Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1911-08-16
MOB LAW AGAINST NEGROES IN
THE NORTH.

!
THE NORTH
Pennsylvania has joined the ever
increasing Northern states that have
been disgraced by the brutal, uncivil-
lied and entirely uncalled for burning
alive of a negro charged with crime.
The burning alive of negroes did
not begin in the South, if we remem-
Der correctly, but in Delaware, in the
city of Wilmington, the metropolis
of that state, a negro rapist being put
to death in that way. Texas unfor-
tunately followed the example set in
the North and in several Southern
states negroes charged with the mai
treatment of white women have met
a similar fate. This horrible death
has been reserved in this section,
though, for those guilty Of criminal
assaults upon white women. 1t re-
NAMED for Pennsylvania, the home OF
Lucretia Mott and other ardent aboli-
tionists and one OF the chief depots
on the old Underground road for run
away slaves to Canada. to establish
death at the stake as the proper dis
position of the negro charged with
Staying an officer of the law. In the
South such murderers have at times
been Iynched by hanging or shooting.
The death route via wood satnratCdG
with kerosene oil, converted INTO
funeral pyre,s has not been selected
for such criminals.
In Delaware, Maryland, Ohio, Indi-
ana and Illinois, negroes have been
lynched by violently destructive mobs !
mob in recent years. Pennsylvania |
now joins the list. Massachusetts |
does not really love the negro at
heart any more than these other
states, and some day, it, too, will find |
the work of the mob is not sectional, |
and that even the descendants of the
Puritans are apt to rise up and fall |
on the criminal without due process
of law.
Mob law is bad wherever it is found. |
1t is just as ,uncalled for in the South
as in the North Regardless of section,
the courts should be permitted to try
and dispose of criminals as the stat
utes provide. Theoretically we all
recognize and acknowledge this. IN
the South, wnere so many criminally
inclined negroes exist, the tendency
to lynch law, or mob rule, is agra
waited by the ever present fear that
unless there is prompt and lawful
crimes others may not be deferred
from similar offences. The same con
ditions do not exist in the North, and
the reason for mob law there is inf
Intestinal compared with what it is
in the remote rural districts of the
South.
1t is noticeable in the lynChing OF
negroes in the North that it is not
in the country districts that this form
of punishment is meted out to ne
groes. Wilmington, Delaware, is a
city of a hundred thousand, Spring
field, ILL.,, Columbus, o., and otne"
towns where rioters have Wreaked
vengeance on negroes, are the princl-
pal cities of their states. And Coates
vile, the scene of the Pennsylvania
burning, is a town of ten thousand
whites, in the midst of a thickly popu-
lated district. These facts make the
exercise of mob law in the North even
more disgraceful to that section than
do similar outbursts of passion in the
country districts of the South, where
there are no police maintained in or
der to protect person and property
from the viciously inclined.
The conduct of Northern mobs is
no excuse for similar conduct in the
South. But it would be asking too
much for the South not to profit at
/ the Northern record of recent years
| and gently ask the people and the
press up there to criticize the beam
before calling on the South to use a
silk handkerchief to remove the mote
in it's eey.
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