The northwestern bulletin., 1922-03-18
WHITE CAROLINA
EDITOR FLAYS
MOB LAW THEORY
Greensf Ats.,N. c. News Voices
Scat. Ssian Sa hst an of Bull
lc..- hs1"tosis ,iss 500.
SAVON RACE PA >~aa pay
THEORY ''POl S cK''
mob Rif-Raff Has No Race
Pride but has Votes
to Intimidate."
CAssociated Negro Press)


What is regarded as one of the nm
est editorial expressions ever writ
ten in a plea for law and order,
while at the same time upbraiding
the South for dealing with facts ar
tifcially, appeared recently in the
Greensboro News, with reference to
the Bullock case. This newspaper is
one of the most influential publica-
tions of the South, and may be re-
garded as speaking officially, when
writing under the headline of What
Lynching Means to the South" The
News says:
"The Governor win not humili-
ate the state, he declares, by sending
witnesses to testify for 1t in pet
ty judicial officers court in CANADA.
No danger. That isn't what has
humiliated the state. If the state
had sent a few Warren county
lynchers to the penitentiary. it would
probably have been under no obli-
CATION to send witnesses to Canada
in order to secure the extradition OF
Bullock.
Reputation As Murderers
"Let MS keep this thing straight.
Canada may have been a little over
Jealous, but she had plenty OF rea-
son. We have a reputation OF be-
ing bloodthirsty murderers down
here in North Carolina. and 1t is
our industrious lynchers who have
secured that reputation for us. We
shall never be regarded as a thor
eughly civilized people until we
stop this lynching business. It's no
use talking in grandiloquent Tom
Dixonish terms about what a white
man will stand and what a white
man won't stand. A white man has
got to stand by the law, IL he ex-
poets to hold up, his head among 9TH
er white men.
Mobs Are Off-Scourings
"All this snorting about the fierce
pride of the Anglo-Saxon race is
the most disgusting poppycock ever
invented. If no Negro were ever
lynched for anything but rape, it
might have some shadow of excuse.
But alleged rapists constitute only
a small proportion of the victims OF
mobs in the South these days. Ne
groes are lynched for all manner Of
crimes, ranging down to simple mis-
demeanors. Matthew Bullock's
brother was not lynched for rape,
but for shooting at white men. Fur
thermore, as every Southerner
knows, the mobs are not composed
of fiercely proud Anglo-Saxons, but
usually of the off-scourings of crea-
tion-the poorest, morally, of poor
white trash, plug-uglies and thugs
of every imaginable description,
many of them wanted themselves by
the police, occasionally under the
leadership of some semi-respectable
white man of the rattle headed type.
The idea that any thoroughly decent
citizen took part in any Of the four
affairs of the sort that disgraced the
state last year is absurd.
Everlasting Disgrace
This sort of riff-raff has no race
pride, nor any other sort of pride,
it has merely a congenital tendency
toward disorder, easily inflamed into
crazy blood-lust. But it also has
votes. Therefore, elected officers,
more interested in holding their jobs
than in doing their duty, fear it
with a CHASTITY fear, and repudiating
their oaths, let the mob work it's
will. That is what lynching means
. in the South today. There is not
one redeeming element, not one
word that can be said in its defense.
1t is our everlasting disgrace, the
one foul shame that blots our civ
ilization and as long as we continue
to palliate and condone it, il will