The Scranton tribune. [volume] (Scranton, Pa.) 1891-1910, 1899-05-27
NEGRO BURNING AS
PRATICED In SOUTH
A GROSS CRIME AND ITS COM
MUNAL EFFECTS.
A Pen Picture of an Episode Which
Has Sent Thrill of Horror
Throughout Civilization - Study
of the Conflict Between Law and
Order and Anarchy.

From the New York Evening Post.
The deliberate narrator who comes
after the reporter and the correspond
ent. and tries to set down upon paper,
without their power of rapid general
ization and speed of utterance, what
really takes place in small commun-
ity in the south when negro is burned
at the stake, is met at once by the
hindrance of truth ITSELF which at such
times refuses to come into the domain
of the utterable. Nobody has dared TO
describe a modern burning with its
communal aspects as carefully and ac-
curately as the old writers have de-
scribed the auto da fe of centuries ago.
Shame and pity run together into re-
ticence in our day. The nineteenth GEN.
tury sits heavy on our lips. The re-
cital is an indictment of man himself.
The writer of this article happened
to be stopping in southern town when
one of these deeds Of shame occurred.
He was staying with a small family as
a guest. The adults were intelligent,
God-fearing persons of the kindliest
natures, humbly active in good work,
widely respected, and making that kind
of a home which one oftenest finds in
middle life, and in which some kind of
sunshine seems TO radiate from the
characters themselves. All at once there
came the news of an atroCious crime
committed by Il negro. The heinous-
ness and the ferocity of the act were
such as to indicate the demonism or
Athe insanity of a rude nature, suddenly
Possessed by ungovernable passion. In
the family where l was, the circum-
stance was guardedly alluded to as an
Incidental exhibition of crime not at
nsll peculiar to the region; an exhibition
bf elemental savagery that constantly
takes place in the very centers of civil
? iZation. and is only to be met by the
, accreting power of intelligence on the
one hand and law and order on the
other. All this goes without saying,
among men and women who have been
taught to lean up confidently against
the abstract majesty of civilization
itself. But l very soon perceived that
my friends and their neighbors, in all
their illusions TO what was an import
ant event in that community, betrayed
an apprehension that did not under
stand until twenty-four hours later.
THEY'VE GOT HIM"
While we were at breakfast neigh
bor's wife broke in upon us and cried
out eXcitedly They've got him
they've got him." and then as suddenly
disappeared. l saw her through the
window running from house to house,
disheveled by the eagerness of her It'd
ings. The effect of the announcement
in our group was peculiar and instant.
The mother of the family was staring
at her husband with frightened facial
inquiry. and he was palpably trying to
avoid her eye. Suddenly he jumped
up, without a word of explanation, and
made for the door, but before he had
turned the knob his wife had leaped
after him and had her arms around
rim. For the love of Cod she said,
stay here with me and the boys" His
reply echoed her apprehension without
answering 1t. They mustn't do it
they mustn't do it," and he was gone.
The woman entirely ignored me for the
moment Her first thoughts were Of
her two boys. who were at the table.
Go up stairs to your room," she said
peremptorily and they obeyed her as
If some inscrutable danger had beset
the household. Then she went to the
south windows and began pulling the
green blinds to, and hooking them, but
not before l had caught>a glimpse of
cur neighbors hurrying down the road
1t all flashed upon me then in an in
stant. But even if it had not, would
not have been left in the dark very
long, for presently another neighbors
wife put her head in, her face already
congested with excitement, and shout
ed. Come on, they're going to burn
him."
FEAR AND TERROR.
AS l left that house / carried with
me an impression of a frightened wom-
an barricading herself in her own re-
treat, not indeed to escape from some
struggling and half-demented mis-
creant, but to protect herself and her
boys from her own race. hurried
down the road in the direction of the
court house, some kind of trepdation
repeating over and over in me the
words of my friend: 1T must not be,
It must not be-" l had to pass the
little white Methodist church, perched
on a small knoll, and there were three
or four negro women, poor, half-ar-