Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-10-13
BLAMES THE PRISONS
DIR. THIRKIELD DISCUSSES OUT
RACES BY NEGROES.
He Declares Southern Prison System is
Largely Responsible for
These Crimes.

A dispatch from Cincinnati Ohio, last
night says: DIR. w. p Thirkield, corre-
spending secretary of the Methodist Freed
mans Aid and Southern Educational So
ciety in delivering the opening address of
the Evangelical Alliance today, charged
that outrages by negroes in the south were
due to the chain-gang prison system. He
said in part:
Far be it from me to utter one word in
extenuation of the unspeakable crime of
which some black men are guilty. Let us
keep in mind, however, that only about %
per cent of the black men who are lynched
have ever been charged with the unspeak-
able crime against the sacrednesS of wo-
manhood. Let the black man bring every
influence to bear to make such crimes i'm
possible. Lynch law however, is anarchy.
1t brutaliZes members of the mobs; it I'M
dermines government; ii does not stop
crime.
In estimating criminality among the
black people we should keep in mind that
since Appomattox nearly every southern
state has maintained schools of crme-an
organized institution for the training of
criminals. This charge against the convc t
lease system of the south. This system, with
its thousands of victims, has been the cause
of much of the outbreak in crime among
black people, through its brutaliZng and
ilQuSHCS tuOCSdituS u ue-
groes.
Under this system both prison and pris-
oners are farmed out under the control of
private corporations-sold to the highest
bidder.
ITO the lessee the body and soul of con-
victs are assigned. The motive of both
state and lessee is not morals but money;
not reformation, but exploitation of GRIM
mails for gain 1t is crime turned into a
source of revenue: the Drawn and blood of
criminals hartaraI syaip
Criminals are generally scattered in
branch prisons-quartered in rude stock
AIDES without proper sanitation, food or
clothing. The average life of these con-
VlctS is less than ten years Old and young
are promiscuously chained and herded to-
gether. Even men and women are, in some
camps, not separated One warden of a
state penitentiary in his report says that
under the present law and custom the pen
1tentiary is the school of crime instead of
being a reformatory institution
In period of two years over / 100 of
these convtcts escaped from southern pris
ons. Think of 100 thieves murdsrers and
thugs at large-law!ess men roaming about
in defiance of all law and order. Think of
system that has no refoTmatory element:
no system to cure men of crime, but edu-
cate young criminals in crime and that by
its barbarity, brutalizes and dehumanizes
men and sends out those that do not die,
under the horrors of the system, to debauch
and degrade society. From such criminals
what wonder if there have come forth hum
dreds of moral monsters?
The south should reform it's present sys-
tenn and thus stop the education of crimi-
nals The present system is a sowing of
the wind, and it is bound to reap the whirl-
wind.
over against the outcome of these
schools of crime is the fact that of all the
thousands of graduates from the Christian
schools maintained by the benevolence of
the north and south not one graduate has
ever been even accused of the crime against
the sacredness of womanhood"