The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1897-08-22

lives is q reproach to the manhood OF
the land, and is fraught with peril to
posterity, which from her must take its
| very form and pressure" For as has
been tersely said, she is the future.
The Southern people are fully alive to
the abuses and dangers to which lynch
law may lead. No people could more
deeply and earnestly deplore its necessity
than they do. They have done all they
could to obviate its necessity by taxing
themselves to educate and elevate the
negro race. But not only has the result
been ill, but just the opposite of what
might be expected in this respect. Brodie
is product of negro schools.
We live in a sparsely peopled country.
Among people of means the women run
little risk. Servants go their errands.
They need not leave The security Of home
without male protection. But the great
majority of our race, men and women,
earn their bread by the sweat of their
brows. The poor girl must needs fetch
water from the distant spring, and the
COWS from the distant pasture, and
trudge through the lonely woods TO school
or go without the education she Graves.
Her father and brothers must toll that
she and they live.
But the vicious young negro--and his
name is legion-toils not. He lies around
in the woods and steals and eats what
the white man owns. He rec0nnoitres
the spring and finds a lair among the
bushes and vines, as Brodie did. He be-
sets the path of the unwary maiden, I'M
wary because an her purity she does not
know that there is any such danger in the
world. Time and place chosen, with dew
lllsh cunning the demon grasps her as a
mend might grasp an angel wandering
unguarded too near the purlieus of hell
Now are the Southern men to be de-
nounced for dealing with the brute as the
beast of prey he is? Is he entitled to the
laws delay and quibbles and hairsplit-
ting of the lawyers? Must an innocent
woman's wrongs be doubled by public
trial? Must she be twice outraged?
Do not Southern men show forbearance
in not exterminating the whole vicious
horde from which the rapidly increasing
swarm of rapists are recruited? Would
they be transgressing the bounds OF right
eous wrath in dealing summarily with
the large number of negroes who do their
utmost to shield even from lawful pun
lSHLSul tue wretch VINO mas Qefleu the
highest law of man and of nature?
| would not be unjust to the negro race.
know that blood is thicker than water.
know that racial sympathy is deeply in
grained in all men. But they must arouse
themselves to the fact that the inhuman
deeds of the dregs of their race is imper-
ling their whole race. That a man who
divests himself of manhood by the COM
mission of crime which man cannot
commit, thereby relinquishes the right
to be dealt with as man.
1t is well known that the negro is wax
in the hands of his leaders. Let these
leaders exert against rape, against the
lasciyious Evenings of white women by
negro men, the same influence omnipo-
tent in politics. The same influence that
makes him a unit at the ballot box, can,
if it will, control him in the thicket.
When all sympathy with such mis-
creants is withdrawn their numbers will
decrease, and as the number Of such
crimes decrease the public danger and
pari passu, the public alarm, will subside.
Sporadic cases of rape viii be dealt with
according to law. As long as rape re-
mains epidemic, as it now unquestionably
is, it will be dealt with as epidemies
moral or physical perforce must be-
stamped out at sight.
o. w. BLACKNALL.
Kittrell, N. G.