Among the signers of this call are the attorney general of the United States, five governors, one of them, Governor Hugh M. Dorsey of Georgia, a southern governor, four ex-governors, one of these, Hon. Emmet O'Neal of Alabama, from the South, two ex-attorney generals of the United States, nine university presidents, the president of the American Bar Association, a number of leading lawyers of national reputation of the country, including Elihu Root and Charles Evans Hughes, Cardinal Gibbons and leading churchmen and representative colored leaders. Nineteen of the signers of the call are representatives leaders of southern white liberal opinion. The Association urgently appeals for financial support in its constructive efforts to stamp out lynching in the United States. JOHN R. SHILLADY, _Secretary_ NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE THE FIGHT AGAINST LYNCHING "I therefore very earnestly and solemnly beg that the governors of all the states, the law officers of every community, and above all, the men and women of every community in the United States, all who revere America and wish to keep her name without stain or reproach, will co-operate, not passively merely, but actively and watchfully to make an end of this disgraceful evil. It cannot live where the community does not countenance it." July 26, 1918. WOODROW WILSON. COMMENT BY THE WAY 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.