An increased executive and clerical staff has permitted the Association to devote more time and thought to its Anti-Lynching work and to conduct a more energetic campaign for legal trial of Negro alleged offenders, than in any previous year of the Association's history. Lynching is rapidly becoming a national issue. Under the stress of war time, mob violence has menaced communities heretofore relatively immune. Four white men were lynched in 1918. And yet, when all the facts are summed up, and we would be the last to minimize the evil of mob violence or to excuse it in the least degree, the lynching of Negroes by whites is the outstanding fact in the situation.

Sixty-three Negroes are known to have died at the hands of white mobs during 1918, as we point out in succeeding pages. These lynchings might well be regarded as evidences of civil war were it not that up to this time the Negroes have not retaliated in kind. In the absence of combined action by Negroes forcibly to protect members of their race, the lynching of black men and women by white men for all causes and no cause, so far as crimes are concerned, can only be compared, although in lesser degree, to Russian pogroms against Jews under the Tzarist regime, or to Turkish attacks upon the Armenians.

We would deeply deplore the forcible defense of Negroes by other Negroes, since it would perhaps lead to sanguinary conflicts between the lower element of whites and the Negroes, but no sane observer can fail to reflect that either white men, who make and enforce the laws, must stop mob attacks upon black men, no matter what reason may be given for the attacks, or confess themselves unable to maintain law and order and protect all citizens from unlawful attack. No class of citizens can be denied the protection of the law with impunity.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fights this evil, as others in its program, with spiritual and legal weapons. Its appeal is to the heart, the mind, the conscience of America. It insists upon "ordered law and humane justice," to quote a phrase used by President Wilson in his appeal to the country against lynching. It has hoped that the better South would rouse itself and wipe out this terrible blot upon its honor. But the wait has been a long one. Can the Negro depend upon securing his day in court so long as he has no say as to who sits upon the bench, in the jury box, or who becomes the sheriff or chief of police? Think it over in the light of experience, ye voters and students of history and politics!