Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching StatisticsWells-Barnett, Ida B.
History
Mob Rule in New Orleans: Robert Charles and His Fight to Death, the Story of His Life, Burning Human Beings Alive, Other Lynching Statistics
Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
Lynching
After the infuriated citizens had vented their spleen on the body of the
dead Negro it was loaded into the patrol wagon. The police raised the
body of the heavy black from the ground and literally chucked it into
the space on the floor of the wagon between the seats. They threw it
with a curse hissed more than uttered and born of the bitterness which
was rankling in their breasts at the thought of Charles having taken so
wantonly the lives of four of the best of their fellow-officers.
When the murderer's body landed in the wagon it fell in such a position
that the hideously mutilated head, kicked, stamped and crushed, hung
over the end.
As the wagon moved off, the followers, who were protesting against its
being carried off, declaring that it should be burned, poked and struck
it with sticks, beating it into such a condition that it was utterly
impossible to tell what the man ever looked like.
As the patrol wagon rushed through the rough street, jerking and
swaying from one side of the thoroughfare to the other, the gory,
mud-smeared head swayed and swung and jerked about in a sickening
manner, the dark blood dripping on the steps and spattering the body of
the wagon and the trousers of the policemen standing on the step.
+MOB BRUTALITY+
The brutality of the mob was further shown by the unspeakable cruelty with
which it beat, shot and stabbed to death an unoffending colored man, name
unknown, who happened to be walking on the street with no thought that he
would be set upon and killed simply because he was a colored man. The
_Times-Democrat_'s description of the outrage is as follows:
While the fight between the Negro desperado and the citizens was in
progress yesterday afternoon at Clio and Saratoga Streets another
tragedy was being enacted downtown in the French quarter, but it was a
very one-sided affair. The object of the white man's wrath was, of
course, a Negro, but, unlike Charles, he showed no fight, but tried to
escape from the furious mob which was pursuing him, and which finally
put an end to his existence in a most cruel manner.
The Negro, whom no one seemed to know--at any rate no one could be found
in the vicinity of the killing who could tell who he was--was walking
along the levee, as near as could be learned, when he was attacked by a
number of white longshoremen or screwmen. For what reason, if there was
any reason other than the fact that he was a Negro, could not be
learned, and immediately they pounced upon him he broke ground and
started on a desperate run for his life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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