[35] Address of Charles A. Gardiner, cited before.
[36] “The American Negro,” by William Hannibal Thomas, p. 68.
[37] Page 183.
[38] Page 184.
CHAPTER IV
THE LYNCHING OF NEGROES—ITS CAUSE AND ITS PREVENTION[39]
In dealing with this question the writer wishes to be understood as speaking not of the respectable and law-abiding element among the Negroes, who unfortunately are so often confounded with the body of the race from which come most of the malefactors. To say that Negroes furnish most of the ravishers is not to say that all Negroes are rapists.
The crime of lynching in this country has, at one time or another, become so frequent that it has aroused the interest of the whole people, and has even arrested the attention of people in other countries. It has usually been caused by the boldness with which crime was committed and the inefficiency of the law in dealing with lawbreakers through its regular forms. Such, for instance, were the acts of the Vigilantes in California in the old days, and such have been the acts of the Vigilantes in other sections of the country at times. In these cases, there has always been a form of trial, which, however hasty, was conclusive on the essential points of the commission of the crime, the identification of the prisoner, the sentence of “Judge Lynch”—that is, of the mob—and the orderly execution of that sentence. And, in such cases, most persons who are well-informed as to all the conditions and circumstances have found some justification for this “wild justice.”
Lynching, however, has never before been so common, nor has it existed over so extended a region as of late years in the Southern States. And it has aroused more feeling outside of that section than was aroused formerly by the work of the Vigilantes. This feeling has undoubtedly been due mainly to the belief that the lynching has been directed almost exclusively against the Negroes; though a part has, perhaps, come from the supposition that the laws were entirely effective, and that, consequently, the lynching of Negroes has been the result of irrational hostility or of wanton cruelty. Thus, the matter is, to some extent, complicated by a latent idea that it has a political complexion.
This is the chief ground of complaint in the utterances of the Negroes themselves and also in those of a considerable part of the outside press. And, indeed, for a good while, the lynching of Negroes appeared to be confined to the South, though lynching of whites was by no means the monopoly of that section, as may be recalled by those familiar with the history of Indiana and some of the other Northwestern States.