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
Nor need we go back to other years. The annual session of that
organization held in Cleveland in November, 1894, made a record which
confirms and emphasizes the silence charged against it. At that session,
earnest efforts were made to secure the adoption of a resolution of
protest against lynching. At that very time two men were being tried for
the murder of six colored men who were arrested on charge of barn burning,
chained together, and on pretense of being taken to jail, were driven into
the woods where they were ambushed and all six shot to death. The six
widows of the butchered men had just finished the most pathetic recital
ever heard in any court room, and the mute appeal of twenty-seven orphans
for justice touched the stoutest hearts. Only two weeks prior to the
session, Gov. Jones of Alabama, in his last message to the retiring state
legislature, cited the fact that in the two years just past, nine colored
men had been taken from the legal authorities by lynching mobs and
butchered in cold blood--and not one of these victims was even charged
with an assault upon womanhood.
It was thought that this great organization, in face of these facts, would
not hesitate to place itself on record in a resolution of protest against
this awful brutality towards colored people. Miss Willard gave assurance
that such a resolution would be adopted, and that assurance was relied on.
The record of the session shows in what good faith that assurance was
kept. After recommending an expression against Lynch Law, the President
attacked the antilynching movement, deliberately misrepresenting my
position, and in her annual address, charging me with a statement I never
made.
Further than that, when the committee on resolutions reported their work,
not a word was said against lynching. In the interest of the cause I
smothered the resentment. I felt because of the unwarranted and unjust
attack of the President, and labored with members to secure an expression
of some kind, tending to abate the awful slaughter of my race. A
resolution against lynching was introduced by Mrs. Fessenden and read, and
then that great Christian body, which in its resolutions had expressed
itself in opposition to the social amusement of card playing, athletic
sports and promiscuous dancing; had protested against the licensing of
saloons, inveighed against tobacco, pledged its allegiance to the
Prohibition party, and thanked the Populist party in Kansas, the
Republican party in California and the Democratic party in the South,
wholly ignored the seven millions of colored people of this country whose
plea was for a word of sympathy and support for the movement in their
behalf. The resolution was not adopted, and the convention adjourned.
In the _Union Signal_ Dec. 6, 1894, among the resolutions is found this
one:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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