The weekly echo. (Meridian, Miss.) 1931-1942, 1933-09-08
SAVAGE CITIZENS OF NORTH CAR
OLINA LYNCH INJURED MAN WHO
HAD SOUGHT FOOD
(By Samuel Tice)
by Samuel Tice)

to dc! What to do Thursday night,
starting at midnight, three white men
rode from one boundary of Harnett
county to the other, and worked until
dawn in a desperate effort to save the
life of a Negro Johnnie Lee.
Sunday night, three days later, in
Pender county, a mob Of these same
stripe Of whites, seized a wounded Ne
gro from a posse, which included the
sheriff, sheriff's deputies, the coroner,
end plain citizens, deputizad on the
SPOT. riddled him with bullets and,
after he was dead, carried him to Bur-
gaw, where in fiendish glee, they dra-
gged his torn and bullet-riddled corpse
over the courthouse lawn, in insane
defiance of all the laws majesty which
the courthouse symbolized
Who can understand these whites?
Friday morning, working with des-
perate zeal to save the life of a Negro,
Sunday, numbering a wounded man in
cold blood and knocking God in their
bestiality.
Two thousand years ago, the Jews
lynched a Man on Friday and three
days later, Sunday, He rose from the
dead
And what had this man whom civil
izod" white North Carolinians murd-
cred done? His name was Dock Rog-
ers. He was a 45-yearold farmer
Once he had done odd jobs for the
family of Tom Piner, white. Sunday
Rogers was hungry. He went to the
home of Piner and asked him for some
thing to eat Piner said later that Rog-
ers had insisted on eating with him and
his wife Ga very foul crime indeed to
seek to eat at the same table with
white people, and Piner refused him
food.
Rogers complained, Piner continued
to refuse him and berated him until
Rogers was angered. 1t is easy to
turn the head Of a hungry man. Rogers
obtained a gun. He is alleged to have
returned and shot Mrs. Piner as she !
stood in the door of her house.
Then the mob formed They call
them posses down here. But you know
what they are. All the whites gang
together and the sheriff pins the vocal
bad-e of authority on them. That max
es every white hunted Negro mlght
run into an officer of the law. II an
innocent fugitive should meet a scraw-
~ white school boy in the road and
should object to his effort to intercept
him. the white boy might shoot HIM
down and be absolved OF crime because
the Negro was resisting" arrest
Such posse sought Rogers. he
fought back, wonding one deputy, For
three hours battle ragged between
Pc -ers and the Officers" His house
was set afre and he fled to a cornheld'
Tbare he was wounded and captured
After he was taken into custody, ne
was placed in conveyance, with all
these Officers" to be taken to jail On
the way to the jail, a posse Of undeput-
lied citizens, met those who were de-
putized, seized the wounded man ana
shot him to death.
Hitlers troops could have done no
worse
of this crime, the editor of the News
and Observer this city, writes;
North Carolina justice has been
rddled on the highway and dragged in
bloody mutilation across the very lawn
Of the courthouse as if the lynchers
wanted to throw their corpse IN mock
erv in the very lap Of the courts.
"Yet So far as the coroner's jury is
able to determine all this was done by
" a person or persons unknown Inc
coroner himself was present at the
wounding Of the Negro and there Is no
evidence that he was absent when the
wounded man was seized for lynchlne'
Yet out of mob of several hundred
citizens" neither he nor his jury is able
TO identify man. Such verdict "a
mounts to mockery of the law added
t. the violence done the law on Sunday
GAS public enemy this mob must be
unidentified and its members tried as
the criminals which they are. Inc
;,stice of the State is either sperlor to
the attack they made upon it or it is !
rot. Either the members OF the mob
must be punished or North Carolina
will demonstrate that its officers and It's
courts are too feeble or too cowardly
to cope with mob defiance.
"The State and its decent citizenship
is slammed. North Carolina can cleanse