XI
ABOUT LYNCHINGS
"Eleven persons joined our church the other Sunday and they were all from Vicksburg, Miss., where there had been a lynching a few weeks before," said Dr. L. K. Williams, colored pastor of the largest protestant church in North America, in an address to the Baptist Ministers' council of Chicago.
Tuskeegee institute records of lynchlngs the first six months of this year show the following numbers In the states named: Alabama, 3; Arkansas, 4; Florida, 2; Georgia, 3; Louisiana, 4; Mississippi, 7; Missouri, i; North Carolina, 2; South Carolina, 1; Texas, 1. The total, 28, is seven less than In the corresponding period of 19 1 8 and fourteen more than in the corresponding period of 1917.
Not only Is Chicago a receiving station and port of refuge for colored people who are anxious to be free from the jurisdiction of lynch law, but there has been built here a publicity or propaganda machine that directs Its appeals or carries on an agitation that every week reaches hundreds of thousands of people of the colored race in the southern states. The State street blocks south of 31st street are a "newspaper row," with the Defender, the Broad Ax, the Plaindealer, the Searchlight, the Guide, the Advocate, the Whip, as weekly publications, and there are also Illustrated monthly magazines such as the Half Century and the Favorite.
The Defender is the dean of the weekly newspaper group, and it is said to reach more than 100,000 subscribers in southern states. A Carnegie foundation investigator records his belief that the Defender, more than any other one agency, was the cause of the "northern fever" and the big exodus from the south in the last three years. It advocates race pride and race militancy and exhausted the vocabulary of denunciation on lynching, disfranchisement, and all forms of race discrimination.
At some postoffices in the south it was difficult to have copies of the Defender delivered to subscribers. A colored man caught with a copy in his possession was suspected of "northern fever" and other so called disloyalties. Thousands of letters poured into the Defender office asking about conditions in the north.
This situation had a curious political reflex. A rumor arose. It traveled to Chicago and Washington. It said that sinister forces were operating to prevent negroes in the north and particularly in Chicago from returning to their former homes in the south. Down south the rumor traveled and was published to the effect that thousands of colored men and women were walking the streets of Chicago, hungry and without shoes, begging for transportation to Dixie, the home of the cotton blossoms that they were longing to see again.
Lieut. W. L. Owen of the military intelligence service at Washington was sent to Chicago to investigate. He went to Dr. George C. Hall, a leader in several colored organizations, and asked, "What is this undercurrent that is keeping the negroes in the north?" Dr. Hall answered, "There isn't any undercurrent. Everything is in the open in this case. The trouble started when the Declaration of Independence was written. It says that every man has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So long as the colored people get more of those three things in the north than in the south they are going to keep coming, and they are going to stay."
Dr. Hall told the intelligence officer that the situation reminded him of the reply of the colored band leader to Liza Johnson, who asked what was the occasion of the brass band's parading the streets one evening. The reply was, "Lordy, Liza, don't you know we don't need no occasion?"
The declaration of Dr. Williams to the Baptist Ministers' association that eleven new members came from Vicksburg has a direct connection with a lynching story which is being widely circulated by the publicity or propaganda batteries of South State street, reaching at least 1,000,000 of the illiterate colored people of the south. The story, for ingenious cruelty and with relation to the kind of barbarism that is worse for the practitioners than the victims, equals anything recited in recent European war atrocities or anything in the Spanish inquisition or more ancient days.
In Vicksburg, in the third week in June, the story goes, a colored man accused of an assault on a white woman was placed in a hole that came to his shoulders. Earth was tamped around his neck, only his head being left above ground. A steel cage five feet square then was put over the head of the victim and a bulldog was put inside the cage. Around the dog's head was tied a paper bag filled with red pepper to inflame his nostrils and eyes. The dog immediately lunged at the victim's head. Further details are too gruesome to print.
Whatever may be the truth about this amazing story, it is published in newspapers of the colored people and is attested as a fact by Secretary A. Clement McNeal of the National Association for Advancement of the Colored People, whose local office is at 3333 South State street.
The last named organization, the most militant in activities against lynching, will hold its annual convention next year for the first time in a southern city. It will go to Atlanta on invitation of the mayor of that city and on request of Gov. Dorsey of Georgia. This is one of several indfcations that the southern states are actively considering steps to be taken to retain their negro population and to lessen the violence which threatens to become a habit in a number of communities.