The Kansas City sun. (Kansas City, Mo.) 1908-1924, 1918-03-09
CONCERNING LYNcHINes.

mo violence Tuesday in what is
usually one of the best ordered of
Tennessee communities, it is time for
the people of this state who have it's
best interest at heart who desire its
progress and who wish that it may be
considered in the front rank of Twen-
tieth century civilization, to consider
that for the attainment of these de-
sirable ends such practices must stop.
This applies to the whole South, but
the Banner wishes now to speak for
its W state and the people whose
immediate interest ii serves, those
among whom it moves, lives and has
it's being, and where it may hope that
its voice will be heard.
This practice of burning Negro
criminals at the stake and subjecting
them to torture is rank savagery. 1t
is of no avail to try to excuse or
modify it, or call it by any milder
name. No really civilized people ever
INDUCED a practice of that kind. The
Banner is willing to admit the sur
prising fact that such outbreaks have
occurred in communities where re-
fined and cultivated people live, and
where all the outward exhibitions of
a Christian civilization are found, but
such acts in themselves are unmixed
savagery and mark a most painful re-
version to primitive conditions, to the
wild men who knew no law, in whom
human instincts lad not developed and
who, lacking the power to administer
justice, resorted to merciless cruelty
in dealing with those who gave Of
tense.
The Banner hopes to see Tennessee
grow beyond the possibility of such
revolving deeds, and has long hoped
for it, but it is a painful and dis
couraging fact that they grow more
frequent, more violent and are charac-
terized by more sickening exhibitions
Of barbarity.
The l%ynching began with hanging
Negroes for rape. 1t was extended to
hanging them for all manner of
crimes. Then Negroes were burned
for rape and now they are burned and
tortured for other offenses. Lynch
ings are placing the South in the
ranks of the lakewood, ha~lf-civilized
people of the earth, and they must
be suppressed.
1t doesn't put any better phase on
such evil happenings to argue that
they have occurred elsewhere. They
are wholly evil and without excuse in.
one place as much as in another, and
our W faults need correcting for
our W sake, no matter what those
Of other people in other regions may
need. And it is undeniably true that
they occur in about the ratio of ten
TO one in the South.
1t avails nothing to rave at the
critics of the outside world who con-
cause for all they say. To torture
and burn to death a criminal is not
civilization, it is lot Christian, and
there is no defense for such practice.
There is a large and enlightened
element of Tennessee citizenship to
whom the sinister aspect of such hap
penings is wholly apparent, and whose
minds are not befogged and whose
morals are not blunted by the manner.
of excuse made in their behalf. This
element should vigorously assert itself
to oppose such practices, and endea-
vor to awaken the civil authorities to,
the duty of preventing them. They
] ShDIIl6 fry RI nrnafn n hnttnp l;-lo-
and more enlightened public senti-
ment that will not tolerate or give
countenance to anything so utterly in
tolerable.
The news of these constantly re-
curing %lynchings go abroad, and they
make on people of other lands the
same manner of impression concern
ing Southerners that accounts of the
massacres of Armenians by Kurds
makes OF Americans. When the story
of such happenings get to other lands
the sympathy is all with the victims
and the race that suffers. The South
ern whites are charged with revolt
ing brutality because of'this lynching,
and the trouble is that one such deed
IN a remote locality Will be charged
to the whole South, and years will
not eradicate the reproach it puts
upon US.
1t is only the encrusted provincial
mind that doesn't recognize this fact,
and the people need to be brought to a
wider and more enlightened view.
Mob violence is no proper way to
enforce white supremacy. 1t degrades
the white man and argues his inabil-
ity to keep order or to properly en-
force the laws that he has himself
created. He can best rule by abso-
lutte justice and by commanding uni
yersal obedience to law.
And it is the duty of the white men,
the ruling class, to the Negroes,
w-6orN A. A. -