The noble and tireless efforts of the Colored editors, in trying to help convert the prejudiced white people of the United States from their unjust hatred, discrimination and cruelties upon the Negro race just because of its progress, are each day being more ably backed up by the American white press. As the writer has said in the chapter dealing with church work, white papers throughout the country are increasing in numbers in making their editorials stronger and stronger in justly denouncing mob rule, its results and future reaction upon these United States. This sentiment in the white press is increasing and spreading so rapidly that even white papers in different parts of the South are fearlessly joining this movement for right.
In the summer of 1918 a Southern paper, the San Antonio Express of Texas set aside a fund of one hundred thousand dollars to be used in helping to put down lynching in the United States. This money is to be used to pay rewards for the arrest and conviction of all persons taking part in lynchings. Other Texas white papers, the Houston Post and the Austin American have on different occasions come out strongly in contending for fair treatment and justice to the Colored people.
With reference to the jury which heard the evidence in the peonage trial of John S. Williams, Georgia white planter, accused of killing eleven Negro farm hands, and on trial for the slaying of one of them, and which jury brought in a verdict of guilty, with life sentence, but urged “mercy” on the court; the following editorial by Thomas W. Loveless appeared in a Georgia white paper, The Enquirer-Sun, according to an article that came out in the April 16, 1921 issue of the Chicago Defender:
“A Newton county jury has tried John S. Williams, the Jasper county multimurderer, found him guilty, and recommended him to the mercy of the court. By what process of reasoning the jury arrived at this form of verdict is difficult if not well nigh impossible to imagine. This is, if we try to analyze it by any ‘process of reasoning’, but if we brush aside all subterfuge and hypocrisy and tell the plain truth about it, the verdict—as great a travesty of justice as it is—is not so difficult to understand.
“And this plain truth is we have not yet reached that stage of grace, or of justice, in Georgia where we ‘hang a white man for killing a nigger’, as the expression is and has long been ...
“However, the owner and operator of this Georgia ‘murder farm’ escapes with his own life—a penitentiary sentence—and perhaps a pardon later on if he lives long enough and his family can bring enough influence to bear.
“Thus do we again ‘advertise Georgia.’ God help her.”
Referring to the recent Tulsa, Oklahoma race riot, in which the mob destroyed forty-four blocks of Negro property, the following extracts are parts of an editorial that appeared in the July 7, 1921 issue of a white newspaper, The National Tribune of Washington, D.C.
“The Burning Disgrace of ‘Race Riot’”.
“As we have said before, there is a strong element in Tulsa coming from the renegade whites who fled out of the reach of justice to start a so-called “race riot” on any pretext. The more that the situation is studied the less provocation there was for such an outrage. The absurdity of the white girl’s story that she had been insulted by a negro boy was apparent on its face. It is said her reputation was not of the best and no one apparently stopped to think of the impossibility of such an outrage in the most public place in a city of 100,000 people. The elevator which she was running was in the most conspicuous part of the building.