The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1923-10-13
PRESIDENT COOLIDGE AND
LYNcHING

(From The New York NeWS.)
The popularity of President Cool
idge with the colored voters of the
country in 1924 is going to depend
in large measure upon his success In
getting Congress to pass an anti
lynching bill during the coming Con-
gress.
There is but one cure for lynching
in the South or in the North. That
cure is the strong right arm OF the
Federal law. That, at least, is the
only possible cure for the inhuman
mob crimes growing daily in number
and cruelty throughout Dixie. There
are those who have passionately de-
clared that mob law upon the part of
the whites will cease only when check
ed by mob law upon the part of the
blacks. They have courageously de-
clared that when the black man gen.
orally of the South learns the easy
composition and the deadly use of
the dynamite bomb, then and then
only will mob rule upon the part OF
the cowardly crackers who mass arm
ed in hundreds to torture a single
black cease. However effective this
wholesome and just remedy might be
in some cases, it would eventually
beget in it's turn only it's own off
spring-more mob law and worse mob
law. 1t would sow the same seeds
of habitual anarchy and barbarism in
the heart of the blacks as now infest
the lives of the cracker whites. 1t
would result only in Southern white
demagogues in power with all the
machinery of government in restoring
to wholesale and official massacre
where now it is isolated and beyond
the official pale of the law. Anarchy
and dynamiate upon the part of the
Southern blacks will not cure anarchy
upon the part of the whites.
The South is now in the slough Of
her own despond. AS the Florida
Governor recently said, the South
cannot stop lynching if it would. The
native-born white Southerner knows
no law, only force and violence in his
attitude toward the black. Four-tifths
of the white South--rich and poor
alike-are descendants of lynchers,
burners at the stake and for genera
tons back slave-driving, numbering
prosecutors of colored men and
women 1t is just as reasonable to
suppose that these folk, governors,
sheriffs, marshals, butchers, bakers
and candlestick makers, will observe
law and justice toward their black
neighbors as it is to expect hyenas
to live in graveyards and not devour
the corpses of the helpless dead. 1t
is in the blood and nature of the
beast. When the Federal Government,
as matter of saving the wreck of
the republic, as a matter OF thwart-
ing the destruction of the patriotism
and the lives of the nations black
soldiers, as a matter of anticipating
the time when the outraged black race
has been goaded to seek self-preserva-
ton with a torch in one hand and the
sword in the other-when then the
Federal Government passes and en-
forces without fear or favor a law
Furnishing every lyncher as murder
er and traitor to the nation-then
lynching will cease. When the Fed
eral Government, as matter of ma
tional defense i'm behalf of its loyal
defenders, uses one-tenth the effort,
exerts one 1.-THE the force, invokes
-hundredth part of the law to en-
force the Constitution and secure a
republican form of government in
every State of the Union as it does
now to punish the Bolshevists, then
lynching will end. The cure for lynch
ing is the enforcement of a Federal
anti-lynching law.