The Omaha guide., 1933-07-29
LID. MAKES SURVEY OF LYNCH
MURDERS JAN. TO JULY 1888

months of 1888, aside from these de
fined as formal ly~nchings, were rec
orded in the press Of the metropolitan
centers of the country, according to
a survey by the International Labor
Defense made public today.
No attempt to punish a single one
Of the murderers has been made by
the authorities. In cases where cir
cumstancs forced on inquiry" it has
in every instance been turned into a
complete ~whitewash. These have been
only attempts to quell the indignation
of the Negro and white masses and
to prevent the development of mass
protest.
This survey is assumed to cover a
fraction of one percent Of the total
number of such murders by police of
ficers or by white agents of the rul-
ing class who act with the endorse
ment and at the direction of the
authorities. This endorsement is prov
en- by the inevitable justification
which ends every so-called investi-
cation.
Even more than lynchings, news of
which is often successfully suppress
ed, innumerable murders of Negroes
by individuals are never recorded in
tn press. In most, the murder of a
Negro is not considered worth even
a line in the white Press- It is not
news.
Such murders, it was pointed out
by the /. l.. D., are constantly be-
coming more popular as substitutes
for formal lynchings, which are more
difficult to hide. The growing unity
Of white and Negro workers has
forced police, sheriffs, and other
authorities Of the white ruling class
to seek such methods of terrorization
and murder of Negroes as will not
attract such wide attention as formal
lynchings, which rouse more and more
militant protest from the workers of
both races. The white landlords and
industrialists seek at all costs to
avoid more Scottsboro, which means
to them the wide exposure of terror
and frame-up. Terror thrives best in
the dark. 1t cannot stand mass ex-
posture.
Such murders, however, stand side
by side with lynchings in the white
ruling class arsenal of weapons with
which to enforce upon both white and
Negro workers peonage, the chain
gang, wage-slavery, and forced labor
camps, and for this purpose keep
Negroes in their place" lest in asking
boldly for their wages or for bread
they incite white ~toilers to revolt a.
gainst their almost equally unbear-
able conditions.
These acts of terror are not con-
fined to the South, as the survey
shows, but are most common there,
where no attention is paid to them
by the press.
The I. L. D. program of struggle
against terror, lynching, frame-ups,
jim Crown, and all forms of national
oppression it was pointed out, offers
| the only way out for white and Negro
workers from the situation exposed
by this survey.
The L. l.. D. demands the death
penalty for all such m~urderers, and
raises the slogan of death to lynch
ers. This demand is also covered in
the section on lynchings in the Bill of
Civil Rights for the Negro people,
drawn up by the League of Struggle
for Negro Rights and endorsed and
supported by the I. L. D.
The following murders are covered
in the 1. L. D. survey:
1. Charley Johnson, 20, shot and
killed last January by T. E. Christy
for disturbing a church service" at
Shreveport, La.
2, 8, 4. Three Negroes were kill
ed at Hazard, KY, and a fourth
wounded when they refused to push
a stalled a occupied by two white
men and a white woman into town to
a garage.
5. Emmett Gouche was shot and
killed in the home of Lee Hill, white,
with Hill's gun. Hill said Gouche
"shot himself" though investigation
showed the wound could not have
been self inflicted, Montezuma, Ga.
g., z, s. Willie Washington, Tom
Green, Emma Green, shot and killed
by Harry Kinney and Robert Tilsey,
both white, at Osceola, Ark, January
10, when Washington failed to furnish
them with a match they demanded
Mr.. and Mrs. Green were murdered
in an effort to destroy all witnesses.
9. Policeman A. J. Breedon shot
killed Harry Johnson, in Lumberton,
N. c., January "a, when he saw him
coming out of a white mans yard.
10. William Hayward, shot and
killed at WATERFORD, S. c., January
26, by Louise WEIGH, white when he
got into an argument with her hro