The Montgomery advertiser., 1904-12-05
JUDGE STEER
Suggests Utilizing the Good Negroes
 Against the Bad.

Against the Bad.
 Savannah. Ga, Special.
 Judge Emory Speer. in his charge to the Grand Jury in the United States District Court this morning. drew vivid picture or the horrors of lynch law. Then he said:
 Within recent years in our beloved State. whose motto is Wisdom. Justice and Mod eration.' no less than four prisoners have been dragged from the presence of the judge on the bench. and. with one torture or an- other. sent swiftly to their doom. It Is not to be gainsaid that if the crimes against womanhood life and home. and the reign of the mob which results. are to continue. no matter how much wealth we may accu- mulate. not only will the happiness of our homes be utterly destroyed. but the very character of the people will be changed, and in time of nominal peace there will re- suit in many localities conditions of savage warfare and reckless massacre as bloody and merciless in those dark days when the rifles of our fathers protected wives and children from the scalping knife and the tomahawk and the Indian on the border.
 T speak a Georgian keenly alive to and familiar with our conditions, sharing the dangers and the apprehensions of the people to whom I speak, and yielding to no man in earnest sympathy and affection ate solicitude for their interest. I can ask we not as a people devise measures upon a line of policy which will at once pro- tect homes and put behind us forever an occasion for the recurrence of those frenzied actions of the mob which have so fiercely stained the pages of our history What nobler> more beneficient move can animate the heart of tho patriot and hu- manitarian7
 The negro is here. and he is here to re- main for centuries after you and and our children shall have perhaps lost interest in the problems of this transtory life. It ia her nf Claveland a condition and not a theory which con- fronts us
 Tn view of these well known facts, do we not fall into cardinal error in our failure to utilize the better element of the colored people In the detection and arrest of crlm- inals of their own race and the main- tenance of law and order among them? Those of us who recall the ancient regime know that when an offense had been com mitted in the quarter 1t was necessary for the planter to rely upon one or more of the best negroes to aid him in the detection and punishment of the cuIprit.
 Tt is true. however. even in the most aggravated cases, that the negroes rarely assist in the efforts of the officers to arrest negro criminals. On the contrary, 1t is generally believed that many of them assist in the escape. If this be true. believe 1t to be largely ascribable to the widespread conviction among them that, if arrested. tie II pc ScflOus, may not be accorded due process of law. but may be put to death by lawless methods.
 T further believe that if the law-respect- ing elements among the white people should unite and give assurances to the better ele- ments among the negroes that in all cases the negro accused of crime would only be punished in accordance with the law of the land. thousands of them would aid their white friends in the most effective manner
 Tn view of the distressing and alarming conditions which have existed in some To- calities. would it not be we'll for the law respecting members of the community to form law and order leagues and give guarantees of this sort and invite the coop eration of such negroes as are well known to live decent lives. who are securing homes of their own. who are attempting the edu- cation of their children. and who are strug- gling the best they can with their limited opportunities to become good citizens and to lift themselves and their families to better conditions of life? Men of this class never commit the crimes which so outrage and infuriate the white people"
 Judge Speer also reiterated his plea for rural constabulary in Georgia.