# Petition from the citizens of New Jersey praying for Congress to make the act of lynching a crime

TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES
We, the undersigned petitioners, citizens of Massachusetts New Jersey, beg most respectfully to represent to your honorable bodies, the Senate and House of Representatives, the alarming state of the country in respect to the appalling prevalence in the Southern States, of that species of lawlessness known as lynching whereby inhabitants of that section are deprived of life without due process of law by gangs of irresponsible and wickedly deposed persons; that the victims of these barbarous outbreaks and outrages are usually members of the Negro race, and that the crimes imputed to them by their self-constituted executioners, but never proved, and for which they suffer death, have ranged all the way from petty larceny to murder; that Negroes have been hanged and shot in the South by lynching mobs on mere suspicion, or because they have incurred the odium of being politically troublesome to the community in which they resided; that human life is frightfully cheap in the South, and that a Negro's life has absolutely no value whatever there when a Southern mob scents his blood; that the local police power offers him under such circumstances no adequate protection and often times are in actual or virtual connivance with his murderers:
WHEREFORE, your petitioners pray your honorable bodies to make the act of lynching a crime against the United States, to provide for its commission the sternest pains and penalties, and to empower the President of the United States and to make it his duty to intervene whenever and wherever necessary with the armed force of the nation to prevent the commission of this atrocious crime, and to rescue any person or persons from the hands of any mob in any state of the Union, and for the better prevention of lynching your petitioners further pray your honorable bodies for the creation of a Central Detective Bureau at Washington with branch offices in various parts of the section or sections subject to this kind of lawlessness, for the purpose of collecting and transmitting information promptly to the President relative to the intentions and movements of lynching bodies, and that such information may be used in subsequent prosecuting proceedings against such individuals in the Courts of the United States for violation of the law made and provided in that bohalf.
Miss (illegible text) Englewood N. J.
Evelyn Brown, Englewood N. J.
Mrs. Carrie (illegible text) Clarke, Englewood N. J.
Ada Clarke Englewood N. J.
Miss Annie Thompson Englewood N. J.
Mr Clarence Jordan Englewood N. J.
Mrs W Thompson Englewood N J
Mr. Robert Baldwin Englewood N J
Miss Minnie Degroot Englewood N. J.
William B. Surette Englewood N. J.
John Baldwin Englewood N. J.
Mrs Susan Degroot Englewood N. J.
Mrs Percy Degroot Englewood N J
Mr Robert White Englewood N. J.
Mrs Harriet Hecke Englewood N. J.
Carrie Brown Englewood N. J.
(illegible text) Englewood N. J.
John Costly
George Mason
Lorenzo Coles
Arthur Jackson—Pres. Afro American Council
Robert " Sergt-Arms " " "
This work was published in 1900 and is anonymous or pseudonymous due to unknown authorship. It is in the public domain in the United States as well as countries and areas where the copyright terms of anonymous or pseudonymous works are 123 years or less since publication.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse