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
It was now 5 o'clock Tuesday morning, and a general alarm was given.
Sergeant Aucoin and Corporal Trenchard, having received a new supply of
courage by returning daylight, renewed their effort to capture the man
that they had allowed to escape in the darkness. Citizens were called upon
to participate in the man hunt and New Orleans was soon the scene of
terrible excitement. Officers were present everywhere, and colored men
were arrested on all sides upon the pretext that they were impertinent and
"game niggers." An instance is mentioned in the _Times-Democrat_ of the
twenty-fifth and shows the treatment which unoffending colored men
received at the hands of some of the officers. This instance shows
Corporal Trenchard, who displayed such remarkable bravery on Monday night
in dodging Charles's revolver, in his true light. It shows how brave a
white man is when he has a gun attacking a Negro who is a helpless
prisoner. The account is as follows:
The police made some arrests in the neighborhood of the killing of the
two officers. Mobs of young darkies gathered everywhere. These Negroes
talked and joked about the affair, and many of them were for starting a
race war on the spot. It was not until several of these little gangs
amalgamated and started demonstrations that the police commenced to
act. Nearly a dozen arrests were made within an hour, and everybody in
the vicinity was in a tremor of excitement.
It was about 1 o'clock that the Negroes on Fourth Street became very
noisy, and George Meyers, who lives on Sixth Street, near Rampart,
appeared to be one of the prime movers in a little riot that was rapidly
developing. Policeman Exnicios and Sheridan placed him under arrest, and
owing to the fact that the patrol wagon had just left with a number of
prisoners, they walked him toward St. Charles Avenue in order to get a
conveyance to take him to the Sixth Precinct station.
A huge crowd of Negroes followed the officers and their prisoners.
Between Dryades and Baronne, on Sixth, Corporal Trenchard met the trio.
He had his pistol in his hand and he came on them running. The Negroes
in the wake of the officers, and prisoner took to flight immediately.
Some disappeared through gates and some over fences and into yards, for
Trenchard, visibly excited, was waving his revolver in the air and was
threatening to shoot. He joined the officers in their walk toward St.
Charles Street, and the way he acted led the white people who were
witnessing the affair to believe that his prisoner was the wanted Negro.
At every step he would punch him or hit him with the barrel of his
pistol, and the onlookers cried, "Lynch him!" "Kill him!" and other
expressions until the spectators were thoroughly wrought up. At St.
Charles Street Trenchard desisted, and, calling an empty ice wagon,
threw the Negro into the body of the vehicle and ordered Officer
Exnicios to take him to the Sixth Precinct station.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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