The commonwealth. (Greenwood, Miss.) 1896-1923, 1902-05-16

the white people of the South have
\ INDUCED in more idle and mis-
chievous defamation, more false and
meritricious pretense, more vain, ex-
travagant and impracticable protesta-
tion against lynching negroes for rape,
and for other cold-blooded, foul and
hideous crimes, than they have exhib
tied on all other questions combined in
the last hundred and twenty-five years.
LYnching for certain crimes is here to
stay for an indefinite period, it is an in
eradicable evil; it is the natural pro-
duct of unnatural conditions, thrust
upon us against our will. 1t is heter
ologous formation not smenable to the
science of moral and civil therapeutics,
1t is legal carcimona-judicial cancer;
we can not cure If we would. Let us
diagnose the disease and then endeavor
to exercise the skill, prudence and pa
tience of the wise and experienced ply
sician in dealing with an incurable
malady. Before we can eliminate
lynching we must extinguish the dia-
thesis, the morbid condition from which
it arises This can never be done so
long as the blind folly prevails of striv-
ing to convert the negro into a fully
panoplied American citizen. The sys-
tenn of jurisprudence devised and inau-
gurated centuries ago by the great law
givers, for the regulation and protec-
tion of the Caucasian society, does not
effectually reach the existing status of
the white and negro races in the South,
because it was impossible to have antic-
ipated such civil and political solecism
as the violent attempt to mould the
highest type of the Anglo-Saxon and
the most vicious type of the negro bar
barian into a homogeneous and har-
monious body polite Of unequal equal
ity. 1t is impossible to adjust the oper
ations of the law to the incongruous
elements of two separate and distinct
races or creations withsthe same precis-
ion and efficacy as Iwhere the applica-
tion is made to the disturbing factors
in one race or single creation. The
gross and beastly disregard of law. by
the weak and degraded elements of the
inferior race, will inevitably invoke in
fraction of the letter, if not of the spir-
it Of the law, on the part Of the strong
er and superior race.
Bourke Cochran, in his speech before
mixed audience, white and black, at
Montgomery, Ala. said: The fifteenth
amendment is dead, it has Oeen!lynched
A constitution or law can be lynched
as effectually as a man" He told the
negroes as their friend, that it was folly
for them Ito clamor for theoretical
right that had been lynched to death.
He said the white man must and will
rule, and for the good of both races,
ought to rule. He told them their only
hope of peace and protection lay in
their abandonment of theory that was
already dead in practice aud would re-
main 80.
For the same reason the criminal law
is dead and imperative as to certain in.
fractions that are provoked by specific
crimes incident to the abnormal rela-
tions, under the law, of superior and
inferior race, The negro llynches the
law and the white man lynches the ne
gro. Who would think of trying a
wolf for devouring lambH who would
suggest a judicial process against a
gorilla for stealing baby2 True, the
line of racial division between the 60
rilla and the negro may be wider than
the space between the negro and the
white man, but it is no older, no more
clearly defined, no more immutable and
impossible. China has maintained, for
six thousand years, the most stable gov
ernment in history. She had civili-
zation that taught theology, astronomy,
mathematics, history, poetry, music
and painting three thousand years be-
fore the Christian era, and yet the
Chinaman and the Anglo Saxon are no
nearer together as races than when our
rude andiwarlike ancestors first crossed
the border Of the historic era
For four hundred years we have been
in close contact with the North Ameri-
can Indian, those Stoics of the woods,
those philosophers of the wilderness,
who were worshippers of the Great
Spirit" before they ever saw the face of
the white man.
Unlike the negro, they we're race of
orators, patriots and warriors. They