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THE NEGRO
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Roland, the dead man, was a comparative stranger at Wilson's Rock. Bruce's Island is in the centre of the Arkansas River, contains about twenty-five acres, and is densely covered with timber and thick under- brush. Posses of citizens left today for the scene of the trouble from Fort Smith, Spiro, Muldrew, and Fort Gibson. There is much excitement around the island. One or two of the negroes are known to be desperate characters. Such lawlessness on the part of negroes and the rioting they incite may even occur in the very heart of any of the great Northern cities. What the papers please to call race riots are of frequent occurrence, and were the negroes out of the country, no such disgrace- ful scenes would be known to the country. Scores of them now occur at the National Capital (W^ashing- ton, D. C.), and I have been a Vv'itness to not a few of them. Here is a New York City example of the kind of trouble they give the people and the authorities. The Bronx is a part of the northeastern section of the city. (See the New York Daily Tribune, Sunday, August 16, 1903, p. 2, for the following news item) : — RACE WAR IN THE BRONX Negro Cuts White Man — Rioting Ensues, and Many Persons Are Hurt. In race rioting in The Bronx last night John Fin- nessy, forty years old, of No. 808 Jackson avenue, was stabbed in the abdomen, probably fatally, by a negro, who escaped. Fifty men with billiard cues and liquor bottles, and a dozen detectives, were chasing him at a late hour. The stabbing resulted in a race riot, and a hundred and fifty white men hunted negroes all night around the scene of the stabbing, at One Hundred and Fifty-fifth street and Washington avenue, bruis-