“There was a school house only a mile and a half away, but they could not let their two daughters go to it. They could not let them stir away from home unprotected. They had to pay for their education at home, while at the same time they were being taxed for the education of the Negro children of the district.
“‘Do you think,’ was asked a leading Negro educator, ‘that those girls could safely have gone to school?’
“‘It would depend upon the district,’ was the reply. ‘In some districts the girls could have gone to school safely enough; in others, no.’
“This I think was a terrible admission.”[65:11]
As the world is to be made safe for democracy, so ought the South to be made free for white women. Is it not the business of the South to endeavor to make the South safe for white women by whatever method appears to be most effective? The women of the South should be just as free to go when, where, and as they please as women in other sections of the country and not be, as has been so aptly put by John Temple Graves, “prisoners to danger and fear”:
“In a land of light and liberty, in an age of enlightenment and law, the women of the South are prisoners to danger and fear. While your women may walk from suburb to suburb, and from township to township, without escort and without alarm, there is not a woman of the South, wife or daughter, who would be permitted or who would dare to walk at twilight unguarded through
the resident streets of a populous town, or to ride the outside highways at midday.
“The terror of the twilight deepens with the darkness, and in the rural regions every farmer leaves his home with apprehension in the morning, and thanks God when he comes from the fields at evening to find all well with the women of his home.”[66:12]
A few words now as to the minor causes of lynching. In reading the annual summary of lynchings given by the Chicago Tribune, one may get the impression that Negroes are often lynched for very trifling things. Investigation, however, is apt to show that back of any such lynching was something much more serious than what appears on the face. Many illustrations might be given but one may suffice: thirteen Negroes lynched in Arkansas, March 26, 1904, cause, race prejudice.[66:13] The following account of this affair is abbreviated from an Arkansas paper:[66:14]
“Dewitt (Ark.), March 25.—Five Negroes who had been arrested as a result of the race troubles at St. Charles, were taken from the