by Various
Every white minister in the city was notified, and it was well advertised in the papers. Besides this, hundreds of neat invitations were printed at extra expense and mailed to all the Congressmen and prominent citizens of the District of Columbia. On the night of the lecture, there were not more than a dozen whites in the house, while the President, Benjamin Harrison, was so little concerned he forgot (?) to send the letter of regrets he promised Hon. Frederick Douglass he would. The report of that lecture in THE POST the following morning, February 2, said the recital was enough to cause a blush of shame, to think that such things could be in a civilized country. I told that very same story in Great Britain. If it were not a “misrepresentation” in Washington city, how could it be so in Birmingham and London? (!)
That same issue of your paper contained a full account of the awful barbarity in Texas—burning alive of Henry Smith. If I misrepresented the case to my British audience THE POST also is guilty of the same offense, for the details of how Smith was tortured with red hot irons for fifty minutes, his tongue cooked, his eyes burned out, and his body thrown back into the flames when he crawled out, and how the mob fought over the ashes for buttons and bones as relics, were first taken from the columns of THE POST on the morning of February 22. It was when giving this account that English audiences cried “Shame,” “Abominable,” &c. THE POST editorial on this shocking affair the Sunday following, after denouncing alike the crime of Henry Smith and the Paris (Tex.) populace, says:
“Our correspondent, however, will find it very difficult to arouse any particularly strong feeling over the fate of Henry Smith. If he committed the unspeakable enormity of which he was accused, and it is just as easy to believe that as to accept the assertion that a collection of civilized men was temporarily transformed into a drove of pitiless wild beasts—if Henry Smith we say, were guilty as alleged, nobody is likely to concern himself very greatly as to what was done with him. Indeed, it is one of the worst effects of a frightful crime that it tends to dull men’s minds to the almost equal enormity of its punishment.
“We hear a great deal nowadays of lynchings and the like, in truth, they are more frequent than any one could wish. But it is foolish, as well as untrue, to say that the negro is the especial victim of these extra judicial performances, and especially unwise of the colored people to think of it as a race affair. The vigilance committees of San Francisco, Vicksburg, New Orleans, and fifty other American towns in times gone by devoted themselves almost exclusively to white offenders. They sought to eradicate a special class of criminals, and that, no doubt is the object of the lynching parties to-day. The color of the victim is a mere incident. Neither is it fair to say that lynching belongs to any section more than another.
“Henry Smith would have been put to death in Ohio or New York or Massachusetts just as surely as he was in Texas, had he committed the same crime there and fallen into the hands of the populace. Human nature is very much the same all over this country, and in one part of it as much as in the other. You can argue from certain premises to their infallible results. No intelligent and observant person needs to be told that if lynching occurs oftener at the South than at the North it is because the crimes for which lynching is applied are committed oftener there, and for no other reason.
“Of course it would be better if the punishment of offense, no matter how heinous, were always left to the deliberate process of the law, but no one who lives in the District of Columbia should wonder at men’s distrust of these processes elsewhere, or be too severe in their denunciation of people who at times, and under circumstances of peculiar enormity, refuse to wait upon their uncertain evolution.”
The closing paragraph of this editorial destroys entirely the effect of the first third of it. If it were true that the law is uncertain in effect, the law makers and administrators should be punished for this. No law ever miscarries where a negro is concerned, and none others but negroes would have been or are being burned in this country. Since the appearance of the above condoning editorial in THE POST, the third negro was burned in the South April 24, and he was only charged with the murder of a white man, and, with no proof of guilt, was hurried away to a stake and burned.
The American press, with few exceptions, either by such editorials or silence, has encouraged mobs, and is responsible for the increasing wave of lawlessness which is sweeping over the States. Mobs may, and occasionally do, lynch white persons, but no white man has been burned alive by a white mob nor white woman hanged by one. The St. Louis Republic is authority for the statement that mobs draw the color line. In its issue the first week in February this year it says: “Of the nearly 7,000 homicides reported in 1892 236 were committed by mobs, this being an increase of 41 over the number reported for the previous year.*** Of the persons so murdered 231 were men and 5 were women; 80 were white and 135 were negroes, while only 1 Indian was reported.”
Over fifty negroes have been lynched in this country since January 1, 1893, two of whom were burned at the stake with all the barbarity of savages. One man was under the protection of the governor of South Carolina, and he gave him up to the mob that promptly lynched him. A State senator was prominently mentioned in connection with the lynching. No concealment was attempted. One of these negroes was lynched almost in sight of Jackson Park the first of this month. In no case have the lynchers been punished, in few cases has the press said anything in favor of law and order, the religious and philanthropic bodies of the country utter no word of condemnation, nor demand the enforcement of the law, and still I am charged with misrepresenting my native country. If the pulpit and press of the country will inaugurate a crusade against this lawlessness, it will be no longer necessary to appeal to the Christian, moral, and humane forces of the outside world. And when they do so, not out of sympathy with criminals, but for the sake of their country’s good name, they will have no more earnest helper than
IDA B. WELLS
“Our Country’s Lynching Record” (1913)
SOURCE: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “Our Country’s Lynching Record,” Survey (February 1, 1913): 573–574.
The closing month of the year 1912 witnessed an incident which probably could not happen in any other civilized country. The governor of one of the oldest states of the Union in an address before the Conference of Governors defended the practice of lynching, and declared that he would willingly lead a mob to lynch a Negro who had assaulted a white woman. Twenty years ago, another governor of the same state not only made a similar statement, but while he was in office actually delivered to a mob a Negro who had merely been charged with this offense—it was unproven—and who had taken refuge with the governor for protection.
It is gratifying to know that the governors’ meeting formally condemned these expressions, and that a leading Georgia citizen has undertaken to refute the sentiment expressed by Governor Blease. However, while no other official has thus officially encouraged this form of lawlessness, yet, because of the widespread acquiescence in the practice, many governors have refused to deal sternly with the leaders of mobs or to enforce the law against lynchers.
To the civilized world, which has demanded an explanation as to why human beings have been put to death in this lawless fashion, the excuse given has been the same as that voiced by Governor Blease a short month ago. Yet statistics show that in none of the thirty years of lynching has more than one-fourth of the persons hung, shot and burned to death, been even charged with this crime. During 1912, sixty-five persons were lynched.
Up to November 15 the distribution among the states was as follows:
Alabama
5
Oregon
1
Arkansas
3
Oklahoma
1
Florida
3
South Carolina
5
Georgia
11
Tennessee
5
Louisiana
4
Texas
3
Mississippi
5
Virginia
1
Montana
1
West Virginia
1
North Carolina
1
Wyoming
1
North Dakota
1
Fifty of these were Negroes; three were Negro women. They were charged with these offenses:
Murder
26
Insults to white women
3
Rape
10
Attempted rape
2
Murderous assault
2
Assault and robbery
1
Complicity in murder
3
Race prejudice
1
Arson
8
No cause assigned
1
Because the Negro has so little chance to be heard in his own defense and because those who have participated in the lynching have written most of the stories about them, the civilized world has accepted almost without question the excuse offered.
From this table it appears that less than a sixth of these persons were lynched because the mob believed them to be guilty of assaulting white women. In some cases the causes have been trivial. And it appears that the northern states have permitted this lawless practice to develop and the lives of hapless victims to be taken with as much brutality, if not as frequently, as those of the South—witness, Springfield, Ill., a few years ago, and Coatesville, Pa., only last year.
The lynching mania, so far as it affects Negroes, began in the South immediately after the Emancipation Proclamation fifty years ago. It manifested itself through what was known as the Klu Klux Klan, armed bodies of masked men, who during the period between 1865 and 1875, killed Negroes who tried to exercise the political rights conferred on them by the United States until by such terrorism the South regained political control. The aftermath of such practices is displayed in the following table giving the number of Negroes lynched in each year since 1885:
1885
184
1899
107
1886
138
1900
115
1887
122
1901
135
1888
142
1902
96
1889
176
1903
104
1890
127
1904
87
1891
192
1905
66
1892
235
1906
60
1893
200
1907
63
1894
190
1908
100
1895
171
1909
87
1896
131
1910
74
1897
106
1911
71
1898
127
1912
64
With the South in control of its political machinery, the new excuse was made that lynchings were necessary to protect the honor of white womanhood. Although black men had taken such good care of the white women of the South during the four years their masters were fighting to keep them in slavery, this calumny was published broadcast. The world believed it was necessary for white men in hundreds to lynch one defenseless Negro who had been accused of assaulting a white woman. In the thirty years in which lynching has been going on in the South, this falsehood has been universally accepted in all sections of our country, and has been offered by thousands as a reason why they do not speak out against these terrible outrages.
It is charged that a ceaseless propaganda has been going on in every northern state for years, with the result that not only is there no systematic denunciation of these horrible barbarisms, but northern cities and states have been known to follow the fashion of burning human beings alive. In no one thing is there more striking illustration of the North’s surrender of its position on great moral ideas than in its lethargic attitude toward the lynching evil.
The belief is often expressed that if the North would stand as firmly for principle as the South does for prejudice, lynching and many other evils would be checked. It seems invariably true, however, that when principle and prejudice come into collision, principle retires and leaves prejudice the victor.
In the celebration of the fiftieth year of the Negro’s freedom, does it seem too much to ask white civilization, Christianity and Democracy to be true to themselves on this as all other questions? They can not then be false to any man or race of men. Our democracy asserts that the people are fighting for the time when all men shall be brothers and the liberty of each shall be the concern of all. If this is true, the struggle is bound to take in the Negro. We cannot remain silent when the lives of men and women who are black are lawlessly taken, without imperiling the foundations of our government.
Civilization cannot burn human beings alive or justify others who do so; neither can it refuse a trial by jury for black men accused of crime, without making a mockery of the respect for law which is the safeguard of the liberties of white men. The nation cannot profess Christianity, which makes the golden rule its foundation stone, and continue to deny equal opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the black race.
When our Christian and moral influences not only concede these principles theoretically but work for them practically, lynching will become a thing of the past, and no governo
r will again make a mockery of all the nation holds dear in the defense of lynching for any cause.
“The Ordeal of the ‘Solitary’: Mrs. Barnett Protests Against It” (1915)
SOURCE: Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “The Ordeal of the ‘Solitary’: Mrs. Barnett Protests Against It,” Chicago Defender (July 26, 1915).
For more than fifty hours before he appeared before the coroner’s jury Campbell had been in a “solitary” cell.
The “solitary” is this: There is a little whitewashed cell. It has two doors, the outer one of oak two inches thick, the inner of steel bars.
The man in “solitary” stands handcuffed to the steel door. The manacles are locked an inch or so higher than the arm extended from the shoulder. The prisoner looks directly in front of him at the blank oak door two feet ahead.
He stands in this way for two hours. A keeper than appears and the prisoner may rest for thirty minutes. Then he is shackled up again. From 6 o’clock in the morning until 8 at night this is kept up.
At night the man in “solitary” sleeps on a bare board six feet long and three wide.
Not a ray of light filters through to him day or night. He is in absolute darkness.
Bread and water is his fare three times a day.
Simpson, Cohn and George Edwards also have been undergoing this treatment. Several times they have been dragged at night from their fitful sleep to face inquisitors and volleys of sharp questions.
Back to their lonesome cells they go after each ordeal, there to be alone with their consciences.