The practical application of such a principle is difficult, but, perhaps, it is not impossible. It is possible that in every community Negroes might be appointed officers of the law, to look exclusively after lawbreakers of their own race. The English in the East manage such matters well, under equally complicated and delicate conditions. For example, in the Island of Malta, where the population is of different classes among whom a certain jealousy exists, there are several classes of police: the naval police, the military police, and the civil or municipal police. To each of these is assigned more especially the charge of one of the three classes of whom the population of the island is composed. Again, in Hong Kong, where the situation is even more delicate, there are several classes of police: the English, the Chinese, and the Indian police. Only the first are empowered to make general arrests; the others have powers relating exclusively to the good order of the races to which they belong, though they may in all cases be called in to assist the English police.
Somewhat in the same way, the Negroes might be given within their province powers sufficiently full to enable them to keep order among their people, and they might on the other hand be held to a certain accountability for such good order. It might even be required that every person should be listed and steadily kept track of, as is done in Germany at present. The recent vagrant laws of Georgia, where there are more Negroes than in the entire North, constitute an attempt in this direction.
In the same way, the white officials charged with the good order of the county or town might be given enlarged powers of summoning posses, and might be held to a high accountability. For example, ipso facto forfeiture of the officers’ official bond and removal from office, with perpetual disability to hold any office again, might be provided as a penalty for permitting any persons to be taken out of their hands.
Few ravishings by Negroes would occur if the more influential members of the race were charged with responsibilities for the good order of their race in every community; and few lynchings would occur, at least after the prisoners were in the hands of the officers of the law, if those officers by the mere fact of relinquishing their prisoners should be disqualified from ever holding office again.
These suggestions may be as Utopian as others which have been made; but if they cannot be carried out, it is because the ravishings by Negroes and the murders by mobs have their roots so deep in racial instincts that nothing can eradicate them, and in such case the ultimate issue will be a resort to the final test of might, which in the last analysis underlies everything.
FOOTNOTES:
[39] An interesting paper on “Lynch Law,” by Albert Matthews, of Boston, was published in The Nation, December 4, 1902. Mr. Matthews, after giving the numerous alleged derivations of the term, and reciting a score or so of instances in which “Lynch Law” had been applied (his first reference being to Wirt’s Life of Patrick Henry, 1818, page 372), states his conclusions, as follows:
“From this evidence and from other material in my possession, it appears that the original term was “Lynch’s Law”; that this was soon shortened to “Lynch (or lynch) Law,” and then to “Lynch”; that originally lynch law was a whipping or other personal chastisement; that lynch law originally obtained only in the border settlements, where the administration of justice either was, or was supposed to be uncertain; that in the early days of lynch law, innocent persons were sometimes punished, and suits for damages were by no means unknown; that, about 1830, writers regarded the practice as on the wane and likely soon to disappear altogether; that before about 1835 the victims of lynch law were generally whites, occasionally Indians, but never Negroes; that soon after 1830 a revival of lynch law took place, due to the anti-slavery agitation, and the practice spread throughout the country; that between 1830 and 1840 the term “lynch” underwent a change in meaning and “to lynch” began to acquire the sense of to put to death; that during the same period Negroes were first lynched; that about 1835, we first hear of “Judge Lynch”; that in recent years, lynching has been confined largely, but by no means wholly, to Negroes in the South and West. It further appears that there is a direct historical connection between the killing of a Negro in a highly civilized community in 1902 and the whipping of a white man along the frontiers in 1817. Step by step, the illegal whippings of 1817 have led to the illegal burnings alive of 1902. In short, the more civilized the country has become, the more brutal has been the punishment meted out under lynch law.”
[40] In 1901 one Indian and one Chinaman were lynched.