[Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1892 but wassubsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spellingdate back to the original or were introduced later; they have beenretained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify withanother source before quoting this material. ]

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

1892, 1893, 1894

By Ida B. Wells-Barnett

PREFACE

The greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the_New York Age_ June 25, 1892, in explanation of the editorial which theMemphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destructionof my paper, the _Free Speech_. 

Since the appearance of that statement, requests have come from all partsof the country that "Exiled" (the name under which it then appeared) beissued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for thatpurpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5have enabled me to comply with this request and give the world a true, unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South. 

This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogethera defense for the poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselvesto be betrayed by white Delilahs. It is a contribution to truth, an arrayof facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this greatAmerican Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall. 

It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption hereexposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinnedagainst than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. Theawful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, notonly because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to thevictims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it placesagainst the good name of a weak race. 

The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute inany way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience ofthe American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, andpunishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race aservice. Other considerations are of minor importance. 

IDA B. WELLS_New York City_, Oct. 26, 1892

To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love, earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York, on the night of October 5, 1892--made possible its publication, thispamphlet is gratefully dedicated by the author. 

HON. FRED. DOUGLASS'S LETTER

_Dear Miss Wells:_

Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abominationnow generally practiced against colored people in the South. There hasbeen no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my wordis feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actualknowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelityand left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. 

Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which canneither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only halfalive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, ifAmerican moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction ofoutrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame andindignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. 

But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditionsfavorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted byearth and Heaven yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in thepower of a merciful God for final deliverance. 

Very truly and gratefully yours, FREDERICK DOUGLASS_Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D. C. _, Oct. 25, 1892

1 _The_ OFFENSE

Wednesday evening May 24, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled withexcitement. Editorials in the daily papers of that date caused a meetingto be held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for theeditors of the _Free Speech_ an Afro-American journal published in thatcity, and the only reason the open threats of lynching that were made werenot carried out was because they could not be found. The cause of all thiscommotion was the following editorial published in the _Free Speech_ May21, 1892, the Saturday previous. 

 Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the _Free Speech_ one at Little Rock, Ark. , last Saturday morning where the citizens broke(?) into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala. , one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga. , the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket--the new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter. 

 Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. 

The _Daily Commercial_ of Wednesday following, May 25, contained thefollowing leader:

 Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of individuals of their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind are playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand that there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his defenders. A negro organ printed in this city, in a recent issue publishes the following atrocious paragraph: "Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction; and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. "

 The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had enough of it. 

 There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and the obscene intimations of the foregoing have brought the writer to the very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough. 

The _Evening Scimitar_ of same date, copied the _Commercial_'s editorialwith these words of comment:

 Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts. , brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor's shears. 

Acting upon this advice, the leading citizens met in the Cotton ExchangeBuilding the same evening, and threats of lynching were freely indulged, not by the lawless element upon which the deviltry of the South is usuallysaddled--but by the leading business men, in their leading businesscentre. Mr. Fleming, the business manager and owning a half interest the_Free Speech_, had to leave town to escape the mob, and was afterwardsordered not to return; letters and telegrams sent me in New York where Iwas spending my vacation advised me that bodily harm awaited my return. Creditors took possession of the office and sold the outfit, and the _FreeSpeech_ was as if it had never been. 

The editorial in question was prompted by the many inhuman and fiendishlynchings of Afro-Americans which have recently taken place and was meantas a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them charged withrape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and educationmore brutalizing than slavery, and the world knows that the crime of rapewas unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of theSouth were at the mercy of the race which is all at once charged withbeing a bestial one. 

Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home becauseof that editorial, the issue has been forced, and as the writer of it Ifeel that the race and the public generally should have a statement of thefacts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for theAfro-Americans Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by whiteDelilahs. 

The whites of Montgomery, Ala. , knew J. C. Duke sounded the keynote of thesituation--which they would gladly hide from the world, when he said inhis paper, the _Herald_, five years ago: "Why is it that white womenattract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when sucha thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatlysuspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for coloredRomeos. " Mr. Duke, like the _Free Speech_ proprietors, was forced to leavethe city for reflecting on the "honah" of white women and his papersuppressed; but the truth remains that Afro-American men do not alwaysrape(?) white women without their consent. 

Mr. Duke, before leaving Montgomery, signed a card disclaiming anyintention of slandering Southern white women. The editor of the _FreeSpeech_ has no disclaimer to enter, but asserts instead that there aremany white women in the South who would marry colored men if such an actwould not place them at once beyond the pale of society and within theclutches of the law. The miscegnation laws of the South only operateagainst the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man freeto seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored manwho yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in whitewomen. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is adespoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women. 

2

_The_ BLACK _and_ WHITE _of_ IT

The _Cleveland Gazette_ of January 16, 1892, publishes a case in point. Mrs. J. S. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused anAfro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to thekitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried todrive 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 horriblecondition. She did not know the man but could identify him. She pointedout 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 wentto Mrs. Underwood's residence at her invitation and was criminallyintimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against thesworn testimony of a ministers wife, a lady of the highest respectability. He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, forfifteen years. Some time afterwards the woman's remorse led her to confessto her husband that the man was innocent. 

These are her words:

 I met Offett at the Post Office. 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, shesaid: "I had several reasons for telling you. One was the neighbors sawthe fellows here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a loathsomedisease, and still another was that I feared I might give birth to a Negrobaby. I hoped to save my reputation by telling you a deliberate lie. " Herhusband horrified by the confession had Offett, who had already servedfour years, released and secured a divorce. 

There are thousands of such cases throughout the South, with thedifference that the Southern white men in insatiate fury wreak theirvengeance without intervention of law upon the Afro-Americans who consortwith their women. A few instances to substantiate the assertion that somewhite women love the company of the Afro-American will not be out ofplace. Most of these cases were reported by the daily papers of the South. 

In the winter of 1885-86 the wife of a practicing physician in Memphis, ingood social standing whose name has escaped me, left home, husband andchildren, and ran away with her black coachman. She was with him a monthbefore her husband found and brought her home. The coachman could not befound. The doctor moved his family away from Memphis, and is living inanother city under an assumed name. 

In the same city last year a white girl in the dusk of evening screamed atthe approach of some parties that a Negro had assaulted her on the street. He was captured, tried by a white judge and jury, that acquitted him ofthe charge. It is needless to add if there had been a scrap of evidence onwhich to convict him of so grave a charge he would have been convicted. 

Sarah Clark of Memphis loved a black man and lived openly with him. Whenshe was indicted last spring for miscegenation, she swore in court thatshe was _not_ a white woman. This she did to escape the penitentiary andcontinued her illicit relation undisturbed. That she is of the lower classof whites, does not disturb the fact that she is a white woman. "Theleading citizens" of Memphis are defending the "honor" of _all_ whitewomen, _demi-monde_ included. 

Since the manager of the _Free Speech_ has been run away from Memphis bythe guardians of the honor of Southern white women, a young girl living onPoplar St. , who was discovered in intimate relations with a handsomemulatto young colored man, Will Morgan by name, stole her father's moneyto send the young fellow away from that father's wrath. She has sincejoined him in Chicago. 

The _Memphis Ledger_ for June 8 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 it might reveal 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 horified. 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 fathers 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 rankoutrage. " If it had been a white child or Lillie Bailey had told a pitifulstory of Negro outrage, it would have been a case of woman's weakness orassault and she could have remained at the Woman's Refuge. But a Negrochild and to withhold its father's name and thus prevent the killing ofanother Negro "rapist. " A case of "fearful depravity. "

The very week the "leading citizens" of Memphis were making a spectacle ofthemselves in defense of all white women of every kind, an Afro-American, M. Stricklin, was found in a white woman's room in that city. Althoughshe made no outcry of rape, he was jailed and would have been lynched, butthe woman stated she bought curtains of him (he was a furniture dealer)and his business in her room that night was to put them up. A whitewoman's word was taken as absolutely in this case as when the cry of rapeis made, and he was freed. 

What is true of Memphis is true of the entire South. The daily papers lastyear reported a farmer's wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child. When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took themule from the plow and fled. The dispatches also told of a woman in SouthCarolina who gave birth to a Negro child and charged three men with beingits father, _every one of whom has since disappeared_. In Tuscumbia, Ala. , the colored boy who was lynched there last year for assaulting a whitegirl told her before his accusers that he had met her there in the woodsoften before. 

Frank Weems of Chattanooga who was not lynched in May only because theprominent citizens became his body guard until the doors of thepenitentiary closed on him, had letters in his pocket from the white womanin the case, making the appointment with him. Edward Coy who was burnedalive in Texarkana, January 1, 1892, died protesting his innocence. Investigation since as given by the Bystander in the _Chicago InterOcean_, October 1, proves:

 1. The woman who was paraded as a 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 miscegnationists 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. 

In Natchez, Miss. , Mrs. Marshall, one of the _creme de la creme_ of thecity, created a tremendous sensation several years ago. She has a blackcoachman who was married, and had been in her employ several years. Duringthis time she gave birth to a child whose color was remarked, but tracedto some brunette ancestor, and one of the fashionable dames of the citywas its godmother. Mrs. Marshall's social position was unquestioned, andwealth showered every dainty on this child which was idolized with itsbrothers and sisters by its white papa. In course of time another childappeared on the scene, but it was unmistakably dark. All were alarmed, and"rush of blood, strangulation" were the conjectures, but the doctor, whenasked the cause, grimly told them it was a Negro child. There was a familyconclave, the coachman heard of it and leaving his own family went West, and has never returned. As soon as Mrs. Marshall was able to travel shewas sent away in deep disgrace. Her husband died within the year of abroken heart. 

Ebenzer Fowler, the wealthiest colored man in Issaquena County, Miss. , wasshot down on the street in Mayersville, January 30, 1885, just before darkby an armed body of white men who filled his body with bullets. Theycharged him with writing a note to a white woman of the place, which theyintercepted and which proved there was an intimacy existing between them. 

Hundreds of such cases might be cited, but enough have been given to provethe assertion that there are white women in the South who love theAfro-American's company even as there are white men notorious for theirpreference for Afro-American women. 

There is hardly a town in the South which has not an instance of the kindwhich is well known, and hence the assertion is reiterated that "nobody inthe South believes the old thread bare lie that negro men rape whitewomen. " Hence there is a growing demand among Afro-Americans that theguilt or innocence of parties accused of rape be fully established. Theyknow the men of the section of the country who refuse this are not sodesirous of punishing rapists as they pretend. The utterances of theleading white men show that with them it is not the crime but the _class_. Bishop Fitzgerald has become apologist for lynchers of the rapists of_white_ women only. Governor Tillman, of South Carolina, in the month ofJune, standing under the tree in Barnwell, S. C. , on which eightAfro-Americans were hung last year, declared that he would lead a mob tolynch a _negro_ who raped a _white_ woman. So say the pulpits, officialsand newspapers of the South. But when the victim is a colored woman it isdifferent. 

Last winter in Baltimore, Md. , three white ruffians assaulted a MissCamphor, a young Afro-American girl, while out walking with a young man ofher own race. They held her escort and outraged the girl. It was a deeddastardly enough to arouse Southern blood, which gives its horror of rapeas excuse for lawlessness, but she was an Afro-American. The case went tothe courts, an Afro-American lawyer defended the men and they wereacquitted. 

In Nashville, Tenn. , there is a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged alittle Afro-American girl, and, from the physical injuries received, shehas been ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and isnow a detective in that city. In the same city, last May, a white manoutraged an Afro-American girl in a drug store. He was arrested, andreleased on bail at the trial. It was rumored that five hundredAfro-Americans had organized to lynch him. Two hundred and fifty whitecitizens armed themselves with Winchesters and guarded him. A cannon wasplaced in front of his home, and the Buchanan Rifles (State Militia)ordered to the scene for his protection. The Afro-American mob did notmaterialize. Only two weeks before Eph. Grizzard, who had only been_charged_ with rape upon a white woman, had been taken from the jail, withGovernor Buchanan and the police and militia standing by, dragged throughthe streets in broad daylight, knives plunged into him at every step, andwith every fiendish cruelty a frenzied mob could devise, he was at lastswung out on the bridge with hands cut to pieces as he tried to climb upthe stanchions. A naked, bloody example of the blood-thirstiness of thenineteenth-century civilization of the Athens of the South! No cannon ormilitary was called out in his defense. He dared to visit a white woman. 

At the very moment these civilized whites were announcing theirdetermination "to protect their wives and daughters, " by murderingGrizzard, a white man was in the same jail for raping eight-year-oldMaggie Reese, an Afro-American girl. He was not harmed. The "honor" ofgrown women who were glad enough to be supported by the Grizzard boys andEd Coy, as long as the liaison was not known, needed protection; they werewhite. The outrage upon helpless childhood needed no avenging in thiscase; she was black. 

A white man in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, two months ago inflicted suchinjuries upon another Afro-American child that she died. He was notpunished, but an attempt was made in the same town in the month of June tolynch an Afro-American who visited a white woman. 

In Memphis, Tenn. , in the month of June, Ellerton L. Dorr, who is thehusband of Russell Hancock's widow, was arrested for attempted rape onMattie Cole, a neighbors cook; he was only prevented from accomplishinghis purpose, by the appearance of Mattie's employer. Dorr's friends say hewas drunk and not responsible for his actions. The grand jury refused toindict him and he was discharged. 

3 _The_ NEW CRY

The appeal of Southern whites to Northern sympathy and sanction, theadroit, insiduous plea made by Bishop Fitzgerald for suspension ofjudgment because those "who condemn lynching express no sympathy for the_white_ woman in the case, " falls to the ground in the light of theforegoing. 

From this exposition of the race issue in lynch law, the whole matter isexplained by the well-known opposition growing out of slavery to theprogress of the race. This is crystalized in the oft-repeated slogan:"This is a white man's country and the white man must rule. " The Southresented giving the Afro-American his freedom, the ballot box and theCivil Rights Law. The raids of the Ku-Klux and White Liners to subvertreconstruction government, the Hamburg and Ellerton, S. C. , the CopiahCounty, Miss. , and the Layfayette Parish, La. , massacres were excused asthe natural resentment of intelligence against government by ignorance. 

Honest white men practically conceded the necessity of intelligencemurdering ignorance to correct the mistake of the general government, andthe race was left to the tender mercies of the solid South. ThoughtfulAfro-Americans with the strong arm of the government withdrawn and withthe hope to stop such wholesale massacres urged the race to sacrifice itspolitical rights for sake of peace. They honestly believed the race shouldfit itself for government, and when that should be done, the objection torace participation in politics would be removed. 

But the sacrifice did not remove the trouble, nor move the South tojustice. One by one the Southern States have legally(?) disfranchised theAfro-American, and since the repeal of the Civil Rights Bill nearly everySouthern State has passed separate car laws with a penalty against theirinfringement. The race regardless of advancement is penned into filthy, stifling partitions cut off from smoking cars. All this while, althoughthe political cause has been removed, the butcheries of black men atBarnwell, S. C. , Carrolton, Miss. , Waycross, Ga. , and Memphis, Tenn. , havegone on; also the flaying alive of a man in Kentucky, the burning of onein Arkansas, the hanging of a fifteen-year-old girl in Louisiana, a womanin Jackson, Tenn. , and one in Hollendale, Miss. , until the dark and bloodyrecord of the South shows 728 Afro-Americans lynched during the past eightyears. Not fifty of these were for political causes; the rest were for allmanner of accusations from that of rape of white women, to the case of theboy Will Lewis who was hanged at Tullahoma, Tenn. , last year for beingdrunk and "sassy" to white folks. 

These statistics compiled by the _Chicago Tribune_ were given the first ofthis year (1892). Since then, not less than one hundred and fifty havebeen known to have met violent death at the hands of cruel bloodthirstymobs during the past nine months. 

To palliate this record (which grows worse as the Afro-American becomesintelligent) and excuse some of the most heinous crimes that ever stainedthe history of a country, the South is shielding itself behind theplausible screen of defending the honor of its women. This, too, in theface of the fact that only _one-third_ of the 728 victims to mobs havebeen _charged_ with rape, to say nothing of those of that one-third whowere innocent of the charge. A white correspondent of the _Baltimore Sun_declares that the Afro-American who was lynched in Chestertown, Md. , inMay for assault on a white girl was innocent; that the deed was done by awhite man who had since disappeared. The girl herself maintained that herassailant was a white man. When that poor Afro-American was murdered, thewhites excused their refusal of a trial on the ground that they wished tospare the white girl the mortification of having to testify in court. 

This cry has had its effect. It has closed the heart, stifled theconscience, warped the judgment and hushed the voice of press and pulpiton the subject of lynch law throughout this "land of liberty. " Men whostand high in the esteem of the public for Christian character, for moraland physical courage, for devotion to the principles of equal and exactjustice to all, and for great sagacity, stand as cowards who fear to opentheir mouths before this great outrage. They do not see that by theirtacit encouragement, their silent acquiescence, the black shadow oflawlessness in the form of lynch law is spreading its wings over the wholecountry. 

Men who, like Governor Tillman, start the ball of lynch law rolling for acertain crime, are powerless to stop it when drunken or criminal whitetoughs feel like hanging an Afro-American on any pretext. 

Even to the better class of Afro-Americans the crime of rape is sorevolting they have too often taken the white man's word and given lynchlaw neither the investigation nor condemnation it deserved. 

They forget that a concession of the right to lynch a man for a certaincrime, not only concedes the right to lynch any person for any crime, but(so frequently is the cry of rape now raised) it is in a fair way to stampus a race of rapists and desperadoes. They have gone on hoping andbelieving that general education and financial strength would solve thedifficulty, and are devoting their energies to the accumulation of both. 

The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of theAfro-American. It has left the out-of-the-way places where ignoranceprevails, has thrown off the mask and with this new cry stalks in broaddaylight in large cities, the centers of civilization, and is encouragedby the "leading citizens" and the press. 

4 _The_ MALICIOUS _and_ UNTRUTHFUL WHITE PRESS

The _Daily Commercial_ and _Evening Scimitar_ of Memphis, Tenn. , are ownedby leading business men of that city, and yet, in spite of the fact thatthere had been no white woman in Memphis outraged by an Afro-American, andthat Memphis possessed a thrifty law-abiding, property-owning class ofAfro-Americans the _Commercial_ of May 17, under the head of "More Rapes, More Lynchings" gave utterance to the following:

 The lynching of three Negro scoundrels reported in our dispatches from Anniston, Ala. , for a brutal outrage committed upon a white woman will be a text for much comment on "Southern barbarism" by Northern newspapers; but we fancy it will hardly prove effective for campaign purposes among intelligent people. The frequency of these lynchings calls attention to the frequency of the crimes which causes lynching. The "Southern barbarism" which deserves the serious attention of all people North and South, is the barbarism which preys upon weak and defenseless women. Nothing but the most prompt, speedy and extreme punishment can hold in check the horrible and beastial propensities of the Negro race. There is a strange similarity about a number of cases of this character which have lately occurred. 

 In each case the crime was deliberately planned and perpetrated by several Negroes. They watched for an opportunity when the women were left without a protector. It was not a sudden yielding to a fit of passion, but the consummation of a devilish purpose which has been seeking and waiting for the opportunity. This feature of the crime not only makes it the most fiendishly brutal, but it adds to the terror of the situation in the thinly settled country communities. No man can leave his family at night without the dread that some roving Negro ruffian is watching and waiting for this opportunity. The swift punishment which invariably follows these horrible crimes doubtless acts as a deterring effect upon the Negroes in that immediate neighborhood for a short time. But the lesson is not widely learned nor long remembered. Then such crimes, equally atrocious, have happened in quick succession, one in Tennessee, one in Arkansas, and one in Alabama. The facts of the crime appear to appeal more to the Negro's lustful imagination than the facts of the punishment do to his fears. He sets aside all fear of death in any form when opportunity is found for the gratification of his bestial desires. 

 There is small reason to hope for any change for the better. The commission of this crime grows more frequent every year. The generation of Negroes which have grown up since the war have lost in large measure the traditional and wholesome awe of the white race which kept the Negroes in subjection, even when their masters were in the army, and their families left unprotected except by the slaves themselves. There is no longer a restraint upon the brute passion of the Negro. 

 What is to be done? The crime of rape is always horrible, but the Southern man there is nothing which so fills the soul with horror, loathing and fury as the outraging of a white woman by a Negro. It is the race question in the ugliest, vilest, most dangerous aspect. The Negro as a political factor can be controlled. But neither laws nor lynchings can subdue his lusts. Sooner or later it will force a crisis. We do not know in what form it will come. 

In its issue of June 4, the _Memphis Evening Scimitar_ gives the followingexcuse for lynch law:

 Aside from the violation of white women by Negroes, which is the outcropping of a bestial perversion of instinct, the chief cause of trouble between the races in the South is the Negro's lack of manners. In the state of slavery he learned politeness from association with white people, who took pains to teach him. Since the emancipation came and the tie of mutual interest and regard between master and servant was broken, the Negro has drifted away into a state which is neither freedom nor bondage. Lacking the proper inspiration of the one and the restraining force of the other he has taken up the idea that boorish insolence is independence, and the exercise of a decent degree of breeding toward white people is identical with servile submission. In consequence of the prevalence of this notion there are many Negroes who use every opportunity to make themselves offensive, particularly when they think it can be done with impunity. 

 We have had too many instances right here in Memphis to doubt this, and our experience is not exceptional. _The white people won't stand this sort of thing, and whether they be insulted as individuals are as a race, the response will be prompt and effectual. _ The bloody riot of 1866, in which so many Negroes perished, was brought on principally by the outrageous conduct of the blacks toward the whites on the streets. It is also a remarkable and discouraging fact that the majority of such scoundrels are Negroes who have received educational advantages at the hands of the white taxpayers. They have got just enough of learning to make them realize how hopelessly their race is behind the other in everything that makes a great people, and they attempt to "get even" by insolence, which is ever the resentment of inferiors. There are well-bred Negroes among us, and it is truly unfortunate that they should have to pay, even in part, the penalty of the offenses committed by the baser sort, but this is the way of the world. The innocent must suffer for the guilty. If the Negroes as a people possessed a hundredth part of the self-respect which is evidenced by the courteous bearing of some that the _Scimitar_ could name, the friction between the races would be reduced to a minimum. It will not do to beg the question by pleading that many white men are also stirring up strife. The Caucasian blackguard simply obeys the promptings of a depraved disposition, and he is seldom deliberately rough or offensive toward strangers or unprotected women. 

 The Negro tough, on the contrary, is given to just that kind of offending, and he almost invariably singles out white people as his victims. 

On March 9, 1892, there were lynched in this same city three of the bestspecimens of young since-the-war Afro-American manhood. They werepeaceful, law-abiding citizens and energetic business men. 

They believed the problem was to be solved by eschewing politics andputting money in the purse. They owned a flourishing grocery business in athickly populated suburb of Memphis, and a white man named Barrett had oneon the opposite corner. After a personal difficulty which Barrett soughtby going into the "People's Grocery" drawing a pistol and was thrashed byCalvin McDowell, he (Barrett) threatened to "clean them out. " These menwere a mile beyond the city limits and police protection; hearing thatBarrett's crowd was coming to attack them Saturday night, they musteredforces, and prepared to defend themselves against the attack. 

When Barrett came he led a _posse_ of officers, twelve in number, whoafterward claimed to be hunting a man for whom they had a warrant. Thattwelve men in citizen's clothes should think it necessary to go in thenight to hunt one man who had never before been arrested, or made anyrecord as a criminal has never been explained. When they entered the backdoor the young men thought the threatened attack was on, and fired intothem. Three of the officers were wounded, and when the _defending_ partyfound it was officers of the law upon whom they had fired, they ceased andgot away. 

Thirty-one men were arrested and thrown in jail as "conspirators, "although they all declared more than once they did not know they werefiring on officers. Excitement was at fever beat until the morning papers, two days after, announced that the wounded deputy sheriffs were out ofdanger. This hindered rather than helped the plans of the whites. Therewas no law on the statute books which would execute an Afro-American forwounding a white man, but the "unwritten law" did. Three of these men, thepresident, the manager and clerk of the grocery--"the leaders of theconspiracy"--were secretly taken from jail and lynched in a shockinglybrutal manner. "The Negroes are getting too independent, " they say, "wemust teach them a lesson. "

What lesson? The lesson of subordination. "Kill the leaders and it willcow the Negro who dares to shoot a white man, even in self-defense. "

Although the race was wild over the outrage, the mockery of law andjustice which disarmed men and locked them up in jails where they could beeasily and safely reached by the mob--- the Afro-American ministers, newspapers and leaders counselled obedience to the law which did notprotect them. 

Their counsel was heeded and not a hand was uplifted to resent theoutrage; following the advice of the _Free Speech_, people left the cityin great numbers. 

The dailies and associated press reports heralded these men to the countryas "toughs, " and "Negro desperadoes who kept a low dive. " This same pressservice printed that the Negro who was lynched at Indianola, Miss. , inMay, had outraged the sheriff's eight-year-old daughter. The girl was morethan eighteen years old, and was found by her father in this man's room, who was a servant on the place. 

Not content with misrepresenting the race, the mob-spirit was not to besatisfied until the paper which was doing all it could to counteract thisimpression was silenced. The colored people were resenting their badtreatment in a way to make itself felt, yet gave the mob no excuse forfurther murder, until the appearance of the editorial which is construedas a reflection on the "honor" of the Southern white women. It is not halfso libelous as that of the _Commercial_ which appeared four days before, and which has been given in these pages. They would have lynched themanager of the _Free Speech_ for exercising the right of free speech ifthey had found him as quickly as they would have hung a rapist, and gladof the excuse to do so. The owners were ordered not to return, the _FreeSpeech_ was suspended with as little compunction as the business of the"People's Grocery" broken up and the proprietors murdered. 

5 _The_ SOUTH'S POSITION

Henry W. Grady in his well-remembered speeches in New England and New Yorkpictured the Afro-American as incapable of self-government. Through himand other leading men the cry of the South to the country has been "Handsoff! Leave us to solve our problem. " To the Afro-American the South says, "the white man must and will rule. " There is little difference between theAntebellum South and the New South. 

Her white citizens are wedded to any method however revolting, any measurehowever extreme, for the subjugation of the young manhood of the race. They have cheated him out of his ballot, deprived him of civil rights orredress therefor in the civil courts, robbed him of the fruits of hislabor, and are still murdering, burning and lynching him. 

The result is a growing disregard of human life. Lynch law has spread itsinsiduous influence till men in New York State, Pennsylvania and on thefree Western plains feel they can take the law in their own hands withimpunity, especially where an Afro-American is concerned. The South isbrutalized to a degree not realized by its own inhabitants, and the veryfoundation of government, law and order, are imperilled. 

Public sentiment has had a slight "reaction" though not sufficient to stopthe crusade of lawlessness and lynching. The spirit of christianity of thegreat M. E. Church was aroused to the frequent and revolting crimes againsta weak people, enough to pass strong condemnatory resolutions at itsGeneral Conference in Omaha last May. The spirit of justice of the grandold party asserted itself sufficiently to secure a denunciation of thewrongs, and a feeble declaration of the belief in human rights in theRepublican platform at Minneapolis, June 7. Some of the great dailies andweeklies have swung into line declaring that lynch law must go. ThePresident of the United States issued a proclamation that it be nottolerated in the territories over which he has jurisdiction. GovernorNorthern and Chief Justice Bleckley of Georgia have proclaimed against it. The citizens of Chattanooga, Tenn. , have set a worthy example in that theynot only condemn lynch law, but her public men demanded a trial for Weems, the accused rapist, and guarded him while the trial was in progress. Thetrial only lasted ten minutes, and Weems chose to plead guilty and accepttwenty-one years sentence, than invite the certain death which awaited himoutside that cordon of police if he had told the truth and shown theletters he had from the white woman in the case. 

Col. A. S. Colyar, of Nashville, Tenn. , is so overcome with the horriblestate of affairs that he addressed the following earnest letter to the_Nashville American_. 

 Nothing since I have been a reading man has so impressed me with the decay of manhood among the people of Tennessee as the dastardly submission to the mob reign. We have reached the unprecedented low level; the awful criminal depravity of substituting the mob for the court and jury, of giving up the jail keys to the mob whenever they are demanded. We do it in the largest cities and in the country towns; we do it in midday; we do it after full, not to say formal, notice, and so thoroughly and generally is it acquiesced in that the murderers have discarded the formula of masks. They go into the town where everybody knows them, sometimes under the gaze of the governor, in the presence of the courts, in the presence of the sheriff and his deputies, in the presence of the entire police force, take out the prisoner, take his life, often with fiendish glee, and often with acts of cruelty and barbarism which impress the reader with a degeneracy rapidly approaching savage life. That the State is disgraced but faintly expresses the humiliation which has settled upon the once proud people of Tennessee. The State, in its majesty, through its organized life, for which the people pay liberally, makes but one record, but one note, and that a criminal falsehood, "was hung by persons to the jury unknown. " The murder at Shelbyville is only a verification of what every intelligent man knew would come, because with a mob a rumor is as good as a proof. 

These efforts brought forth apologies and a short halt, but the lynchingmania was raged again through the past three months with unabated fury. 

The strong arm of the law must be brought to bear upon lynchers in severepunishment, but this cannot and will not be done unless a healthy publicsentiment demands and sustains such action. 

The men and women in the South who disapprove of lynching and remainsilent on the perpetration of such outrages, are particeps criminis, accomplices, accessories before and after the fact, equally guilty withthe actual lawbreakers who would not persist if they did not know thatneither the law nor militia would be employed against them. 

6 SELF-HELP

In the creation of this healthier public sentiment, the Afro-American cando for himself what no one else can do for him. The world looks on withwonder that we have conceded so much and remain law-abiding under suchgreat outrage and provocation. 

To Northern capital and Afro-American labor the South owes itsrehabilitation. If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. TheAfro-American is thus the backbone of the South. A thorough knowledge andjudicious exercise of this power in lynching localities could many timeseffect a bloodless revolution. The white man's dollar is his god, and tostop this will be to stop outrages in many localities. 

The Afro-Americans of Memphis denounced the lynching of three of theirbest citizens, and urged and waited for the authorities to act in thematter and bring the lynchers to justice. No attempt was made to do so, and the black men left the city by thousands, bringing about greatstagnation in every branch of business. Those who remained so injured thebusiness of the street car company by staying off the cars, that thesuperintendent, manager and treasurer called personally on the editor ofthe _Free Speech_, asked them to urge our people to give them theirpatronage again. Other business men became alarmed over the situation andthe _Free Speech_ was run away that the colored people might be moreeasily controlled. A meeting of white citizens in June, three months afterthe lynching, passed resolutions for the first time, condemning it. _Butthey did not punish the lynchers. _ Every one of them was known by name, because they had been selected to do the dirty work, by some of the verycitizens who passed these resolutions. Memphis is fast losing her blackpopulation, who proclaim as they go that there is no protection for thelife and property of any Afro-American citizen in Memphis who is not aslave. 

The Afro-American citizens of Kentucky, whose intellectual and financialimprovement has been phenomenal, have never had a separate car law untilnow. Delegations and petitions poured into the Legislature against it, yetthe bill passed and the Jim Crow Car of Kentucky is a legalizedinstitution. Will the great mass of Negroes continue to patronize therailroad? A special from Covington, Ky. , says:

Covington, June 13. --The railroads of the State are beginning to feel verymarkedly, the effects of the separate coach bill recently passed by theLegislature. No class of people in the State have so many and so largelyattended excursions as the blacks. All these have been abandoned, andregular travel is reduced to a minimum. A competent authority says theloss to the various roads will reach $1, 000, 000 this year. 

A call to a State Conference in Lexington, Ky. , last June had delegatesfrom every county in the State. Those delegates, the ministers, teachers, heads of secret and others orders, and the head of every family shouldpass the word around for every member of the race in Kentucky to stay oilrailroads unless obliged to ride. If they did so, and their advice wasfollowed persistently the convention would not need to petition theLegislature to repeal the law or raise money to file a suit. The railroadcorporations would be so effected they would in self-defense lobby to havethe separate car law repealed. On the other hand, as long as the railroadscan get Afro-American excursions they will always have plenty of money tofight all the suits brought against them. They will be aided in so doingby the same partisan public sentiment which passed the law. White menpassed the law, and white judges and juries would pass upon the suitsagainst the law, and render judgment in line with their prejudices and indeference to the greater financial power. 

The appeal to the white man's pocket has ever been more effectual than allthe appeals ever made to his conscience. Nothing, absolutely nothing, isto be gained by a further sacrifice of manhood and self-respect. By theright exercise of his power as the industrial factor of the South, theAfro-American can demand and secure his rights, the punishment oflynchers, and a fair trial for accused rapists. 

Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where theproposed lynching did _not_ occur, was where the men armed themselves inJacksonville, Fla. , and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times anAfro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun andused it in self-defense. 

The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every blackhome, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses togive. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs asgreat risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, hewill have greater respect for Afro-American life. The more theAfro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, themore he is insulted, outraged and lynched. 

The assertion has been substantiated throughout these pages that the presscontains unreliable and doctored reports of lynchings, and one of the mostnecessary things for the race to do is to get these facts before thepublic. The people must know before they can act, and there is no educatorto compare with the press. 

The Afro-American papers are the only ones which will print the truth, andthey lack means to employ agents and detectives to get at the facts. Therace must rally a mighty host to the support of their journals, and thusenable them to do much in the way of investigation. 

A lynching occurred at Port Jarvis, N. Y. , the first week in June. A whiteand colored man were implicated in the assault upon a white girl. It wascharged that the white man paid the colored boy to make the assault, whichhe did on the public highway in broad day time, and was lynched. This, toowas done by "parties unknown. " The white man in the case still lives. Hewas imprisoned and promises to fight the case on trial. At the preliminaryexamination, it developed that he had been a suitor of the girl's. She hadrepulsed and refused him, yet had given him money, and he had sentthreatening letters demanding more. 

The day before this examination she was so wrought up, she left home andwandered miles away. When found she said she did so because she was afraidof the man's testimony. Why should she be afraid of the prisoner! Whyshould she yield to his demands for money if not to prevent him exposingsomething he knew! It seems explainable only on the hypothesis that a_liaison_ existed between the colored boy and the girl, and the white manknew of it. The press is singularly silent. Has it a motive? We owe it toourselves to find out. 

The story comes from Larned, Kansas, Oct. 1, that a young white lady heldat bay until daylight, without alarming any one in the house, "a burlyNegro" who entered her room and bed. The "burly Negro" was promptlylynched without investigation or examination of inconsistant stories. 

A house was found burned down near Montgomery, Ala. , in Monroe County, Oct. 13, a few weeks ago; also the burned bodies of the owners and meltedpiles of gold and silver. 

These discoveries led to the conclusion that the awful crime was notprompted by motives of robbery. The suggestion of the whites was that"brutal lust was the incentive, and as there are nearly 200 Negroes livingwithin a radius of five miles of the place the conclusion was inevitablethat some of them were the perpetrators. "

Upon this "suggestion" probably made by the real criminal, the mob actedupon the "conclusion" and arrested ten Afro-Americans, four of whom, theytell the world, confessed to the deed of murdering Richard L. Johnson andoutraging his daughter, Jeanette. These four men, Berrell Jones, MosesJohnson, Jim and John Packer, none of them twenty-five years of age, uponthis conclusion, were taken from jail, hanged, shot, and burned while yetalive the night of Oct. 12. The same report says Mr. Johnson was on thebest of terms with his Negro tenants. 

The race thus outraged must find out the facts of this awful hurling ofmen into eternity on supposition, and give them to the indifferent andapathetic country. We feel this to be a garbled report, but how can weprove it?

Near Vicksburg, Miss. , a murder was committed by a gang of burglars. Ofcourse it must have been done by Negroes, and Negroes were arrested forit. It is believed that two men, Smith Tooley and John Adams belonged to agang controlled by white men and, fearing exposure, on the night of July4, they were hanged in the Court House yard by those interested insilencing them. Robberies since committed in the same vicinity have beenknown to be by white men who had their faces blackened. We stronglybelieve in the innocence of these murdered men, but we have no proof. Noother news goes out to the world save that which stamps us as a race ofcutthroats, robbers and lustful wild beasts. So great is Southern hate andprejudice, they legally(?) hung poor little thirteen-year-old MildreyBrown at Columbia, S. C. , Oct. 7, on the circumstantial evidence that shepoisoned a white infant. If her guilt had been proven unmistakably, hadshe been white, Mildrey Brown would never have been hung. 

The country would have been aroused and South Carolina disgraced foreverfor such a crime. The Afro-American himself did not know as he should haveknown as his journals should be in a position to have him know and act. 

Nothing is more definitely settled than he must act for himself. I haveshown how he may employ the boycott, emigration and the press, and I feelthat by a combination of all these agencies can be effectually stamped outlynch law, that last relic of barbarism and slavery. "The gods help thosewho help themselves. "