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
Only two years prior to the massacre of the six men near Memphis, that
same city took part in a massacre in every way as bloody and brutal as
that of September last. It was the murder of three young colored men and
who were known to be among the most honorable, reliable, worthy and
peaceable colored citizens of the community. All of them were engaged in
the mercantile business, being members of a corporation which conducted a
large grocery store, and one of the three being a letter carrier in the
employ of the government. These three men were arrested for resisting an
attack of a mob upon their store, in which melee none of the assailants,
who had armed themselves for their devilish deeds by securing court
processes, were killed or even seriously injured. But these three men were
put in jail, and on three or four nights after their incarceration a mob
of less than a dozen men, by collusion with the civil authorities, entered
the jail, took the three men from the custody of the law and shot them to
death. Memphis knew of this awful crime, knew then and knows today who the
men were who committed it, and yet not the first step was ever taken to
apprehend the guilty wretches who walk the streets today with the brand of
murder upon their foreheads, but as safe from harm as the most upright
citizen of that community. Memphis would have been just as calm and
complacent and self-satisfied over the murder of the six colored men in
1894 as it was over these three colored men in 1892, had it not recognized
the fact that to escape the brand of barbarism it had not only to speak
its denunciation but to act vigorously in vindication of its name.
AN ALABAMA HORROR IGNORED
A further instance of this absolute disregard of every principle of
justice and the indifference to the barbarism of Lynch Law may be cited
here, and is furnished by white residents in the city of Carrolton,
Alabama. Several cases of arson had been discovered, and in their search
for the guilty parties, suspicion was found to rest upon three men and a
woman. The four suspects were Paul Hill, Paul Archer, William Archer, his
brother, and a woman named Emma Fair. The prisoners were apprehended,
earnestly asserted their innocence, but went to jail without making any
resistance. They claimed that they could easily prove their innocence upon
trial.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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