The Twin City star. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn.) 1910-19??, 1911-09-09
coATEsvlLLE INCIDENT AS SEEN
BY LOCAL WHITE MAN
WRITER.

lSSAiGSviLLE lNCiOENi 40 SEEN
BY LOCAL WHITE MAN
WRITER.
Burning Of Negro Walker Calls out
caustlc Letter From Native
Born Southern.
Talking interest in the recen
Gainesville, Pa, outrage Louis ]
Livingston, now in Dowagiac on bust
ness, writes the following open let
ter in the Dowagiac Daily News, Aug
10, 1911:
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAYOF
OF COATESvILLE, PA.
AUG. 16, 1911.
Sir:
l am white man of pure Cauca
sian blood, with not a drop of negro
blood in all my ancestry. I am a
Southerner by birth-a native OF
Louisiana. In politics I am an In.
dependent Republican, and in every
line of thought am an Independent
and Progressive.
l am not in love with the negro,
but am in love with Justice and
with Humanity; and If the awful
deed, the more than savage burning
of the negro, Walker, that has for
ever blackened the name of your
city, and left stain which not even
justice can wipe out, is not followed
by bringing to swift and merciless
punishment the worse than hyenas,
who somehow or other, have acquired
the semblance- of human beings, then
I ask God to call down upon them the
punishment commensurate with such
an awful deed, and to wipe from the
face of the earth the community
that would condone such superlative
incarnate! Knowing to
what a degraded level the police of
our country-North, South, East and
West, in rural communities as well
as cities and towns-have fallen that
they form one of the principal sourc-
es and main abettors, instead of the
preventers and curers, of vice and
crime. that almost universally their
sole interest in their work is the &C.
of human misery and
want, that they may feed and fatten
upon it; that they have become a
scourge, and not a protection, to
most communities, large or small,
Mat they secretly encourage and con-
hive at the breaking of the very
laws they are specially selected to
uphold; and that, instead of bending
every effort to the capture of GRIM
mails they expend that energy in the
effort to make criminals of innocent
men and women, who, without
friends, money or influence, win their
and fall into their power;
until today the police of America are
almost universally known as the most
brutal, depraved and corrupt on
earth!
Knowing, tlso, that the negro,
whatever his faults, is nearer to our
by birth, inheritance,
environment, education and
than the scum of almost
,very nation and race on earth that
are allowed to swarm through the
gates of our Castle Gardens; that the
negro, since the shackles of slavery
nave been stricken from his limbs,
has paid for that emancipation in
ull, not only by fighting the battles
II his white prosecutor, with distinc-
ion. and even glory, in the Civil,
indian, Spanish and PHILIPPINE wars
one of his greatest deeds being the |
torming of San Juan hill, and win
ling of the crucial land battle of the |
Spanish war; but by emancipating
himself from ignorance, helplessness |
md poverty, and making himself a
lseful, industrious and helpful citiz.
N; and knowing that there is GER
ain element of many American com.
nunities, associated with those secret
'owers-hierarchical as we'll as pol
tical-that are secretly bending
very energy to the destruction of
american institutions and American
pirit!
Knowing these things, repeat, and
ceiling that the statement given out
s to the acts and the confession of
Walker are one-sided and cannot now
e confuted by the miserable victim
( their awful savagery, and the
leagre fact in his favor, that has
cen allowed to creep through the
ress censorship, that he killed the
oliceman in self-defense, I. as an
Id newspaper man and man of the
'orld, expert in the analysis and
tudy of human actions, base my pro-
est upon the well known facts given
y me above.
Next to the awful inhumanity of
UGH fiendish deeds, my greatest Il