“It is too great an ordeal for the self-respecting white woman to go into court and accuse the Negro ravisher and withstand a public cross-examination. It is intolerable. No woman will do it. And, besides, the courts are uncertain. Lynching is the only remedy.”
Yet the South is deeply stirred over the prevalence of lynching. The mob spirit, invoked to punish such a crime as rape, is defended by some people in the North as well as in the South; but once invoked, it spreads and spreads, until to-day lynching for rape forms only a very small proportion of the total number of mob hangings. It spreads until a Negro is lynched for chicken stealing, or for mere “obnoxiousness.” In the year 1903, out of 103 lynchings, only 11 were for rape and 10 for attempted rape, while 47 were for murder, 15 for complicity in murderous assault, 4 for arson, 5 for mere “race prejudice,” 2 for insults to whites, 1 for making threats, 5 for unknown offenses, 1 for refusing to give information, and 3 were wholly innocent Negroes, lynched because their identity was mistaken. It is probable that lynching in the South would immediately be wiped out, if it were not for the question of rape. You will hear the problem put by thinking Southerners very much in this fashion:
“We must stop mob-law; every month we recognise that fact more clearly. But can we stop mob-law unless we go to the heart of the matter and stop lynching for rape? Is there not a way of changing our methods of legal procedure so that the offender in this crime can be punished without subjecting the victim to the horrible publicity of the courts?”
Governor Cunningham—A Real Leader
But I have wandered from my story. In Acting-Governor Cunningham, the people of Alabama had a leader who was not afraid to handle a dangerous subject like lynching. He sent a court of inquiry to Huntsville, which found the local military company “worthless and inefficient,” because it had failed to protect the jail. Immediately, upon the receipt of this report, the Governor dismissed the Huntsville company from the service, every man in it. Quite a contrast from the action at Statesboro! The Governor then went a step further: he ordered the impeachment of the sheriff. A little later Federal Judge Jones took up the case, charged his jury vigorously, and some of the mob rioters were indicted in the federal courts.
Governor Cunningham took a bold stand against mob-law everywhere and anywhere in the state:
“I am opposed to mob-law,” he said, “of whatsoever kind, for any and all causes. If lynching is to be justified or extenuated for any crime, be it ever so serious, it will lead to the same method of punishment for other crimes of a less degree of depravity, and through the operation of the process of evolution, will enlarge more and more the field of operation for this form of lawlessness.”
It means something also when citizens, in support of their institutions and out of love of their city, rise above politics. Judge Speake had been nominated by the Democrats to succeed himself. A Democratic nomination in Alabama means election. After his vigorous campaign against the lynchers, he became exceedingly unpopular among the majority of the people. They resolved to defeat him. A committee waited on Shelby Pleasants, a prominent Republican lawyer, and asked him to run against Judge Speake, assuring him a certain election.
“I will not be a mob’s candidate,” he said. “I indorse every action of Judge Speake.”
The committee approached several other lawyers, but not one of them would run against the judge, and the Republican newspaper of the town came out strongly in support of Judge Speake, even publishing his name at the head of its editorial columns. Before he could be elected, however, a decision of the State Supreme Court, unconnected in any way with the lynching, followed like fate, and deprived Madison County of his services. He was now a private citizen, and even if he had come up for nomination to any political office, he would undoubtedly have been defeated. The New South is not yet strong enough to defy the Old South politically.