The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-01-26
I.awleaanes. neEets LawIe.sness


 For thirty-six years there was no lynching ip or near the city of Mobile, for the respect its citizenship gave to the law. In the latter part of 1908 two negroes charged with aggravated as- sauss s16 wnits srhs were from Birmingham to this city for trial, and hanged by mob. A year later a mob from a suburban town put to gro charged with assault upon an aged white woman. There was some appearance of formality in the double lynching. the crowd being orderly and not shot being fired; and. no doubt, the participants considered that they had accomplished something for socI- ety; the unlawfulness of the act of lynching not being considered in the engendered. The second lynching was marked by disorder, the mob exhibiting a drunken frenzy in It's vengeance, but the violent death of the negro was. in because of his crime.
 And now comes a third lynching, the hanging of the negro Roberson, ac- complished inside the city and almost within the shadow of the county jail, from which he was taken by a mob. This last is worst of all having noth- ing back of 1t but the spirit of mob lawlessness that will not stop at sat- isfaction for one crime, but frequently leads to outrageous eXcesses.
 In condemning the first lynchings, mob violence is wrong. even when ap- parently the result of popular outburst after the deepest passions in the hearts of white men have been stirred. It mob" of good citizens, intent upon averaging a grlevous wrong done wo- manhood. points the way to the disor- derly mob. the ordinarily lawless ele- tnd KO .f vie k or wrong and wholly without respect for the citizenship of which it is a minor part. What was apprehended has unfortunately taken place. The not a shadow of moral excuse. The man had been wounded by the pistol of the deputy he killed and was under the care of the prison physician. He was a confessed murderer, with the gallows awaiting him. Nothing but death from his wounds could have in- terrupted the course of justice; and then. the law would have been satis- fed. The carrying of this wounded prisoner from the jail Is a brutal fea- ture of the lynching that must disgust cumstances point to the conclusion that the men who did this are natur- ally lawless and not representative of Mobiles citizenship. People of the in- death of the negro, would probably have turned on the officer whose death they were avenging If he had stood be- tween them and the negro, as the dead deputy did on more than one occasion In attempted lynchings. It is the irony of fate that a mob should have taken out of jail and lynched the murderer of the one officer of whom the former mobs were afraid.
 The. work of Friday nights mob is an outfage upon the lava wholly un- neceSsafy and brutal outrage; and Il shows ethat onCeImob violence obtains a footing the dG nnAfRl1inR " wtiF stop. 'STgfere has been aI descent from bad to Swprse since the outbreak rof !a1wIessDess tn October, 1906. and 1dn ns iasf SHs%nsa s9nSn by s Gis he soa aroused that even~the mob viOi ienee slt Sappears at times ito cohdone will notD be jtolerated. for' out of the occasloHs. la sScomet the present man.. a. festation of the lynching evil in its worst form.