The Columbus weekly dispatch., 1908-02-20


There is no good to come OF cen
sure. elimination OF criticism. When /
ever a black brute violates the person !
of a white woman. he ought TO be
hung. and he will be hung If white
men can lay their hands upon him
ae forfeits his right to live-his
right to the protection Of the law-he
deserves TO be treated only as mad
dog or wild beast. He ceases TO
be human being, and becomes the
most monstrous of beasts II IS
great pity that when one OF these
morally mfsshapen things are caught,
that he can not be taken by the peo-
ple and disposed of before the officers
of the law apprehend him. The de
liferious effect of an occurrence like
the one at Brookhaven a few days
ago. is the contempt for the court
and for the law that it breeds. The
court had been called to sit in spe-
cfaI session, the grand jury sum-
moned, and everything in readiness
to give this beast a trial according
TO the forms of law. The governor
had taken the precaution to have the
prisoner escorted to Brookhayen by
military guard. But the white peo-
ple Of that community were so en-
RACED that they would not permit the
law to take it's course. A trial by
the courts was showing TO this beast
more consideration than he was en-
titled to. So the people took the law
in their own hands, overpowered the
military. and visited condign punish
ment upon this devil in human form,
who had blighted the life of a sweet
young woman. I am sorry that 1t oc-
CURED as it did. | wish the matter
had been left to the courts, and yet
7 have not one word of censure for
the loving father of the young Wo-
man assaulted, who rushed In and
broke through the military line to
! sink his pocket-knife into the breast
| of the destroyer of his home.
would have done the same thing; so
would you if you are a genuine white
| man. | imagine how this father feIt
when confronted with the possibility
i that his daughter, so irreparaply
wronged, was soon TO be called upon
/ to confront a gaping mob, and tell 10
| the court and the jury the awful story
/ of the outrageous crime perpetrated
upon her. He did no more than any
other father ought to have done, and
T think the only mistake he made
was not being properly armed so that
he might have inflicted upon the de-
mon the punishment that was after
ward inflicted by the mob. To those
who are disposed TO censure this
father and his friends, let them imag-
| inc themselves in their places.
| Think of the sadness and the shame
and the sorrow that came into that
home as the result of this brute S
lust. When confronted with such a
situation. so painful and so trying, |
always recollect The Lyncher's S
| Reason -
little woman, slight and deathly
pale,
| Within her eyes
The dim shame fingers of sin un-
sinned.S
She speaks.
/ Her voice is broken as her pride.
| 1t hath
No music and no color, no warmth.
From eyes like hers, and tones like
hers, a man
May learn how merciful is Death.
She tells
The story of her guiltless infamy-
Tells it, beneath a fire of Interrupt
tions,
| Cross questions, and objections, and
the like,
Sanctioned by Laws procedure.
And insults from shyster privileged
Thro' his employment to insult her
Tells it
From start to finish. and is not
spared a word,
Until, at last,
, pitifully living corpse, she falls
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