The Cordele dispatch. (Cordele, Ga.) 19??-1971, 1916-04-12
has the same right to talk about lynch
ing as others may have.

| ing as others may have.
In the course of his remarks he de
| clared that officers are too much in
clined to think that a lynching meets
1 the popular approval. He might have
bone further and reminded the people
of Georgia that their judges are elect
ed by the people and that this one
thing alone has more to do with keep
ing a superior court judge from active
| ly making an effort to stop or punish
! lynching than anything that could be
done. And the awful thing, after all
is our seeming total Indifference.
/, Time after time, judges and grand jul
ries get into these lynching investiga-
tions, the last one of them knowing
full well before hand that nobody is
going to suffer.
We have no judges nor grand ju-
rors in Georgia who would want to
take part in a lynching, nor would
they sanction any such thrust at our
established institutions. 1t is not
that. 1t is their too easy inclination
to believe that the lynching meets the
approval of most of the people. No
lynching ever met the approval Of a
community where it was enacted. If
you don't believe this statement, in
vestigate and learn for yourself Here
is how Judge Speer knows this thing.
Listen at him:
1.-THE heart of the great mass of
American people is law-loving and law
respecting 1t is a religious people, a
strongly religious people. Take the
plain men from the country, or from
the city, the old-fashioned Baptists
and Methodists and Presbyterians, and
every other denomination, men who
have standing in. the. community, who
have wives to protect and children to
rear, and they are just as solicitous
| for the enforcement of law as they
ever were; but the lynching contin-
ues, and think one great cause Of
| all this is that the judges do not ap'
preciate their duty and the power
which they exercise
When community gets rid of a
culprit who has by means of money or
| by some other hook or crook escaped
Just punishment for his crime, that
community is relieved of burden,
provided such radiance can be had
without leaving indelibly stamped in
| the hearts of it's citizens the deep run
ming, damaging influence of the lynch
| 9r's lawless act When we wreak
| vengeance by lynching we must pay
| ,or it somewhere as with blood and
| he tears of our own, for lawlessness
/ If this character will not stop. II
strikes at our institutions in the very
hearts of our youth who are wont to
'egard the lynchers as heroes. 1t in
| stills lawlessness at our very firesides
wherever the deeds of the lynchers are
| "ecounted in the years that follow.
Whoever lays the evil of lynching
at the doors of our jurors and ouI
Judges is not missing it far. AT this
good hour there are not many good pee
pie who would sanction this method OF
getting even with the criminal. The
more there are who would sanction
lynching the greater will be the dan
| ger of total disregard of the law, and
eventually the spread of this poison
would bring widespread disregard Of
al established laws.
| Our judges and juries can reach ant
uproot the evil of lynching. The!
nave the power, and in this instance
1T is their duty and theirs alone t.
safeguard, establish and maintain ;
proper respect and obedience of thu
law. Wherever they fail, we mus
suffer and the punishment will conc
back to us even to the third ant
ourth generation"