The occurrence of rapes, lynchings and burnings in the North and West has had beneficial influence upon the question at large. It has led white people of other sections to understand in some degree the Southern situation and to express condemnation of the crime that leads to lynching. The attitude of the Northern press has undergone great change in recent years, change effective for reform, in that while lynching is as severely under the ban as ever--which it should be--the companion crime goes with it. Southern sentiment is against lynching; I recall seven governors--Aycock of North Carolina, Montague of Virginia, Heyward of South Carolina, Candler and Terrell of Georgia, Jelks of Alabama, Vardaman of Mississippi--who have so placed themselves conspicuously on record. All our newspapers have done so, I believe, from the "Times-Dispatch" of Richmond, the Charlotte "Observer," the "Constitution" and the "Journal" of Atlanta, the "State" of Columbia, the Charleston "News-Courier," the Savannah "News," to the "Times-Democrat" of New Orleans, and "Times-Union" of Jacksonville. One hope and promise of the new constitutions with which Southern States lately replaced the Black and Tan instruments is the eradication of this method of procedure. Soon after Virginia adopted hers, three negro rapists in that State received legal trial and conviction and not over hasty execution. On motion of District Attorney E. C. Goode, reprieve was granted after conviction that a case in Mecklenburg might be looked into more fully. Such deliberation has not been exceeded--if, indeed, it has been equaled--north of Mason & Dixon's line. But as long as rapes are committed, so long will there be danger of lynchings, not only in the South, but anywhere else. In the presence of this worse than savage crime the white race suffers reversion to savagery. RACE PREJUDICE CHAPTER XXXII RACE PREJUDICE As late as 1890, Senator Ingalls said: "The use of the torch and dagger is advised. I deplore it, but as God is my judge, I say that no people on this earth have ever submitted to the wrongs and injustice which have been put upon the coloured men of the South without revolt and bloodshed." Others spoke of the negro's use of torch and sword as his only way to right himself in the South. When prominent men in Congressional and legislative halls and small stump speakers everywhere fulminated such sentiments, the marvel would have been if race prejudice had not come to birth and growth. Good men, whose homes were safe, and who in heat of oratory or passion for place, forgot that other men's homes were not, had no realisation of the effect of their words upon Southern households, where inmates lay down at night trembling lest they wake in flames or with black men shooting or knifing them.