The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-11-03
WHAT A FEDERAL COURT MIGHT
 DO TO LYNCHERS

The San Antonio Express parts of an editorial recently printed in The Age-Herald, regarding the five Shelby county floggers who were convicted in a federal court and sen- tenced to the penitentiary, an argument in favor of a federal lynching law. The sen- tence which seems to have struck the Express most forcibly read, "The Shelby county flog- gers made the mistake of committing crime over which federal court had Jurisdiction"
 The idea emphasized by the Express is that if a federal court in this case was the scene of swift and retributive justice" lynchers could be tried and convicted with the same ex- petition and certainty of punishment. The Texas newspaper is justly indignant at the in- difference of state authorities toward lynch ings since it sees glaring examples of their un- willingness or inability to prevent lynchings in the Lone Star state The Express says Tn all Texas IA lynchings this year, not single official bullet has figured in a genuine attempt to guard a prisoner from mob, and not single arrest after a mob murder has been reported|
 There is no use trying to evade the fact that prisoners in the south are not adequately pro- tected from mob violence, and that most lynchings could be prevented if officers were sufficiently imbued with sense of duty to be willing to sacrifice their own lives, if neces- sary, to save prisoner from mob, no mat ter what the crime with which he was charged. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Let ne- ~I x.x,lik ,,.pr hand is at once against him. If he is cap tured by deputies they feel the same way to- ward him that the members of mob feel, and it takes heroic stuff in such contingency to do ones duty in upholding the law. It isn't cowardice so much as 1t is something else, that strong racial nntipathy which nothing arouses like crime against white woman committed by black man.
 But the Shelby county floggers belong in an entirely different category. Theirs was a prohibition case, and the man they whippsa was employed by the federal authorities to help locate illicit stills" It has been argued that prohibition is an invasion of states rights but it has now been accepted as the law of the land, and there is no conflict of authority. The Dyer bill, to which the Express refers has been repeatedly amended and is apparently no nearer passage now than it has ever been The contention that such law would be an evasion of state rights is based on the assumption that it would still further take away the states police powers and might not have the desired effect of ending mob violence. The thing goes deeper than law.
 The federal government might be forced to play a lone hand, and if there should be pitched battle between federal authorities and enraged southerners however reprehensbie their attitude might be, there would be small sized civil Uncle Sams hands. The situation is deplorable, but measure fostered by negro agitators and northern politicians for vote-getting purposes, might prove a remedy worse than the disease it attempts to cure.
 Like many other southern newspapers, The Age Herald has long fought lynching, and will continue to do so, but it would prefer to see the problem solved by the states. Some of them are making progress in that direction.