them in blackening the good name of an

entire race, as shown by the sentences quoted in the paragraph above.

These utterances, for which the colored people have never forgiven Miss

Willard, and which Frederick Douglass has denounced as false, are to be

found in full in the Voice of October 23,1890, a temperance organ

published at New York City.

This letter appeared in the May number of _Fraternity_, the organ of the

first Anti-Lynching society of Great Britain. When Lady Henry Somerset

learned through Miss Florence Balgarnie that this letter had been

published she informed me that if the interview was published she would

take steps to let the public know that my statements must be received with

caution. As I had no money to pay the printer to suppress the edition

which was already published and these ladies did not care to do so, the

May number of _Fraternity_ was sent to its subscribers as usual. Three

days later there appeared in the daily _Westminster Gazette_ an

"interview" with Miss Willard, written by Lady Henry Somerset, which was

so subtly unjust in its wording that I was forced to reply in my own

defense. In that reply I made only statements which, like those concerning

Miss Willard's _Voice_ interview, have not been and cannot be denied. It

was as follows:

LADY HENRY SOMERSET'S INTERVIEW WITH MISS WILLARD

To the Editor of the _Westminster Gazette_: Sir--The interview published

in your columns today hardly merits a reply, because of the indifference

to suffering manifested. Two ladies are represented sitting under a tree

at Reigate, and, after some preliminary remarks on the terrible subject

of lynching, Miss Willard laughingly replies by cracking a joke. And the

concluding sentence of the interview shows the object is not to

determine how best they may help the Negro who is being hanged, shot and

burned, but "to guard Miss Willard's reputation."

With me it is not myself nor my reputation, but the life of my people,

which is at stake, and I affirm that this is the first time to my

knowledge that Miss Willard has said a single word in denunciation of

lynching or demand for law. The year 1890, the one in which the

interview appears, had a larger lynching record than any previous year,

and the number and territory have increased, to say nothing of the human

beings burnt alive.

If so earnest as she would have the English public believe her to be,

why was she silent when five minutes were given me to speak last June at

Princes' Hall, and in Holborn Town Hall this May? I should say it was as

President of the Women's Christian Temperance Union of America she is

timid, because all these unions in the South emphasize the hatred of the

Negro by excluding him. There is not a single colored woman admitted to

the Southern W.C.T.U., but still Miss Willard blames the Negro for the

defeat of Prohibition in the South. Miss Willard quotes from

_Fraternity_, but forgets to add my immediate recognition of her

presence on the platform at Holborn Town Hall, when, amidst many other

resolutions on temperance and other subjects in which she is interested,

time was granted to carry an anti-lynching resolution. I was so thankful

for this crumb of her speechless presence that I hurried off to the

editor of _Fraternity_ and added a postscript to my article blazoning

forth that fact.

Any statements I have made concerning Miss Willard are confirmed by the

Hon. Frederick Douglass (late United States minister to Hayti) in a

speech delivered by him in Washington in January of this year, which has

since been published in a pamphlet. The fact is, Miss Willard is no

better or worse than the great bulk of white Americans on the Negro

questions. They are all afraid to speak out, and it is only British

public opinion which will move them, as I am thankful to see it has

already begun to move Miss Willard. I am, etc.,

May 21

IDA B. WELLS

Unable to deny the truth of these assertions, the charge has been made

that I have attacked Miss Willard and misrepresented the W.C.T.U. If to

state facts is misrepresentation, then I plead guilty to the charge.

I said then and repeat now, that in all the ten terrible years of

shooting, hanging and burning of men, women and children in America, the

Women's Christian Temperance Union never suggested one plan or made one

move to prevent those awful crimes. If this statement is untrue the

records of that organization would disprove it before the ink is dry. It

is clearly an issue of fact and in all fairness this charge of

misrepresentation should either be substantiated or withdrawn.

It is not necessary, however, to make any representation concerning the

W.C.T.U. and the lynching question. The record of that organization speaks

for itself. During all the years prior to the agitation begun against

Lynch Law, in which years men, women and children were scourged, hanged,

shot and burned, the W.C.T.U. had no word, either of pity or protest; its

great heart, which concerns itself about humanity the world over, was,

toward our cause, pulseless as a stone. Let those who deny this speak by

the record. Not until after the first British campaign, in 1893, was even

a resolution passed by the body which is the self-constituted guardian for

"God, home and native land."

Nor need we go back to other years. The annual session of that

organization held in Cleveland in November, 1894, made a record which

confirms and emphasizes the silence charged against it. At that session,

earnest efforts were made to secure the adoption of a resolution of

protest against lynching. At that very time two men were being tried for

the murder of six colored men who were arrested on charge of barn burning,

chained together, and on pretense of being taken to jail, were driven into

the woods where they were ambushed and all six shot to death. The six

widows of the butchered men had just finished the most pathetic recital

ever heard in any court room, and the mute appeal of twenty-seven orphans

for justice touched the stoutest hearts. Only two weeks prior to the

session, Gov. Jones of Alabama, in his last message to the retiring state

legislature, cited the fact that in the two years just past, nine colored

men had been taken from the legal authorities by lynching mobs and

butchered in cold blood--and not one of these victims was even charged

with an assault upon womanhood.

It was thought that this great organization, in face of these facts, would

not hesitate to place itself on record in a resolution of protest against

this awful brutality towards colored people. Miss Willard gave assurance

that such a resolution would be adopted, and that assurance was relied on.

The record of the session shows in what good faith that assurance was

kept. After recommending an expression against Lynch Law, the President

attacked the antilynching movement, deliberately misrepresenting my

position, and in her annual address, charging me with a statement I never

made.

Further than that, when the committee on resolutions reported their work,

not a word was said against lynching. In the interest of the cause I

smothered the resentment. I felt because of the unwarranted and unjust

attack of the President, and labored with members to secure an expression

of some kind, tending to abate the awful slaughter of my race. A

resolution against lynching was introduced by Mrs. Fessenden and read, and

then that great Christian body, which in its resolutions had expressed

itself in opposition to the social amusement of card playing, athletic

sports and promiscuous dancing; had protested against the licensing of

saloons, inveighed against tobacco, pledged its allegiance to the

Prohibition party, and thanked the Populist party in Kansas, the

Republican party in California and the Democratic party in the South,

wholly ignored the seven millions of colored people of this country whose

plea was for a word of sympathy and support for the movement in their

behalf. The resolution was not adopted, and the convention adjourned.

In the _Union Signal_ Dec. 6, 1894, among the resolutions is found this

one:

Resolved, That the National W.C.T.U, which has for years counted among

its departments that of peace and arbitration, is utterly opposed to all

lawless acts in any and all parts of our common lands and it urges these

principles upon the public, praying that the time may speedily come

when no human being shall be condemned without due process of law; and

when the unspeakable outrages which have so often provoked such

lawlessness shall be banished from the world, and childhood, maidenhood

and womanhood shall no more be the victims of atrocities worse than

death.

This is not the resolution offered by Mrs. Fessenden. She offered the one

passed last year by the W.C.T.U. which was a strong unequivocal

denunciation of lynching. But she was told by the chairman of the

committee on resolutions, Mrs. Rounds, that there was already a lynching

resolution in the hands of the committee. Mrs. Fessenden yielded the floor

on that assurance, and no resolution of any kind against lynching was

submitted and none was voted upon, not even the one above, taken from the

columns of the _Union Signal_, the organ of the national W.C.T.U!

Even the wording of this resolution which was printed by the W.C.T.U.,

reiterates the false and unjust charge which has been so often made as an

excuse for lynchers. Statistics show that less than one-third of the

lynching victims are hanged, shot and burned alive for "unspeakable

outrages against womanhood, maidenhood and childhood;" and that nearly a

thousand, including women and children, have been lynched upon any pretext

whatsoever; and that all have met death upon the unsupported word of white

men and women. Despite these facts this resolution which was printed,

cloaks an apology for lawlessness, in the same paragraph which affects to

condemn it, where it speaks of "the unspeakable outrages which have so

often provoked such lawlessness."

Miss Willard told me the day before the resolutions were offered that the

Southern women present had held a caucus that day. This was after I, as

fraternal delegate from the Woman's Mite Missionary Society of the A.M.E.

Church at Cleveland, O., had been introduced to tender its greetings. In

so doing I expressed the hope of the colored women that the W.C.T.U. would

place itself on record as opposed to lynching which robbed them of

husbands, fathers, brothers and sons and in many cases of women as well.

No note was made either in the daily papers or the _Union Signal_ of that

introduction and greeting, although every other incident of that morning

was published. The failure to submit a lynching resolution and the wording

of the one above appears to have been the result of that Southern caucus.

On the same day I had a private talk with Miss Willard and told her she

had been unjust to me and the cause in her annual address, and asked that

she correct the statement that I had misrepresented the W.C.T.U, or that I

had "put an imputation on one-half the white race in this country." She

said that somebody in England told her it was a pity that I attacked the

white women of America. "Oh," said I, "then you went out of your way to

prejudice me and my cause in your annual address, not upon what you had

heard me say, but what somebody had told you I said?" Her reply was that I

must not blame her for her rhetorical expressions--that I had my way of

expressing things and she had hers. I told her I most assuredly did blame

her when those expressions were calculated to do such harm. I waited for

an honest an unequivocal retraction of her statements based on "hearsay."

Not a word of retraction or explanation was said in the convention and I

remained misrepresented before that body through her connivance and

consent.

The editorial notes in the _Union Signal_, Dec. 6, 1894, however, contains

the following:

In her repudiation of the charges brought by Miss Ida Wells against

white women as having taken the initiative in nameless crimes between

the races, Miss Willard said in her annual address that this statement

"put an unjust imputation upon half the white race." But as this

expression has been misunderstood she desires to declare that she did

not intend a literal interpretation to be given to the language used,

but employed it to express a tendency that might ensue in public thought

as a result of utterances so sweeping as some that have been made by

Miss Wells.

Because this explanation is as unjust as the original offense, I am forced

in self-defense to submit this account of differences. I desire no quarrel

with the W.C.T.U., but my love for the truth is greater than my regard for

an alleged friend who, through ignorance or design misrepresents in the

most harmful way the cause of a long suffering race, and then unable to

maintain the truth of her attack excuses herself as it were by the wave of

the hand, declaring that "she did not intend a literal interpretation to

be given to the language used." When the lives of men, women and children

are at stake, when the inhuman butchers of innocents attempt to justify

their barbarism by fastening upon a whole race the obloque of the most

infamous of crimes, it is little less than criminal to apologize for the

butchers today and tomorrow to repudiate the apology by declaring it a

figure of speech.

9

LYNCHING RECORD FOR 1894

The following tables are based on statistics taken from the columns of the

_Chicago Tribune_, Jan. 1, 1895. They are a valuable appendix to the

foregoing pages. They show, among other things, that in Louisiana, April

23-28, eight Negroes were lynched because one white man was killed by the

Negro, the latter acting in self defense. Only seven of them are given in

the list.

Near Memphis, Tenn., six Negroes were lynched--this time charged with

burning barns. A trial of the indicted resulted in an acquittal, although

it was shown on trial that the lynching was prearranged for them. Six

widows and twenty-seven orphans are indebted to this mob for their

condition, and this lynching swells the number to eleven Negroes lynched

in and about Memphis since March 9, 1892.

In Brooks County, Ga., Dec. 23, while this Christian country was preparing

for Christmas celebration, seven Negroes were lynched in twenty-four hours

because they refused, or were unable to tell the whereabouts of a colored

man named Pike, who killed a white man. The wives and daughters of these

lynched men were horribly and brutally outraged by the murderers of their

husbands and fathers. But the mob has not been punished and again women

and children are robbed of their protectors whose blood cries unavenged to

Heaven and humanity. Georgia heads the list of lynching states.

MURDER

Jan. 9, Samuel Smith, Greenville, Ala., Jan. 11, Sherman Wagoner,

Mitchell, Ind.; Jan. 12, Roscoe Parker, West Union, Ohio; Feb. 7, Henry

Bruce, Gulch Co., Ark.; March 5, Sylvester Rhodes, Collins, Ga.; March 15,

Richard Puryea, Stroudsburg, Pa.; March 29, Oliver Jackson, Montgomery,

Ala.; March 30, ---- Saybrick, Fisher's Ferry, Miss.; April 14, William

Lewis, Lanison, Ala.; April 23, Jefferson Luggle, Cherokee, Kan.; April

23, Samuel Slaugate, Tallulah, La.; April 23, Thomas Claxton, Tallulah,

La.; April 23, David Hawkins, Tallulah, La.; April 27, Thel Claxton,

Tallulah, La.; April 27, Comp Claxton, Tallulah, La.; April 27, Scot

Harvey, Tallulah, La.; April 27, Jerry McCly, Tallulah, La.; May 17, Henry

Scott, Jefferson, Tex.; May 15, Coat Williams, Pine Grove, Fla.; June 2,

Jefferson Crawford, Bethesda, S.C.; June 4, Thondo Underwood, Monroe, La.;

June 8, Isaac Kemp, Cape Charles, Va.; June 13, Lon Hall, Sweethouse,

Tex.; June 13, Bascom Cook, Sweethouse, Tex.; June 15, Luke Thomas,

Biloxi, Miss.; June 29, John Williams, Sulphur, Tex.; June 29, Ulysses

Hayden, Monett, Mo.; July 6, ---- Hood, Amite, Miss.; July 7, James Bell,

Charlotte, Tenn.; Sept. 2, Henderson Hollander, Elkhorn, W. Va.; Sept. 14,

Robert Williams, Concordia Parish, La.; Sept. 22, Luke Washington, Meghee,

Ark.; Sept. 22, Richard Washington, Meghee, Ark.; Sept. 22, Henry

Crobyson, Meghee, Ark.; Nov. 10, Lawrence Younger, Lloyd, Va.; Dec. 17,

unknown Negro, Williamston, S.C.; Dec. 23, Samuel Taylor, Brooks County,

Ga.; Dec. 23, Charles Frazier, Brooks County, Ga.; Dec. 23, Samuel Pike,

Brooks County, Ga.; Dec. 22, Harry Sherard, Brooks County, Ga.; Dec. 23,

unknown Negro, Brooks County, Ga.; Dec. 23, unknown Negro, Brooks County,

Ga.; Dec. 23, unknown Negro, Brooks County, Ga.; Dec. 26, Daniel McDonald,

Winston County, Miss.; Dec. 23, William Carter, Winston County, Miss.

RAPE

Jan. 17, John Buckner, Valley Park, Mo.; Jan. 21, M.G. Cambell, Jellico

Mines, Ky.; Jan. 27, unknown, Verona, Mo.; Feb. 11, Henry McCreeg, near

Pioneer, Tenn.; April 6, Daniel Ahren, Greensboro, Ga.; April 15, Seymour

Newland, Rushsylvania, Ohio; April 26, Robert Evarts, Jamaica, Ga.; April

27, James Robinson, Manassas, Va.; April 27, Benjamin White, Manassas,

Va.; May 15, Nim Young, Ocala, Fla.; May 22, unknown, Miller County, Ga.;

June 13, unknown, Blackshear, Ga.; June 18, Owen Opliltree, Forsyth, Ga.;

June 22, Henry Capus, Magnolia, Ark.; June 26, Caleb Godly, Bowling Green,

Ky.; June 28, Fayette Franklin, Mitchell, Ga.; July 2, Joseph Johnson,

Hiller's Creek, Mo.; July 6, Lewis Bankhead, Cooper, Ala.; July 16, Marion

Howard, Scottsville, Ky.; July 20, William Griffith, Woodville, Tex.; Aug.

12, William Nershbread, Rossville, Tenn.; Aug. 14, Marshall Boston,

Frankfort, Ky; Sept. 19, David Gooseby, Atlanta, Ga.; Oct. 15, Willis

Griffey, Princeton, Ky; Nov. 8, Lee Lawrence, Jasper County, Ga.; Nov. 10,

Needham Smith, Tipton County, Tenn.; Nov. 14, Robert Mosely, Dolinite,

Ala.; Dec. 4, William Jackson, Ocala, Fla.; Dec. 18, unknown, Marion

County, Fla.

UNKNOWN OFFENSES

March 6, Lamsen Gregory, Bell's Depot, Tenn.; March 6, unknown woman, near

Marche, Ark.; April 14, Alfred Brenn, Calhoun, Ga.; June 8, Harry Gill,

West Lancaster, S.C.; Nov. 23, unknown, Landrum, S.C.; Dec. 5, Mrs. Teddy

Arthur, Lincoln County, W. Va.

DESPERADO

Jan. 14, Charles Willis, Ocala, Fla.

SUSPECTED INCENDIARISM

Jan. 18, unknown, Bayou Sarah, La.

SUSPECTED ARSON

June 14, J.H. Dave, Monroe, La.

ENTICING SERVANT AWAY

Feb. 10, ---- Collins, Athens, Ga.

TRAIN WRECKING

Feb. 10, Jesse Dillingham, Smokeyville, Tex.

HIGHWAY ROBBERY

June 3, unknown, Dublin, Ga.

INCENDIARISM

Nov. 8, Gabe Nalls, Blackford, Ky.; Nov. 8, Ulysses Nails, Blackford, Ky.

ARSON

Dec. 20, James Allen, Brownsville, Tex.

ASSAULT

Dec. 23, George King, New Orleans, La.

NO OFFENSE

Dec. 28, Scott Sherman, Morehouse Parish, La.

BURGLARY

May 29, Henry Smith, Clinton, Miss.; May 29, William James, Clinton,

Miss.

ALLEGED RAPE

June 4, Ready Murdock, Yazoo, Miss.

ATTEMPTED RAPE

July 14, unknown Negro, Biloxi, Miss.; July 26, Vance McClure, New Iberia,

La.; July 26, William Tyler, Carlisle, Ky.; Sept. 14, James Smith, Stark,

Fla.; Oct. 8, Henry Gibson, Fairfield, Tex.; Oct. 20, ---- Williams, Upper

Marlboro, Md.; June 9, Lewis Williams, Hewett Springs, Miss.; June 28,

George Linton, Brookhaven, Miss.; June 28, Edward White, Hudson, Ala.;

July 6, George Pond, Fulton, Miss.; July 7, Augustus Pond, Tupelo, Miss.

RACE PREJUDICE

June 10, Mark Jacobs, Bienville, La.; July 24, unknown woman, Sampson

County, Miss.

INTRODUCING SMALLPOX

June 10, James Perry, Knoxville, Ark.

KIDNAPPING

March 2, Lentige, Harland County, Ky.

CONSPIRACY

May 29, J.T. Burgis, Palatka, Fla.

HORSE STEALING

June 20, Archie Haynes, Mason County, Ky.; June 20, Burt Haynes, Mason

County, Ky.; June 20, William Haynes, Mason County, Ky.

WRITING LETTER TO WHITE WOMAN

May 9, unknown Negro, West Texas.

GIVING INFORMATION

July 12, James Nelson, Abbeyville, S.C.

STEALING

Jan. 5, Alfred Davis, Live Oak County, Ark.

LARCENY

April 18, Henry Montgomery, Lewisburg, Tenn.

POLITICAL CAUSES

July 19, John Brownlee, Oxford, Ala.

CONJURING

July 20, Allen Myers, Rankin County, Miss.

ATTEMPTED MURDER

June 1, Frank Ballard, Jackson, Tenn.

ALLEGED MURDER

April 5, Negro, near Selma, Ala.; April 5, Negro, near Selma, Ala.

WITHOUT CAUSE

May 17, Samuel Wood, Gates City, Va.

BARN BURNING

April 22, Thomas Black, Tuscumbia, Ala.; April 22, John Williams,

Tuscumbia, Ala.; April 22, Toney Johnson, Tuscumbia, Ala.; July 14,

William Bell, Dixon, Tenn.; Sept. 1, Daniel Hawkins, Millington, Tenn.;

Sept. 1, Robert Haynes, Millington, Tenn.; Sept. 1, Warner Williams,

Millington, Tenn.; Sept. 1, Edward Hall, Millington, Tenn.; Sept. 1, John

Haynes, Millington, Tenn.; Sept. 1, Graham White, Millington, Tenn.

ASKING WHITE WOMAN TO MARRY HIM

May 23, William Brooks, Galesline, Ark.

OFFENSES CHARGED FOR LYNCHING

Suspected arson, 2; stealing, 1; political causes, 1; murder, 45; rape,

29; desperado, 1; suspected incendiarism, 1; train wrecking, 1; enticing

servant away, 1; kidnapping, 1; unknown offense, 6; larceny, 1; barn

burning, 10; writing letters to a white woman, 1; without cause, 1;

burglary, 1; asking white woman to marry, 1; conspiracy, 1; attempted

murder, 1; horse stealing, 3; highway robbery, 1; alleged rape, 1;

attempted rape, 11; race prejudice, 2; introducing smallpox, 1; giving

information, 1; conjuring, 1; incendiarism, 2; arson, 1; assault, 1; no

offense, 1; alleged murder, 2; total (colored), 134.

LYNCHING STATES

Mississippi, 15; Arkansas, 8; Virginia, 5; Tennessee, 15; Alabama, 12;

Kentucky, 12; Texas, 9; Georgia, 19; South Carolina, 5; Florida, 7;

Louisiana, 15; Missouri, 4; Ohio, 2; Maryland, 1; West Virginia, 2;

Indiana, 1; Kansas, 1; Pennsylvania, 1.

LYNCHING BY THE MONTH

January, 11; February, 17; March, 8; April, 36; May, 16; June, 31; July,

21; August, 4; September, 17; October, 7; November, 9; December, 20; total

colored and white, 197.

WOMEN LYNCHED

July 24, unknown woman, race prejudice, Sampson County, Miss.; March 6,

unknown, woman, unknown offense, Marche, Ark.; Dec. 5, Mrs. Teddy Arthur,

unknown cause, Lincoln County, W. Va.

10

THE REMEDY

It is a well-established principle of law that every wrong has a remedy.

Herein rests our respect for law. The Negro does not claim that all of the

one thousand black men, women and children, who have been hanged, shot and

burned alive during the past ten years, were innocent of the charges made

against them. We have associated too long with the white man not to have

copied his vices as well as his virtues. But we do insist that the

punishment is not the same for both classes of criminals. In lynching,

opportunity is not given the Negro to defend himself against the

unsupported accusations of white men and women. The word of the accuser is

held to be true and the excited bloodthirsty mob demands that the rule of

law be reversed and instead of proving the accused to be guilty, the

victim of their hate and revenge must prove himself innocent. No evidence

he can offer will satisfy the mob; he is bound hand and foot and swung

into eternity. Then to excuse its infamy, the mob almost invariably

reports the monstrous falsehood that its victim made a full confession

before he was hanged.

With all military, legal and political power in their hands, only two of

the lynching States have attempted a check by exercising the power which

is theirs. Mayor Trout, of Roanoke, Virginia, called out the militia in

1893, to protect a Negro prisoner, and in so doing nine men were killed

and a number wounded. Then the mayor and militia withdrew, left the Negro

to his fate and he was promptly lynched. The business men realized the

blow to the town's were given light sentences, the highest being one of

twelve financial interests, called the mayor home, the grand jury

indicted and prosecuted the ringleaders of the mob. They months in State

prison. The day he arrived at the penitentiary, he was pardoned by the

governor of the State.

The only other real attempt made by the authorities to protect a prisoner

of the law, and which was more successful, was that of Gov. McKinley, of

Ohio, who sent the militia to Washington Courthouse, O., in October, 1894,

and five men were killed and twenty wounded in maintaining the principle

that the law must be upheld.

In South Carolina, in April, 1893, Gov. Tillman aided the mob by yielding

up to be killed, a prisoner of the law, who had voluntarily placed himself

under the Governor's protection. Public sentiment by its representatives

has encouraged Lynch Law, and upon the revolution of this sentiment we

must depend for its abolition.

Therefore, we demand a fair trial by law for those accused of crime, and

punishment by law after honest conviction. No maudlin sympathy for

criminals is solicited, but we do ask that the law shall punish all alike.

We earnestly desire those that control the forces which make public

sentiment to join with us in the demand. Surely the humanitarian spirit of

this country which reaches out to denounce the treatment of the Russian

Jews, the Armenian Christians, the laboring poor of Europe, the Siberian

exiles and the native women of India--will not longer refuse to lift its

voice on this subject. If it were known that the cannibals or the savage

Indians had burned three human beings alive in the past two years, the

whole of Christendom would be roused, to devise ways and means to put a

stop to it. Can you remain silent and inactive when such things are done

in our own community and country? Is your duty to humanity in the United

States less binding?

What can you do, reader, to prevent lynching, to thwart anarchy and

promote law and order throughout our land?

1st. You can help disseminate the facts contained in this book by bringing

them to the knowledge of every one with whom you come in contact, to the

end that public sentiment may be revolutionized. Let the facts speak for

themselves, with you as a medium.

2d. You can be instrumental in having churches, missionary societies,

Y.M.C.A.'s, W.C.T.U.'s and all Christian and moral forces in connection

with your religious and social life, pass resolutions of condemnation and

protest every time a lynching takes place; and see that they axe sent to

the place where these outrages occur.

3d. Bring to the intelligent consideration of Southern people the refusal

of capital to invest where lawlessness and mob violence hold sway. Many

labor organizations have declared by resolution that they would avoid

lynch infested localities as they would the pestilence when seeking new

homes. If the South wishes to build up its waste places quickly, there is

no better way than to uphold the majesty of the law by enforcing obedience

to the same, and meting out the same punishment to all classes of

criminals, white as well as black. "Equality before the law," must become

a fact as well as a theory before America is truly the "land of the free

and the home of the brave."

4th. Think and act on independent lines in this behalf, remembering that

after all, it is the white man's civilization and the white man's

government which are on trial. This crusade will determine whether that

civilization can maintain itself by itself, or whether anarchy shall

prevail; Whether this Nation shall write itself down a success at self

government, or in deepest humiliation admit its failure complete; whether

the precepts and theories of Christianity are professed and practiced by

American white people as Golden Rules of thought and action, or adopted as

a system of morals to be preached to, heathen until they attain to the

intelligence which needs the system of Lynch Law.

5th. Congressman Blair offered a resolution in the House of

Representatives, August, 1894. The organized life of the country can

speedily make this a law by sending resolutions to Congress indorsing Mr.

Blair's bill and asking Congress to create the commission. In no better

way can the question be settled, and the Negro does not fear the issue.

The following is the resolution:

Resolved, By the House of Representatives and Senate in congress

assembled, That the committee on labor be instructed to investigate and

report the number, location and date of all alleged assaults by males

upon females throughout the country during the ten years last preceding

the passing of this joint resolution, for or on account of which

organized but unlawful violence has been inflicted or attempted to be

inflicted. Also to ascertain and report all facts of organized but

unlawful violence to the person, with the attendant facts and

circumstances, which have been inflicted upon accused persons alleged to

have been guilty of crimes punishable by due process of law which have

taken place in any part of the country within the ten years last

preceding the passage of this resolution. Such investigation shall be

made by the usual methods and agencies of the Department of Labor, and

report made to Congress as soon as the work can be satisfactorily done,

and the sum of $25,000, or so much thereof as may be necessary, is

hereby appropriated to pay the expenses out of any money in the treasury

not otherwise appropriated.

The belief has been constantly expressed in England that in the United

States, which has produced Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, James

Russell Lowell, John G. Whittier and Abraham Lincoln there must be those

of their descendants who would take hold of the work of inaugurating an

era of law and order. The colored people of this country who have been

loyal to the flag believe the same, and strong in that belief have begun

this crusade. To those who still feel they have no obligation in the

matter, we commend the following lines of Lowell on "Freedom."

Men! whose boast it is that ye

Come of fathers brave and free,

If there breathe on earth a slave

Are ye truly free and brave?

If ye do not feel the chain,

When it works a brother's pain,

Are ye not base slaves indeed,

Slaves unworthy to be freed?

Women! who shall one day bear

Sons to breathe New England air,

If ye hear without a blush,

Deeds to make the roused blood rush

Like red lava through your veins,

For your sisters now in chains,--

Answer! are ye fit to be

Mothers of the brave and free?

Is true freedom but to break

Fetters for our own dear sake,

And, with leathern hearts, forget

That we owe mankind a debt?

No! true freedom is to share

All the chains our brothers wear,

And, with heart and hand, to be

Earnest to make others free!

There are slaves who fear to speak

For the fallen and the weak;

They are slaves who will not choose

Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,

Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think;

They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three.

A FIELD FOR PRACTICAL WORK

The very frequent inquiry made after my lectures by interested friends is

"What can I do to help the cause?" The answer always is: "Tell the world

the facts." When the Christian world knows the alarming growth and extent

of outlawry in our land, some means will be found to stop it.

The object of this publication is to tell the facts, and friends of the

cause can lend a helping hand by aiding in the distribution of these

books. When I present our cause to a minister, editor, lecturer, or

representative of any moral agency, the first demand is for facts and

figures. Plainly, I can not then hand out a book with a twenty-five-cent

tariff on the information contained. This would be only a new method in

the book agents' art. In all such cases it is a pleasure to submit this

book for investigation, with the certain assurance of gaining a friend to

the cause.

There are many agencies which may be enlisted in our cause by the general

circulation of the facts herein contained. The preachers, teachers,

editors and humanitarians of the white race, at home and abroad, must have

facts laid before them, and it is our duty to supply these facts. The

Central Anti-Lynching League, Room 9, 128 Clark St., Chicago, has

established a Free Distribution Fund, the work of which can be promoted by

all who are interested in this work.

Antilynching leagues, societies and individuals can order books from this

fund at agents' rates. The books will be sent to their order, or, if

desired, will be distributed by the League among those whose cooperative

aid we so greatly need. The writer hereof assures prompt distribution of

books according to order, and public acknowledgment of all orders through

the public press.