The leader. [volume] (Brookhaven, Miss.) 1895-1905, 1901-06-19
MATTERS OF Law AND FACT.

| "h1 Emo OT Law avn FdCI.
In The LEADER of May 10Th, near the
close of column and a half article
giving an account of the commence
ment exercises of the Brookhaven
Graded Public School, the following
paragraph appeared:
The principal and teachers, the trus-
tees and Board of Control and all those
in authority we're gratified at the very
large attendance on every evening, and
If everybody had just "kept one quiet"
! there would have been additional cause
for qualification and satisfaction. As
it was, the police who had been request
ed to preserve order failed to appear
and the decorum of the occasion was
greatly marred.
In an article in last weeks LEADER,
June 18th, noting the fact that some of
the BARRIERS of the city had violated
the Sunday law on the preceding Sun
day, alleging as justification for the
act, that they had received notice from
Constable Magee that they would not
be molested for so doing, the following
paragraphs appeared:
A LEADER representative interviewed
Constable Magee this morning and
he gave as a reason for saying what he
did to the BARRIERS that he was not re-
ceiving the support and cooperation
he should from other local officials in
his efforts to enforce the laws, nor
from many citizens who could give val
liable aid in this direction, and, as a
] nnnoQnnanno ho yuo hfn not
Then he went on to say, as proof of his
assertion about the delinquency of
other officials, that though they knew
the BARRIERS had openly violated the
law, not one of them proceeded to
make affidavit against any of them,
but waited for this to be done by a
private citizen.
This incident is valuable chiefly as
illustrating the peculiar way in which
some officials and some citizens of the
community regard the laws of the
State, which every voter is under sol
emn oath to support.
On last Saturday afternoon directly
after the editor of THE LEADER reached
Brookhaven on the cannon ball train
from Jackson, where he bad been at
tending the Good Roads Convention,
he was approached near the depot by
City Marshal Applewhite, who de-
manded an explanation of the para
graph above published in connection
with THE LEADERS school com mmence-
ment article, and because satisfac-
tory explanation was not given in
stanter, began cursing the editor, at
the same time giving him light blow
with stick which he carried. A fight
very naturally followed, but the editor
and marshal were pulled apart by Po-
liceman Tom Crawford and some by
ISLANDERS with no serious damage done
to either. Soon afterward an affidavit
was sworn out against Marshal Apple
white by Policeman Crawford, charg-
ing him with assault and battery and
he was cited to appear before the
Mayor Monday morning to answer to
the charge, and the editor of TIE
LEADER notified by the Mayor of the
action taken. Monday morning Mar
shall Applewhite quietly went before
the Mayor and plead guilty to the
charge against him, and, though he is
the chief police officer of the city,
charged with preserving the peace and
order of the municipality, His Honor
the Mayor, without inquiring into what
eXtenuating circumstances or real pro-
vocation the Marshal might have had
for violating the law he was charged
with enforcing, and without the chief
witness in the case even being present
or being asked to make a statement,
imposed upon him the nominal fine
of $500 and let the Marshal go forth
to preserve the peace again.
Now few facts about the offensive
paragraph upon which Marshal Apple
white predicated his attack upon the
editor of this paper. CAS- it was, the
police who had been requested to pre-
serve order failed to appear and the
decorum of the occasion was greatly
marred," it says, referring to the dis
order which occurred during the COM
mencement exercises. This statement
was based on an explanation made by
Prof. Scott to the editor of The LEAD
Err, when told by him that complaints
had been heard about the bad order on
the first night of the school exercises.
Prof. Scott made the statement purely
in an explanatory way when the COM
plants which had reached US were re-
ferred to. He did not state who 'the
police who failed to appear" were, and
the editor of The LEADER was honestly
under the impression, until last Satur-
day, that they were special police, ap-
pointed for this particular occasion.
The language is absolutely impersonal,
and was used by THE LEADER mainly
In the sense in which Prof. Scott made
his statement, to explain the disorder
which had been complained of. 1t
neither declares nor surmises any rea-
son why "the police failed to appear"
In short, the paragraph is simply
brief statement of facts, misleading
only in that one is liable to infer from
it that the disorder occurred every
night instead of on the first only, and
this was purely an inadvertance which
occurred in its hasty preparation for
the press, The editor of The LEADER
learned last Saturday, for the first
time, that the regular city police were
the ones relied on to preserve order,
and that the reason they "failed to ap-
pear" on the first night was because
City Marshal Applewhite was confined
at home on that night by illness and
that Policeman Crawford was kept at