This leads us to a front face consideration of the problem of lynching. Why do white men lynch black men in America? We are not dealing here with the original historical cause; nor even with its present social application. We are considering merely the efficient cause. White men lynch black men or any other men because those men’s lives are unprotected either by the authorities of the commonwealth or by the victims themselves. White men lynch Negroes in America because Negroes’ lives are cheap. So long as they so remain, so long will lynching remain an evil to be talked about, written about, petitioned against and slobbered over. But not all the slobber, the talk or the petitions are worth the time it takes to indulge in them, so far as the saving of a single Negro life is concerned. What, then, is the cure? The cure follows from the nature of the cause. Let Negroes determine that their lives shall no longer be cheap; but that they will exact for them as high a price as any other element in the community under similar circumstances would exact. Let them see to it that their lives are protected and defended, if not by the State, then certainly by themselves. Then we will see the cracker stopping to take counsel with himself and to think twice before he joins a mob in whose gruesome holiday sport he himself is likely to furnish one of the casualties. “Let Negroes help to make murder costly, for by so doing they will aid the officers of the city, State and nation in instilling respect for law and order into the minds of the worst and lowest elements of our American cities.” The law of every State says explicitly that killing in defense of one’s own life is strictly proper, legal and justifiable. Therefore, if Negroes determine to defend themselves from the horrible outrage of lynching they should have the support of every official and every citizen who really believes in law and order and is determined to make the law of the land stand as a living reality among the people that made it. —July, 1920. CHAPTER III. THE NEGRO AND THE WAR