Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases — John Shaqi
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its PhasesWells-Barnett, Ida B.
History
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
Lynching
A lynching occurred at Port Jarvis, N.Y., the first week in June. A white
and colored man were implicated in the assault upon a white girl. It was
charged that the white man paid the colored boy to make the assault, which
he did on the public highway in broad day time, and was lynched. This, too
was done by "parties unknown." The white man in the case still lives. He
was imprisoned and promises to fight the case on trial. At the preliminary
examination, it developed that he had been a suitor of the girl's. She had
repulsed and refused him, yet had given him money, and he had sent
threatening letters demanding more.
The day before this examination she was so wrought up, she left home and
wandered miles away. When found she said she did so because she was afraid
of the man's testimony. Why should she be afraid of the prisoner! Why
should she yield to his demands for money if not to prevent him exposing
something he knew! It seems explainable only on the hypothesis that a
_liaison_ existed between the colored boy and the girl, and the white man
knew of it. The press is singularly silent. Has it a motive? We owe it to
ourselves to find out.
The story comes from Larned, Kansas, Oct. 1, that a young white lady held
at bay until daylight, without alarming any one in the house, "a burly
Negro" who entered her room and bed. The "burly Negro" was promptly
lynched without investigation or examination of inconsistant stories.
A house was found burned down near Montgomery, Ala., in Monroe County,
Oct. 13, a few weeks ago; also the burned bodies of the owners and melted
piles of gold and silver.
These discoveries led to the conclusion that the awful crime was not
prompted by motives of robbery. The suggestion of the whites was that
"brutal lust was the incentive, and as there are nearly 200 Negroes living
within a radius of five miles of the place the conclusion was inevitable
that some of them were the perpetrators."
Upon this "suggestion" probably made by the real criminal, the mob acted
upon the "conclusion" and arrested ten Afro-Americans, four of whom, they
tell the world, confessed to the deed of murdering Richard L. Johnson and
outraging his daughter, Jeanette. These four men, Berrell Jones, Moses
Johnson, Jim and John Packer, none of them twenty-five years of age, upon
this conclusion, were taken from jail, hanged, shot, and burned while yet
alive the night of Oct. 12. The same report says Mr. Johnson was on the
best of terms with his Negro tenants.
The race thus outraged must find out the facts of this awful hurling of
men into eternity on supposition, and give them to the indifferent and
apathetic country. We feel this to be a garbled report, but how can we
prove it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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