“There was only one case,[26] as far as the writer can ascertain, of the negro’s crime against womanhood during all the days of slavery,” said Professor Stratton in the “North American Review” a few years ago, “while his fidelity and simple discharge of duty during the Civil War when the white men were away fighting against his liberty have challenged the admiration of the world; but since he has been made free, his increase in crime and immorality has gone side by side with his educational advancement—and even in greater ratio.” The Professor gave figures, as others have done, which proved his case, if figures can prove anything. Considered with reference to the crime under discussion, it is difficult to see how purely intellectual training tends to its increase, if there is any truth in the doctrine that brain development effects a reduction of animal propensities. Only in moral education, however, rests any real security for conduct. Negroes educated and negroes uneducated, in a technical sense, have committed this crime.[27]
The rapist is not to be taken as literal index to race character; he is an excrescence of the times; his crime is a horror that must be wiped out for the honour of the land, the security of womanhood, the credit of our negro citizenhood. The weapon for its destruction is in the hands of Afro-Americans; overwhelming sentiment on their part would put an end to it; they should be the last to stand for the rapist’s protection; rather should they say to him: “You are none of us!” They should be quick to aid in his arrest, identification and deliverance to the law. Such attitude would be more effective than any other one force that can be brought to bear upon this crime and that of lynching. I chronicle here as worthy of record, that in June, 1870, William Stimson, rapist, was tried before a negro jury, convicted on negro evidence, and hung November 4. This happened in North Carolina during negro rule.
The negro guilty of this hideous offense has committed against his race a worse crime than lynching can ever be. By the brutish few the many are judged—particularly when the many in vociferous condemnation of the penalty visited upon the criminal seem to condone his awful iniquity against themselves. Black men who have been and will be womanhood’s protectors outnumber the beasts who wear like skins as many thousands to one; and it is not fair to themselves that they pursue any course, utter any sentiment, which causes them to be classed in any way whatever with these. Black men are seeing this and are setting their faces towards stamping out the crime which causes lynching. Utterances from some of their pulpits and resolutions passed by some of their religious bodies indicate this.
The occurrence of rapes, lynchings and burnings in the North and West has had beneficial influence upon the question at large. It has led white people of other sections to understand in some degree the Southern situation and to express condemnation of the crime that leads to lynching. The attitude of the Northern press has undergone great change in recent years, change effective for reform, in that while lynching is as severely under the ban as ever—which it should be—the companion crime goes with it. Southern sentiment is against lynching; I recall seven governors—Aycock of North Carolina, Montague of Virginia, Heyward of South Carolina, Candler and Terrell of Georgia, Jelks of Alabama, Vardaman of Mississippi—who have so placed themselves conspicuously on record. All our newspapers have done so, I believe, from the “Times-Dispatch” of Richmond, the Charlotte “Observer,” the “Constitution” and the “Journal” of Atlanta, the “State” of Columbia, the Charleston “News-Courier,” the Savannah “News,” to the “Times-Democrat” of New Orleans, and “Times-Union” of Jacksonville.
One hope and promise of the new constitutions with which Southern States lately replaced the Black and Tan instruments is the eradication of this method of procedure. Soon after Virginia adopted hers, three negro rapists in that State received legal trial and conviction and not over hasty execution. On motion of District Attorney E. C. Goode, reprieve was granted after conviction that a case in Mecklenburg might be looked into more fully. Such deliberation has not been exceeded—if, indeed, it has been equaled—north of Mason & Dixon’s line. But as long as rapes are committed, so long will there be danger of lynchings, not only in the South, but anywhere else. In the presence of this worse than savage crime the white race suffers reversion to savagery.
RACE PREJUDICE