Let us consider the historic background forth from which Miss Grimké has drawn her story. How do its incidents compare with known facts? In 1844, Massachusetts sent Judge Hoar to South Carolina to look after the interests of Massachusetts citizens of color there. The mob spirit showed itself so violently that this father of the future Senator was obliged to leave the South. More careful investigation into hidden causes for lynching would doubtless disclose more cases when educated men have been threatened or actually murdered. The rope with which to hang Wendell Phillips was actually carried into the hall where he was to speak. And the concerted plan had been to hang him on Boston Common.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has investigated and published statistics showing that from 1889 to 1918 in the United States, 702 whites and 2522 blacks have been lynched, and that 11 of these victims were white women and 50 were women and girls of color. 6 whites and 142 Negroes were lynched for "no crime."
A few instances may well be cited. After some race riots in 1894 in which crimes had been committed on both sides, MacBride, "a respectable Negro of Portal, Georgia, was beaten, kicked, and shot to death for trying to defend from a whipping at the hands of a crowd of white men, his wife who was confined with a baby three days old." No offence on the part of the wife or the three days old baby is recorded, but the one of that helpless couple who could speak may have made about the riots remarks which disturbed the delicate sensibilities of these southerners who are so discriminating in their "chivalrous treatment" of women.
In 1895 a Negro in Texas was killed by a mob because he was accused of riding over a little white girl and seriously injuring her. "Later developments proved that the mob murdered the wrong negro." In 1899 in Louisiana "an attempt had been made to assault a white woman." Afterwards one Michael Curry saw a large Negro wandering in a field. For no reason whatever he decided that that man had been the assailant. Some white would-be murderers were quickly got together and shot the black man to death. Then it was discovered that he was an escaped lunatic, whose recent history did not square with the theory that he was the assailant.
In Georgia there was in 1911 a Negro woman described as "a good reliable servant" in her normal condition, but who was subject to attacks of violent mania. She killed a white woman in such an attack, as many years ago poor English Mary Lamb killed her own mother. The world knows with what chivalry her brother Charles shielded her through life. This Negro native of Georgia had once been adjudged to be a fit subject for an insane asylum; but the State institution was crowded and she was not then or now taken into it. Georgia took care of her in an easier way. Its lynchers put her into an automobile and placed a rope around her neck, fastened it to a tree, and started the car from under her, and left her to die. No arrests followed. But why mention that fact in this case? There are very few instances of mob murder when white murderers have ever been arrested.
In Oklahoma in 1914, two white men assaulted a seventeen-year-old girl of color. Her screams brought her brother to the rescue. There was a fight. He killed one of the men. The next day a mob came to the house in search of the brother. They could not find him so they killed the girl. In 1915 a sheriff in Georgia was murdered, and straightway five Negroes were killed. About a year later it was learned that all five were innocent. Sometimes "race prejudice" is given as the reason why certain Negroes were lynched. That probably means that in no such instance had the lynched Negro committed any offence, or at most none deserving the death penalty by any legal process.
The next historical question, which Miss Grimké's drama raises, was pertinently put to the present writer: "Was an educated, high-toned man like Loving ever lynched?" The answer as to probabilities is easily made. The American impulse towards mob-murder has always been strong whenever and wherever the rise of the Negro, either free or enslaved, has been considered vitally obnoxious to the community. In the slavery days, Northern mobs prepared often to kill William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and other Abolitionists, but they were foiled every time except when, in 1836, the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, a white Northerner, was killed in Alton, Illinois, for denouncing, in his own paper, the burning to death of a Negro in Missouri. It was supposed, however, that the men who shot Lovejoy were Missourians and not Illinoisans.
The southern temper as to the educated Negroes was certainly voiced to a large extent, when in the eighties, the librarian of a large library in a southern town made answer to a question asked by a northern visitor: "Oh, no, the colored people don't come here to take out books. We don't believe in social equality, you know." And the Negro teacher in that town answered thus another Northerner's question: "Why don't you go there and ask for a book?" "I shouldn't like to do that, if I am going on living here."
In 1898 there were some terrible race riots in North Carolina. Two well educated Negroes owned and edited a small paper. Like the black Loving in Miss Grimké's drama, like the white historical Lovejoy, sixty-two years before, they printed editorials on the side of the Negroes. They were threatened. They fled and escaped pursuit. It is safe to assume that, had they been caught, they would have been lynched.
About a year ago, John R. Shillady, a white man, was engaged on a peaceful mission in Texas on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose agent he was. Prominent white citizens assaulted and beat him severely. It has always been the same story; white or black, educated or ignorant, in every part of this country the defenders of the Negroes have been liable to the decree or the abuse of the mob.