Even in a serious sociological study of Clark County by Professor E. S. Tood, I find this statement:
In Springfield, one of the chief faults of the municipal system has been and is the laxity and discrimination in the enforcement of the law. Many of the municipal ordinances have been shelved for years. The saloon closing ordinances are enforced intermittently, as are those concerning gambling.
When the Negro Dixon was brought into court he was convicted and let out on suspended sentence. He got drunk immediately and was again arrested, this time serving several weeks in jail. The moment he was free he began quarrelling with his “wife,” in a house directly across the street from police headquarters. An officer named Collis tried to make peace and Dixon deliberately shot him through the stomach, also wounding the woman.
This was on Sunday. Dixon was immediately placed in the county jail. Collis died the next morning.
Human Life Cheap in Clark County
I have called attention to the fact that the lynching town nearly always has a previous bad record of homicide. Disregard for the sacredness of human life seems to be in the air of these places. Springfield was no exception. Between January 1, 1902, and March 7, 1904, the day of the lynching, a little more than two years, no fewer than ten homicides were committed in the city of Springfield. White men committed five of these crimes and Negroes five. Three of the cases were decided within a short time before the lynching and the punishment administered was widely criticised. Bishop, a coloured man who had killed a coloured man, was fined $200 and sentenced to six months in the workhouse. This was for killing a man. O’Brien, a white man, who killed a white man, got one year in the penitentiary. And only a week before the lynching, Schocknessy, a white man who killed a white man, but who had influential political friends, went scott-free!
On the morning after the Collis murder, the Daily Sun published a list of the recent homicides in Springfield in big type on its first page and asked editorially:
“What are you going to do about it?”
It then answered its own question:
“Nothing.”