The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1922-12-09
SENATE FORCED
TO DROP DYER
LYNCH|NC BILL

Washington, Dec. 8.-(Crusader
Service) The Dyer ~Anti-Lynching
Bill has been killed in the Senate.
The motion last Monday to make this
bill the unfinished business of the
Senate started filibuster conceded
to be about the most perfectly or
ganlzed the Senate has known since
the Lodge force bill was brought up
more than a score of years ago.
Since Senator Shortridge made that
motion the Senate has been in a COM
plete deadlock. No business of any
kind has been transacted, and the
Democratic leaders announce that
none will be transacted until the Re-
publican leaders withdraw the meas
ure.
Despite the boasts of Senators
Gooding of Idaho, McNary of Oregon
and other advocates of the proposed
legislation, no one believes that the
Republican majority will seek to keep
the bill before the Senate in the regu-
lar session. Most of the Republican
Senators have no genuine interest in
the bill and many of them believe that
the measure is unconstitutional and
would not get past the Supreme
Court. But-something had to be
done to cajole the restless colored
vote Of which the Republicans are
not quite so sure as in the past. To
the challenge of the Democrats that
the advocates Of the bill attempt to
defent. it's constitutionality there were
no takers, the Republicans unani-
mously deciding against acceptance.
A ridiculous part of the Republican
gesture toward the colored vote is
this fact that nobody accepted the
oft-f1ung challenge of the Democratic
minority for Senator who would at
tempt to defend the constitutionality
OF the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. Ap-
parently even the stoutest advocate of
the bill feels that if it passes the
Senate it will live only long enough
to get to the Supreme Court where
it would undoubtedly be killed.
While several organizations have
been theoretically working for the
passage Of the bill, thoughtful people
here are not so sure that these or
CARNATIONS have not been barking up
the wrong tree. They refer to the
tiasca of the Prohibition Amendment
as an example of the inefficacy of
laws opposed to the sentiment of the
community and to the simple fact that
lynchings have occurred and the
lynchers gone unpublished in spite of
the several state laws covering the
crime of murder as proof that the
present sentiment Of the white South
is overwhelmingly on the side of
barbarism.
AS the New York World aptly puts
it, in an issue just received here, the
bill "is not designed to stop lynch
ing, but it is an attempt to persuade
the colored man that something has
been done for him that will not and
cannot be done by such legislation.
Congress is not honest with them in
presenting it as a remedy or proven
tative for mob disorders. !
For there is not single lawyer
in the Senate who honestly believes
the Dyer Bill to be constitutional.
There is none who has not been fully
warned of it's inherent weakness. In
the circumstances it comes near to
being a piece of wilful >humbuggery,
for the most Congress will accomplish
by passing this bill will be to put the
whole question up to the courts.
"The Dyer bill would place on the
same kind Of people who now have
the power and the obligation the re-
sponsibility for Furnishing lynching.
Murder is murder under State laws