Southern States -- Social conditions; United States -- Race relations
The militia of course are not cowards, they are simply sympathizers with
the mob; and throughout the South, in the press, and from the lips of many
otherwise high-minded people, lynching is freely justified. Witness a
coroner's jury in Charlotte, N. C.: "We, the ... jury to inquire into the
cause of the death of Tom Jones, find that he came to his death by gunshot
wounds, inflicted by parties unknown to the jury, obviously by an outraged
public acting in defense of their homes, wives, daughters, and children.
In view of the enormity of the crime committed by said Tom Jones, ... we
think they would have been recreant to their duty as good citizens had
they acted otherwise." The rector of St. Luke's Church, Jacksonville,
says: "I write as an upholder of law and order; as one who deprecates and
denounces mob law; but I write as one who holds that law is but the will
of the majority in a democracy, and that will is that every time a negro
criminally assaults, or attempts to assault, a white woman, he shall be
dealt with by mob law, which is law after all. Only I would say, let that
mob be certain, 'beyond a reasonable doubt,' that they have the right
man." Listen to the _Atlanta Georgian_: "Some good citizens will say they
are shocked, and deplore these evil conditions, and the demoralization
they are going to produce, and all that, but they really ain't shocked,
although they think they are, and under proper provocation they would be
lynchers themselves." Even the late D. H. Chamberlain, once Reconstruction
governor of South Carolina, says: "Practically I come very near to saying
that I do not blame the South for resorting to lynching for this crime,"
and Benjamin R. Tillman, Senator of the United States, has publicly
declared: "I will lead a mob to lynch a man at any time who has attacked a
woman, whether he be white or black," and that it would probably be
necessary "to send some more niggers to hell."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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