The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-03-19
Strip Mask of Legality
From Mass Lynchings

DIGIT on the heel of the hideous mass massacre
N of Negroes in three Southern States on Febru-
airy 9, seven more Negroes we're legally butchered
last Friday morning in Mississippi Georgia and
North Carolina.
For sheer, studied, cold-blooded brutality it is
difficult to find in the long history of ruling
class violence against the oppressed Negro masses
case to parallel the legazed butchery of the three
Negro youths in MiSsssipp-unless one turns to the
mass hangings of rebelous slaves in the frequent
and heroic slave instructions during the 10Th
century.
The crudity of the Mississippi frame-up was
surpassed only by the trial. itself in which every
elementary human and constitutional right of the
Negro masses 1agrantly violated br11tany trod-
den under foot and openly derided as shown by
all reports on the proceedings of Indictment, trial"
conviction and sentencing-all in the course OF
single day-and vigorously exposed by the Daily
Worker"
Accused Of "raping" the daughter Of a Holly,
Miss, merchant and cousin of State Senator Col
inns, the defendants at no time confronted
by their accuser. The supposed rape" victim was
not even submitted to a physical examination by
physician to check her statement. Not single
shred of evidence was presented to give even the
slightest sembance of proof to the rape" charge
The mere accusation that the youths had
raped member of Nnssssippis ruling class was
enough evidence for the al-white boss jury and the
lynch urist, Judge Kuykendal who presided at this
monstruous mockery Of trial. and expressed SNUG
satisfaction at the proceedings as he fastened to
pronounce the sentence Of death before the verdict
was well out of the mouth of the foreman of the
jury.
The Costigan Wagner anti-lynching bill is silent
on legal lynchngs, because its sponsors dare not
expose the class and national oppression character
of lynching and the fact that the fascist lynch
terror is organized and directed by the white ruling
class the same class that controls the lynch courts
The bill is silent on the death penalty for lynchers
It's only provision against the lynchers that of i'm
posing a fine the county in which lynching
takes place already has been discounted in several
states where it has been incorporated into the
statutes, and Where the county governments have
openly Knocked and defed this provision
THE only anti-ynching bill which is provided with
real teeth against the lynch-terror both within
and outside of the lynch courts is the bill drawn
up by the League Of Struggle for Negro Rights and
taken to Washington by the Scottsboro marchers
But the lynchers and their agents naturally op-
posed to this bill. President Roosevelt has thrown
it into his scrap-basket The u s. Congress refuses
to give it hearing either in the House or the
Senate. The Negro millionaire Congressman De
Priest has refused to sponsor it, declaring he would
not permit himself to be embarrassed Embarrassed?
In whose eyes? In the eyes of his imperialist
masters and the lynch lords Of the South
The cloak Of legality must be stripped from the
legal mass butcheries of Negroes by the State APP
paratus The legal mass lynchings must be exposed