I want to ask your attention in passing to a few points about this case.
First the Negro laborer is convicted on a charge of larceny. This charge
might have been trumped up by some white person who wanted the Negro's
service. I do not know. I would not take the word of a Southern Court on
this point. At any rate the Negro laborer is convicted and a fine is
imposed upon him, which he is unable to pay. Now comes the opportunity of
the white employer, who happens to be conveniently in Court, to come to
the rescue of the poor Negro. He pays the fine and the Negro contracts to
pay him back by giving him nine months of his labor. The Negro thereupon
enters upon the performance of this contract, but fails for some reason,
not stated, to finish it. How long he worked does not appear either, but
this much does. He is haled into Court a second time and a second time a
fine is imposed upon him. And again an employer, who is opportunely
present at the second trial, pays the fine. The Negro now binds himself to
the service of this second man for fourteen months, which, to use a slang
expression, is surely "going some." At this stage of the game, however,
the United States Government stepped into the case, otherwise a third
charge might have been preferred in due time, and again the term of
involuntary service lengthened, and so on ad infinitum until death
released the victim. This is a well-known Southern method for multiplying
Negro criminals to meet the demands of Southern employers of cheap labor.
It is a danger to which every colored man is exposed in the South, because
Southern Courts are as a rule administered in the interest of the employer
class wherever the Negro is concerned. There have been a few notable
instances of Southern Judges who have refused to lend their Courts to this
iniquitous business, like Judge Emory Speer, of Georgia, and the late
Judge Jones, of Alabama, but such examples are like angels' visits--few
and far between in that land of race repression and oppression.
Take another and different case, which is common enough in the South also.
It is, like the preceding clipping, taken from the _Washington Post_:
LYNCHED BY MOB OF 1,000.
LITTLE GIRL'S ASSAILANT DRAGGED FROM JAIL AS TROOPS ARE ASSEMBLING.
Shreveport, La., May 12.--Edward Hamilton, colored, held on the
charge of attacking a 10-year old white girl, was taken from the
parish jail shortly after noon and lynched.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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