The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United StatesWells-Barnett, Ida B.
History
The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States
Wells-Barnett, Ida B.
African Americans -- History -- 1877-1964; Lynching -- United States; Lynching -- United States -- Statistics
No matter how heinous the act of the lynchers may have been, it was
discussed only for a day or so and then dismissed from the attention of
the public. In one or two instances the governor has called attention to
the crime, but the civil processes entirely failed to bring the murderers
to justice. Since the crusade against lynching was started, however,
governors of states, newspapers, senators and representatives and bishops
of churches have all been compelled to take cognizance of the prevalence
of this crime and to speak in one way or another in the defense of the
charge against this barbarism in the United States. This has not been
because there was any latent spirit of justice voluntarily asserting
itself, especially in those who do the lynching, but because the entire
American people now feel, both North and South, that they are objects in
the gaze of the civilized world and that for every lynching humanity asks
that America render its account to civilization and itself.
AWFUL BARBARISM IGNORED
Much has been said during the months of September and October of 1894
about the lynching of six colered men who on suspicion of incendiarism
were made the victims of a most barbarous massacre.
They were arrested, one by one, by officers of the law; they were
handcuffed and chained together and by the officers of the law loaded in a
wagon and deliberately driven into an ambush where a mob of lynchers
awaited them. At the time and upon the chosen spot, in the darkness of the
night and far removed from the habitation of any human soul, the wagon was
halted and the mob fired upon the six manacled men, shooting them to death
as no humane person would have shot dogs. Chained together as they were,
in their awful struggles after the first volley, the victims tumbled out
of the wagon upon the ground and there in the mud, struggling in their
death throes, the victims were made the target of the murderous shotguns,
which fired into the writhing, struggling, dying mass of humanity, until
every spark of life was gone. Then the officers of the law who had them in
charge, drove away to give the alarm and to tell the world that they had
been waylaid and their prisoners forcibly taken from them and killed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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