The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1880-08-12
this, in the following EDITORIAL
Georgia AtrOeity.
HIDEOUs OUTRAGE NEAR JoNESBoRo.
ATLANTA, GA, July 81.


ATLANTA, GA, July 81.
To the Editor of the Commercials
One of the most horrible outrages
ever committed upon negroes by the
Soutsern whites has just been perpe-
trated near Jonesboro, twenty miles
from Atlanta. No crime Of the Ku-
Klux era ever surpassed it in mallgni-
ty and atrocious brutality. And when
we look back upon the quondam meth
DDS of the Southern Democracy for
establishing their supremacy, we may
justly call this the opening of the
Presidential campaign in the South.
To the negro race this outrage seems
the return Of the age Of terror. The
hand of oppression that took from
them the rights that were given by
the shedding of blood they feel laid
upon them again. They anticipate
now the return of the methods and of
the spirit of Ku-Kluxism. The whole
affair is not only a disgrace to the State
of Georgia, but trayesty upon the
civilization Of the nineteenth century
and the boasted freedom of our Re-
public
About year ago, Joe Thompson,
an aged and decrepit negro, was, with
his family, employed in Fayette Coun-
ty, Ga, on the cotton plantation of
John Gray. Thompson's son, a ne
gro of sixteen years, was accused by
his employer of the theft Of a plow,
and Gray, disregarding the ordinary
and slow forms of justice, one day ad-
ministered horrible whipping to him
in the fields. Thompson had Gray
arrested on a charge of assault and
battery, and so strong was the testi-
mony against him and so conclusive
the evidence that the young negro%was
innocent of the theft, that Gray was
found guilty, even before Georgia
Jury, and a fine Of one hundred dol
lars was imposed upon this castigator.
Gray now threatened Thompson and
his family with death, and the poor
negro was, with his family, forced to
leave his unharvested crop and flee to
an adjoining county He settled ON ii
plantation two miles from Jonesboro,
in Clayton County, and up to night
before last lived there unmolested,
winn5ng for himself III the communi-
ty reputation for honesty and in
dustry. In the above facts, an out
rage in themselves, is found the only
cause for a second outrage, one of the
most horrible of all those that have
occurred in the South since the eman-
cipation.
In rude log cabin, about twelve
feet square, night before last, Joe
Thompson and his family-a wife,
son, married daughter and her two
children-huddled themselves togeth-
er for nights rest Little did they
dream that their troubles of year
ago were to return to them that night
in a horrible and hideous form. About
midnight the inmates of the rude cab
in were startled from their sleep by
the crashing in of the door and the
tearing of log from the side of then
humble home. They opened then
ewes upon a scene that would terrify
the most dauntless hearts-a scene not
strange to those negroes Of the South
who have lived through the era oi
Ku-Kluxism. A score of armed men
with painted faces, hideous in dis
guise, bearing torches made of rags
saturated with kerosene, yelling like
demons, thronged into the door,
Four seized the aged father by arms
and legs, threatening, Cd ID
you, we came here to give you goo(
thrashing," and bore him towards tn,
door; four others seized the son. Th,
daughter, sleeping between her TIVE
children, raised up in bed, but bulle
, went crashing through her skull AM
she fell back a corpse, her warm bloo'
squirting out in the faces Of her limo
cent children. Meanwhile the father
ignorant of his daughters death, ha