The Wilmington morning star., 1940-01-20
WASHINGTON
DAYBOOK
By PRESTON GROVER

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19.-Congress never
stages a better show than in its periodic anti
~lynching debates.
Half the members are furiously serious.
Some don't care. Others accept the business
lightheartedly as a political gesture by which
members with northern negro constituencies,
such as in Chicago and New York, try to put
the bill across. Representative Gavagan, auth
or of this years bill, comes from New York's
Harlem, although he is white and Irish as he
can be.
There isn't a solitary member of congress
who honestly thinks the bill will get through
the senate this year even though it went
through the house by a wide margin. South
ern senators would die in their seats before
they would let it get to a vote. 1t would pass
for sure if the senate had a chance to vote
on it.
There were only three lynchings last year.
That proves, say southern members that
lynching is under control and the southern
states need no federal whiplash to make them
end it. The bill would permit the federal gov
eminent to Jail local officials where a lynch
ing occurred and make the county pay up to
$1,000 to relatives Of the victim.
Privately, some southern members will tell
you that while they don't approve of mob
operations, there is nothing that quiets the
southern negro populations so much as "a
e1lIlu SOOO lyuC1lILS.
Not so, says Representative Creal Of Ken
lucky, a southerner who thinks the bill should
pass.
There is a theory" he says, that mob
violence terrorizes and thereby has a better
effect than an ordinary electrocution. Why not
adopt a law we had in Kentucky which pro-
vided that in cases of rape the execution
should be by public hanging? In the case of a
public hanging they came from miles around
and when that public execution took place 1t
had a more deterrent effect than Is Or 100
people dragging a man off in the dark and
hanging him."
'Slur on Womanhood'
Once, he says. he forestalled a ~lynching by
proving that a little girl, the supposed vic.
tim, had lied.
Holly, Representative Cox Of Georgia bounds
to his feet.
"The gentleman is casting a damnable re-
Election upon the young womanhood of the
south"
'The thing which I regret most" eases in
Representative Summers of Texas, 'is this at
tempted new concentration of federal power
this testimony of the great house of repre-
sentatives that democratic institutions in the
United Statets have failed, and that it is re-
quired that the great federal government shall
step in and be given the power to take the
officers of a state from their business and
send them to the penitentiary because, for
sooth. they have not carried out a congress
sional edict. That is what is destroying
this democracy-a nation of people afflicted
with 'federa1itis.'"
Northern members argue that lynchings are
a blatant violation Of the 14th amendment de-
signed to give equal legal rights to negroes.
Rees of Kansas wishes the judiciary COM
mittee had passed on the constitutionality of
the bill before the house had to vote on it.
Natural Mistake
'I say to my friend from Kansas" replies
Sam Hobbs of Alabama, that I do not believe
that he would have paid a bit more attention
ciary if it had been adverse to his belief than
the newly installed traffic light. He stood
the new contraption and then drove right through
before the mayor. He said to the mayor:
II didn't mean no harm. I never seed one of
them things before. I stood there for Is min
utes, and I seed all the white folks going
through on the green light, so I figured nat.
urally that the red must be for us niggers."
Pontifically, Representative Fish of New
York gets up.
LAS long as there is one single lynching
in the land says he, eff this bill fails to
pass the senate, another anti-lynching bill will
be introduced here, because we propose to
enact a federal law against lynching until
l%ynching is wiped out in this country. AS long
as life and liberty are protected by guarantee
Of the constitution, how can anyone ask for
less?"