In the Atlanta riot no attempt was made by any of the rioters to conceal their identity. They slew every Negro in sight openly and before the eyes of the officers charged with the enforcement of the laws against disorderly conduct and murder, yet not a single individual of the mob was ever punished. The governor of the State took no action to apprehend the guilty and execute the laws he had sworn to uphold and execute.
At Statesboro, Ga., in 1905, the boldness of the mob was only exceeded by the heinousness of the crime committed. Two negroes being tried for murder under guard of a company of State militia soldiers, were removed from the court room during the progress of the trial and burned at the stake.
Although the sheriff of the county and every officer of the law in that section knew personally numbers of the mob no prosecution was ever attempted by them.
During the winter of 1916 five Negro prisoners were taken from the county jail at Sylvester, Ga. and hanged to the same tree. Later the criminal who committed the crime for which the five were lynched was also summarily put to death.
Six lives of Negroes, five of whom were in no wise connected with the crime for which vengeance was wreaked, in retaliation for the life of one white man!
The case has too many parallels for recitation here.
In none of the open, undisguised atrocious crimes against the blacks is prosecution even remotely probable.
With like impunity are almost all the laws respecting the welfare of the Negro violated throughout the Southern States. Especially notable are the violations of the act to make effective the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States adopted by Congress May 31, 1870.
This act declares, that all citizens who are or shall become qualified by law to vote at any election shall not be denied the right to vote at all elections, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude, by any constitution, law, custom, usage or regulation any State or territory may make.
Various subterfuges in the guise of law are resorted to in the effort to disqualify the Negroes, but as the race is becoming able to qualify rapidly discrimination in the application of the registration laws are openly admitted by the authorities.