Ten members of the mob were indicted—and not for mere rioting or for breaking into the jail, but for murder. The jury also charged Sheriff Rodgers, Mayor Smith, and Chief of Police Overton with wilful neglect and incompetence, and advised their impeachment. No one not understanding the far-reaching family and political relationships in these old-settled Southern communities, and the deep-seated feeling against punishment for the crime of lynching, can form any adequate idea of what a sensation was caused by the charges of the grand jury against the foremost officials of the city. It came like a bolt from a clear sky; it was altogether an astonishing procedure, at first not fully credited. When the utter seriousness of Judge Speake came to be fully recognised, a good many men hurriedly left town. The Birmingham soldiers, led by a captain with backbone, arrested a number of those who remained. Judge Speake ordered a special trial jury, and appointed an able lawyer to assist Prosecutor Pettus in bringing the lynchers to justice. The very next week the trials were begun.
Difficulty of Breaking the Lynching Habit
By this time, however, the usual influences had begun to work; the moral revulsion had carried far, and the rebound had come. The energetic judge and his solicitors found themselves face to face with the bad old jury system, with the deep-seated distrust of the courts, with the rooted habit of non-punishment for lynchers. Moreover, it was found that certain wild young men, with good family connections, had been mixed up in the mob—and all the strong family and political machinery of the country began to array itself against conviction. A community has exactly as hard a road to travel in breaking a bad habit as an individual. The New South is having a struggle to break the habits of the Old South. It was found, also, that the great mass of people in the country, as well as the millworkers in the city, were still strongly in favour of punishment by lynching. One hundred and ten veniremen examined for jurors to try the lynchers were asked this question; “If you were satisfied from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant took part with or abetted the mob in murdering a Negro, would you favour his conviction?” And seventy-six of them answered, “No.”
In other words, a large majority believed that a white man should not be punished for lynching a Negro. And when the juries were finally obtained, although the evidence was conclusive, they acquitted the lynchers, one after another. Only one man in one jury stood out for conviction—a young clerk named S. M. Blair, a pretty good type of the modern hero. He hung the jury, and so bitter was the feeling against him among the millworkers that they threatened to boycott his employer.
Relation of Lynching to the “Usual Crime”
This is the reasoning of many of the men chosen as jurors; I heard it over and over again, not only in Huntsville but, in substance, everywhere that I stopped in the South:
“If we convict these men for lynching the Negro, Maples, we shall establish a precedent that will prevent us from lynching for the crime of rape.”
Every argument on lynching in the South gets back sooner or later to this question of rape. Ask any high-class citizen—the very highest—if he believes in lynching, and he will tell you roundly, “No.” Ask him about lynching for rape, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he will instantly weaken.
“If my sister or my daughter—look here, if your sister or your daughter——”
Lynching, he says, is absolutely necessary to keep down this crime. You ask him why the law cannot be depended upon, and he replies: