LYNCHING

The defects in the administration of justice in the South are complicated by a recognized system of punishment of criminals and supposed criminals by other persons than officers of the law—a system to which the term Lynch Law is often applied. In part it is an effort to supplement the law of the commonwealths; in part it is a protest against the law’s delay; in greater part a defiance of law and authority and impartial justice.

In its mildest form this system of irresponsible jurisprudence takes the form of notices to leave the country, followed by whipping or other violence less than murderous, if the warning be disregarded. Such a method owes all its force to the belief that it proceeds from an organized and therefore a powerful race of people. Next in seriousness come the race riots of which there were many examples during the Reconstruction era; and occasionally they burst into serious race conflicts, of which half a dozen have occurred in the last decade. The responsibility rests in greater measure on that race which has the habit of calculated and concerted action: reckless Negroes can always make trouble by shooting at the Whites; but the laws, the officers of justice, the militia, the courts, are in the hands of the white people. Since they are always able to protect themselves by their better organization, their command of the police, and the conviction in the minds of both races that the white man will always come out victorious, most troubles that start with the Negroes could easily be dealt with, but for a panic terror of negro risings which harks back to slavery times. It is very easy to stampede Southern communities by such rumors. When, in 1908, six armed Negroes were arrested in Muskogee, Okla., telegrams went all over the country to the effect that a race war was on, and two companies of militia were ordered out; but apparently there was not a glimmer of real trouble. Negroes have repeatedly been driven out of small places. For instance, in August, 1907, in Onancock, on the eastern shore of Virginia, there was a dispute over a bill for a dollar and a quarter which ended with the banishment of a number of Negroes. In the year 1898 there was a similar riot in Wilmington, N. C., and several thousand Negroes were either ejected or left afterwards in terror. The trouble here began in excitement over the elections.

By far the most serious of these occurrences was the so-called race riot at Atlanta, September 22, 1906, caused primarily by that intense hostility to the Negroes which is to be found among town youths; and secondarily by some aggravated crimes on the part of Negroes, and the equally aggravated crime of a newspaper, the Atlanta Evening News, which, by exaggerating the truth and adding lies, inflamed the public mind; on the night before the riot it called upon the people of Atlanta to join a league of men who “will endeavor to prevent the crimes, if possible, but failing, will aid in punishing the criminals.”

The whole affair has been examined by several competent observers, but the essential facts may be taken from the report of a committee of business men of Atlanta, who went into the matter at the time, and who declared that of the persons killed, “There was not a single vagrant. They were earning wages in useful work; ... they were supporting themselves and their families.... Of the wounded, ten are white and sixty colored. Of the dead, two are white and ten are colored.” This was not a riot, but a massacre, for which the Superior Race is responsible; and from every point of view it was damaging to the whole South. It kept back foreign emigrants, it deeply discouraged the best of the Negroes in Atlanta and elsewhere; it gave rein to the passions of the mob. Considering that nobody was killed from among the mob, it seems like a ferocious practical joke that scores of Negroes were arrested and charged with murder, while not a single one of the hundreds of real murderers has ever received the slightest punishment. Who can wonder at the grief and anguish of DuBois’s “Litany of Atlanta!” Every large place is liable to disturbance; Northern cities have had race riots, and are likely to have more. The recent assaults on and murders of Negroes in Springfield, Ohio, and Springfield, Ill., are not different in spirit from those in the South; and though there were plenty of indictments, the leader of the latter mob was acquitted on his trial—a result which was reflected in the famous Cairo mob of 1909.

What progress can be made in breaking up the savage and criminal instincts of the Negro when he sees the same instincts in the Superior Race, which is in a position to do him harm? If the Negroes for any cause should in any Southern city, where they are in the majority, take possession of the streets and hunt white people to death as was done in Atlanta, it would bring on a race war which would devastate the whole South; and the lower race would be severely punished for aspiring to the same fashions in gunshots as its superiors. As a commercial traveler said on the general subject of race relations: “You do not understand how the young fellows in the South feel; when any trouble comes, they want to kill the nigger, whether he has done anything or not.”

The third and most frequent form of race violence is lynching, a practice obscured by a mass of conventional and improbable statements. The subject has been set in its proper light in an impartial and scientific study by Professor Cutler entitled “Lynch Law,” based on a compilation of statistics which come down to 1903. He sweeps away three fourths of the usual statements on the subject, first of all disproving the allegation that lynching is a comparatively recent practice brought about by negro crimes since the Civil War. The term Lynch Law has been traced back to Colonel Charles Lynch, of Virginia, who, in Revolutionary times, presided at rude assemblies which whipped Tories until they were willing to shout “Hurrah for Liberty!” Till about 1830 lynching never meant killing; it was applied only to whippings or to tarring and feathering. In the frontier conditions of the South and West, the habit grew up of killing desperadoes by mob law, as, for instance, the celebrated clearing out of five gamblers at Vicksburg, Miss., in 1835. This process was also applied to some murderers, both Whites and Negroes.

Professor Cutler also disposes of the assertion that the most serious offense for which lynching is applied was unknown previous to emancipation. In 1823, a Negro in Maryland was badly beaten, though not killed, for a supposed attack upon a white woman. In 1827 one was burned at the stake in Alabama for killing a white man. From that time on, lynching of blacks continued in every Southern state—commonly for murder, in a few cases for insurrection, in at least nine ascertained cases previous to the Civil War for violence to white women. It is evident, therefore, that the extremest crime had been sometimes committed, and the extremest punishment exacted by mob violence before the slaves were set free.

The lynching of Negroes was kept up after the war, and carried into a system by the Ku Klux Klan and later White Caps, though usually applied by them for political reasons. About 1880 lynching of Negroes began to increase, nominally because of more frequent rapes of white women; and to this day one often hears it said: “Lynchings never occur except for the one crime.” In the twenty-two years from 1882 to 1903, Cutler has recorded 3,337 cases of lynchings, an average of 150 a year, rising to the number of 235 in 1892. In 1903 there were 125 persons lynched and 125 executed legally. Of these lynchings, 1,997 took place in the Southern states, 363 in the Western states, 105 in the Eastern states, and not a single one in New England. Of the 3,337 lynchings, 1,169 were of Whites (109 for rape) and 2,168 were Negroes, thus completely disposing of the notion that this practice either began because of negro crime, or was continued as a safeguard against it. Of the blacks lynched, 783 were charged with murder; 707 with violence to women; 104 with arson; 101 with theft; and from that on down to such serious crimes as writing a letter, slapping a child, making an insolent reply, giving evidence or refusing to give evidence. A Negro was lynched in 1908 for killing a constable’s horse.

The common notion that rape of white women, the most serious crime committed by Negroes, is on the increase, is also exploded by these statistics, which show that the proportion, which has been as high as one half of all lynchings, has come down to about one fourth. It may be said, therefore, without fear of contradiction that lynching did not originate in offenses by Negroes, is not justified by any increase of crime, and is applied to a multitude of offenses, some of them simply trivial.

Successful attempts have been made to lynch Negroes in Northern states, and in 1903 one was burned at the stake, in Wilmington, Del., which, however, is a former slave state, and the last to adhere to the whipping-post. Lynching has also much diminished in the West, so that it is becoming more and more a Southern crime. In 1903, 75 of the 84 lynchings were in the South, in 1907 the total lynchings had come down to 63, of which 42 were in the four states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, and only 2 in the North. The proportion of causes of lynchings remained about the same: murder, 18; violence to women, 12; attempted violence, 11; miscellaneous causes, 22.

The methods of the lynchers are very simple. In 1906 a white man, accused of murdering his brother, on whose case the jury had disagreed, was dragged out of jail and shot. In a great many cases the supposed criminal is hunted down by what is called a “posse”—really a self-appointed body of furious neighbors; and very seldom is there the semblance of investigation. If the offender is lodged in jail, that sanctuary of the law is often invaded. In August, 1906, a mob of three thousand men, incited by a person who afterwards proved to be a released convict, broke open the jail at Salisbury, N. C., in despite of addresses by the mayor and United States senator, took out and killed three supposed negro criminals. Occasionally, when a criminal has been tried, convicted, and is awaiting execution, he is taken out and lynched, for the excitement of seeing the man die, and perhaps from fear that he will be pardoned.

Naturally, in this quick method, mistakes sometimes occur. At Brookhaven, Miss., on January 2, 1908, a Negro was lynched for killing a white man; a few days later they caught the actual murderer, but consoled themselves with the belief that inasmuch as the first Negro was wounded when captured, the presumption was that he must have killed some other white man. A few days later, at Dothan, Ala., a Negro was taken out, hanged, and two hundred shots fired at him, but was found the next morning alive and unwounded, and was allowed to escape. In a recent case at Atlanta a Negro positively identified by the victim of a most serious crime was allowed to go to trial, and was acquitted, because the court believed him innocent, and the woman subsequently identified another man.

How does it come about that these mobs, composed invariably of white men and none others, cannot be put down by the white authorities? The first reason is that there are no rural police in the South to make prompt arrests and protect prisoners; the sheriffs upon whom the custody of such persons depends are chosen by popular election, and usually have no backbone; one of them who had actually lodged his prisoners in jail said that he hated to do it, and didn’t know how he could meet his neighbors. Jailors commonly give up their keys after a little protest; there are few cases where a determined sheriff, armed and ready to do his duty, could not quell a mob; but what can be expected of a sheriff who turns over a prisoner to the mob in order that they may “investigate” his crime? Occasionally a sheriff shows some pluck, and in December, 1906, President Roosevelt singled out for federal appointment a sheriff who had lost his reËlection because he had opposed a mob. Governors are sometimes very weak-kneed; a few years ago the governor of North Carolina delivered up to a mob a colored boy who had had such confidence in the Superior Race as to come to the executive mansion and ask for protection. At Annapolis, in 1908, neither the sheriff, jailor, nor municipal authorities made any effort to prevent the taking out of a prisoner; in Chattanooga, Sheriff Shipp, who permitted a Negro to be taken out of his hands and lynched, though the sheriff had been served by telegram with an order from a justice of the Supreme Court directing him to protect the criminal, was reËlected by a large majority; and apparently did not lose popularity when a year later he was sentenced to ninety days’ confinement for contempt of court.

In all the Southern states the last state resort for keeping the peace is the militia, and there have recently been two scandalous instances where these volunteer soldiers have permitted themselves to be overrun by a mob, giving up their guns without an effort to fire a shot. In one of these cases it was recorded that “No effort was made to hurt any of the soldiers however, as it was plain to the crowd that they had gained their point.” At Brookhaven, Miss., in 1908, the officer commanding the militia excused himself because the sheriff had not asked him to order his men to fire. These brave soldiers, these high-toned Southern gentlemen, these military heroes, called out for the special purpose of protecting a prisoner, would not draw a trigger!

The militia of course are not cowards, they are simply sympathizers with the mob; and throughout the South, in the press, and from the lips of many otherwise high-minded people, lynching is freely justified. Witness a coroner’s jury in Charlotte, N. C.: “We, the ... jury to inquire into the cause of the death of Tom Jones, find that he came to his death by gunshot wounds, inflicted by parties unknown to the jury, obviously by an outraged public acting in defense of their homes, wives, daughters, and children. In view of the enormity of the crime committed by said Tom Jones, ... we think they would have been recreant to their duty as good citizens had they acted otherwise.” The rector of St. Luke’s Church, Jacksonville, says: “I write as an upholder of law and order; as one who deprecates and denounces mob law; but I write as one who holds that law is but the will of the majority in a democracy, and that will is that every time a negro criminally assaults, or attempts to assault, a white woman, he shall be dealt with by mob law, which is law after all. Only I would say, let that mob be certain, ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ that they have the right man.” Listen to the Atlanta Georgian: “Some good citizens will say they are shocked, and deplore these evil conditions, and the demoralization they are going to produce, and all that, but they really ain’t shocked, although they think they are, and under proper provocation they would be lynchers themselves.” Even the late D. H. Chamberlain, once Reconstruction governor of South Carolina, says: “Practically I come very near to saying that I do not blame the South for resorting to lynching for this crime,” and Benjamin R. Tillman, Senator of the United States, has publicly declared: “I will lead a mob to lynch a man at any time who has attacked a woman, whether he be white or black,” and that it would probably be necessary “to send some more niggers to hell.”

The standard published reason for this acquiescence in lynching is that the usual course of law is inadequate; people point to the legal delays and the technicalities of the courts, courts organized by white men, held by white judges, influenced by white counsel, before a white jury. They claim that lynching is a rude sort of primitive justice, “an ultimate sanction” which is simply a speedier form of law, though mobs are notoriously easily confused as to persons and circumstances. They consider lynching necessary in order to prevent the taking of testimony in open court in cases of rape, a necessity which any legislature could obviate. They plead that lynching is the only penalty which will keep the Negro in bounds, although there are such strings of lynchings as show conclusively that the publicity given to sickening details makes lynching simply a breeder of crime. In the little town of Brookhaven, Miss., there were two lynchings in the first eight weeks of 1908. The Southern defenders of lynching set forth the solemnity of this form of execution, closing their eyes to the fearful barbarities which have accompanied many cases and are likely to occur any day.

The most cogent reason for the practice of lynching is that it gives an opportunity for the exercise of a deep-seated race hostility. Most of the murders and other crimes which lead to lynchings happen where Whites and Negroes are living close together. A lynching is an opportunity for the most furious and brutal passions of which humanity is capable, under cover of a moral duty, and without the slightest danger of a later accountability. Spectators go to a lynching, as perhaps they went to the witch trial in Salem, or a treason case under Lord Jeffreys, to get a shuddering sensation. Kindred of the injured ones are invited to come to the front with hot irons and gimlets; special trains have repeatedly been furnished, on request to the railroads, in order to carry parties of lynchers; in several instances the burning at the stake of Negroes has been advertised by telegraph, and special trains have been put on to bring spectators. After the auto da fÉ is over, white people scramble in the ashes for bits of bone. Within a few months a black woman was burned at the stake by a mob, though everybody knew she had committed absolutely no offense except to accompany her husband when he ran away after committing a murder. These are not incidents of every lynching, they are not condoned by those Southerners who disapprove of lynching; but when you have turned a tiger loose and given him a taste of blood, you are not entitled to say that you have no responsibility for innocent people whom he may devour.

The whole fabric of defense of lynching, which in some cases and for some crimes is justified by the large majority of educated white men and women in the South, may be exploded into fragments by a single test. If lynching under any circumstances is for the good of the community, why not legalize it? Why does not some state come out of the ranks of modern civilized communities in which public courts replace private vengeance and torture has ceased to be a part of judicial process, and enact that in every town the adult men shall constitute a tribunal which—on the suggestion that somebody has committed a crime—shall apprehend the suspect, and, with the hastiest examination of the facts, shall forthwith condemn him to be hanged, shot, or burned, and shall constitute themselves executioners, after due notice to the railroads to bring school children in special trains to witness the proceedings, and with the right to distribute the bones and ashes to their friends as souvenirs? Then the whole proceeding may be inscribed on the public records, so that later generations may see the care that has been taken to prevent lawlessness.

It would be unjust to leave this subject as though Southern people spent their lives in breathing out threatenings and slaughter. With all the conversation about homicide, all the columns of lurid dispatches about lynchings, in which again white people pen the dispatches and white editors vivify them, the everyday atmosphere seems peaceful enough; the traveler, the ordinary business and professional man, feels no sense of insecurity. Still one wonders just what was in the mind of the Alabamian who, after driving a Yankee a hundred miles through a wild part of his state, prepared to return by another way, but remarked: “I wouldn’t be afraid to drive right back over the same road that we came.” The chance that a respectable man in the South, who attends to his own business, will be shot, is very much greater than in any other civilized country; but powerful influences are at work to bring about better things. There are some indications that the Negroes will be compelled to give up carrying weapons, and then, perhaps, some of the Whites can also be disarmed. Sensible people deplore the insecurity of life. As for race violence, nobody who knows the South can doubt that the feeling of hatred and hostility to the Negro as a Negro, perhaps to the white man as a white man, is sharper than ever before; but that is the feeling of those members of both races who have no responsibility, of the idle town loafer, of the assistant plantation manager who could make more money if his hands would work better. On the other side stand the upbuilders of the commonwealth, the educators, the professional classes, the plantation owners, the capitalists, most of whom wish the Negro well, oppose violence and injustice, and are willing to coÖperate with the best element of the Negroes in freeing the South from its two worst enemies—the black brute, and the white amateur executioner.