11. The Truth about Lynching

The Carlyle Club hangs ’em high. Mighty white of us!

Table of Contents

1. The Mason-Dixon Number
2. Lynching Defined
3. The Abolitionists
4. “Some Interesting Lynchings”
5. Insurrection
6. The War and Reconstruction
7. “Taking the Law into Their Own Hands”
8. Lynching and Rape
9. The Necessity of Lynching. Includes:
   1. “Extraordinary Conditions”
   2. “When Proper Restraint Is Removed”
   3. “Not a Word of Commiseration for the Family, or the Victim”
10. A “Race Prejudice” Lynching
11. Lynching Solutions
12. The Southerner’s Problem
13. Victory, Western-Style
14. Recommended Reading
15. Letters to the Editor

The Bloody Angle by Mort Künstler

The Mason-Dixon Number

One of our many nefarious goals here at Radish is to correct what we call the Mason-Dixon number. This special number is the ratio of how strongly Americans feel about black-white race relations, to how much they actually know about them; a fraction, that is, with Northern sentiment on top and Southern experience on the bottom — hence the name. When the Mason-Dixon number gets too big (too much feeling, not enough thinking), very bad things can happen.

Unfortunately, on a national level, the Mason-Dixon ratio only ever grows larger, as you can clearly see from the following chart I just made up. (The surge between 1812 and 1861 is known as abolitionism; the one between 1942 and 1969 is called civil rights.) The growth of the Mason-Dixio number is part of an ongoing process known as “political progress,” which is literally destroying civilization.

The Mason-Dixon ratio for slavery, in particular, has grown astonishingly large since the Union annihilated the Confederacy, history being “written by the winners” (Orwell). You may recall that in Issue 3 we attempted to shrink our own Mason-Dixon numbers for slavery down to a manageable size, with help from the Reverend Nehemiah Adams his South-Side View of Slavery (1854). Of course, this was the Reverend’s aim as well, and it cannot be called an unqualified success in light of subsequent events.

Nevertheless! We are, as always, undeterred, and now direct our attention toward that other great source of Mason-Dixon bloat: lynching. Now, I’m sure I don’t need to convince anyone that lynching is to be considered doubleplusungood by all loyal Party members. Around the Internet, lynching means…

• “racial violence”
• “systemic racism”
• “mostly racism”
• “associated with racism”
• “a handy metaphor for racial violence”
• “a metaphor for racism as a whole”
• “the atmosphere of a racist caste system”
• “patriarchal racial and gendered orders”
• “the ways of racism and entitlement”
• “political, social, and economic submission”
• “racialized means of oppression”
• “a weapon of racial domination”
• “vehicle of terror”
• “barbaric terror”
• “terror tactics”
• “terrorize the black community”
• “spread fear among blacks”
• “lawless mass violence”
• “a cruel combination of racism and sadism”
• “acts of savagery committed against the black community”
• “one of the most inhuman chapters in the history of the world”
• “designed to keep an entire race of people in an oppressed place”
• “used by whites to terrorize Blacks [sic] and maintain white supremacy”
• “maintaining white supremacy in the economic, social and political spheres”
• “the iron clad system of white supremacy was not to be challenged”
• “keep the idea and practice of white supremacy alive”
• “the domestic means of asserting white dominance”
• “intimidate and control African Americans”
• “keep blacks in ‘their place'”
• “keeping white women, along with black men, in their places” (?)
• “murder committed in the name of justice”
• “shameless hypocrisy”
• “trivial reasons”
• “racial hatred, ignorance and fear”
• “the sexual fears, guilt, and fantasies of white men” (!)
• “the basest passions, fears, and hatreds of white Americans”
• “white American tradition”
• “memories of lynching”
• “legacy of lynching”
• “influence of the legacy of lynching”
• “enduring consequences of right-wing extremism”
• “ritual of interracial social control and recreation”
• “ritual purification through destroying the lynchers’ identification with the basic humanity of their victims”
• “ritual capacity to define and annihilate the humanity of the black victim and that of every last member of his or her race, symbolically or, if necessary, literally”
• “absolute power, outside any process of law, justice, or rationality”
• “lynching as a Crucifixion and its victims as Christian martyrs”
• “lynch victims as Christian martyrs”
• “burned alive like Christian martyrs”
• “lynching fever”
• “Trayvon Martin”
• “Negro Holocaust”

Few of these writers bothered to cite primary sources, and those who did exercised no critical thinking skills whatsoever.

So: was lynching, in fact, an endless series of terrible “hate crimes” perpetrated by vile, racist whites — redundant, I know — against poor, innocent, long-suffering, angelic blacks, as everyone apparently must believe on pain of vaporization? Does it, in fact, linger on as a “legacy,” whatever that means, still holding back all black people everywhere, through mechanisms unstated, unknown, and indeed inconceivable to the sound-minded? Did white Americans of the 19th and early 20th centuries, in fact, decide to go out and murder a bunch of totally innocent people based solely on the color of their skin?

No, not really.

In this issue of Radish, we’ll learn the truth about lynching through Winfield Hazlitt Collins’ startling, rigorous, aptly named book The Truth about Lynching and the Negro in the South (1918), and a bit from Thomas Nelson Page’s similarly excellent book The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem (1904) as well.

Clint Eastwood’s character got lynched in Hang ‘Em High. Funny, he doesn’t look black to me.

Lynching Defined

The first thing we should know about lynching is that, much like “slut” and “pickle,” the word meant different things at different times. Winfield Collins kicks off Chapter 1 of The Truth about Lynching, ‘The Lynching of Negroes in the South Previous to the Civil War,’ with a brief but much-needed history (p. 9):

It is generally supposed that the custom or practice of lynching in this country had its origin in the method of punishment used by a Virginian farmer named Lynch, who during the Revolutionary War sought in this way to maintain order in his community or section, — hence, Lynch’s Law, and Lynch law, from which comes the word “lynching.”

In the beginning, however, the term seldom, if ever, conveyed the meaning “to put to death”; nor does it appear that Negroes were lynched even so often as whites. The methods of punishment in the majority of cases consisted of riding the victim on a rail, beating or whipping him, and often of giving him a coat of tar and feathers.

So, to recap: it wasn’t fatal, and it certainly wasn’t racial. It wasn’t even very common (pp. 9–11):

Moreover, it does not appear that lynching in any form was very common in the early history of the country. Indeed, in 1839 a writer in the Southern Literary Messenger began a brief article on the subject with the following:

“Forty years ago the practice of wreaking private vengeance or of inflicting summary or illegal punishment for crime actual or pretended which has been glossed over by the name Lynch law was hardly known except in sparse, frontier settlements beyond the reach of courts and legal proceedings.”

Newspapers, periodicals, and other literature of the time show, as the years pass, an interesting change in the meaning of the term Lynch law. As the practice of lynching increased, the methods of the executors of this law became more severe, and it grew more often to mean “a putting to death.” …

The change from the mild to the severer meaning of the term was gradual. From 1830 to 1840 it seldom meant “to put to death”; from 1850 to 1860 it very often had that meaning, and by 1870, or 1875, this became the almost exclusive interpretation of “lynching,” even as at present.

Abolitionists, the top progressives of the day, took advantage of the ambiguity of the term for propaganda purposes (pp. 13–14):

In 1856 The Liberator made the following remarkable statement in regard to the treatment of abolitionists in the South:

“A record of the cases of Lynch-Law in the Southern States reveals the startling fact that within twenty years over three hundred white persons have been murdered upon the occasion in most cases unsupported by legal proof of carrying among the slaveholders arguments addressed to their own intellects and consciences as to the morality and expediency of slavery.”

This is evidently a great exaggeration. If it were alleged that over three hundred had been “lynched,” bearing in mind that during those years the word, more often than otherwise, meant giving the victim a coat of tar and feathers, and so on, it would not even then be in accord with what is indicated by better evidence. Books of travel and other literature of the time fail to show that any great number of abolitionists in the South met death by lynching during the period in question.

That said, I suppose we should explore the role of abolitionists in the rise of lynching.

‘The Abolition Garrison in Danger and the Narrow Edge of the Scotch Ambassador, Boston, Oct. 21, 1835.’ “Lynch him,” they shout. “Give him a coat of tar and feathers.” “To jail with him!” Even in Boston.

The Abolitionists

Lynching became more frequent and more severe in response to abolitionist activity in the years leading up to the War Between the States (pp. 11–12):

In seeking a cause for the great increase of lynching, whether in its milder or severer form, from about 1830, I think one need not hesitate to give first place to the Anti-Slavery agitation; and the Southampton Slave Insurrection is also to be considered as contributory.

When, about 1830, the Anti-Slavery agitation began to attract some attention there were a number of anti-slavery societies in the South. These, however, soon broke up as those formed in the North became unreasonable. The net effect of the societies in the North was to produce distrust and even hatred at the South. It could hardly have been otherwise, for the Northern anti-slavery propagandists during the whole period of such agitation seemed to have regard for neither law nor common sense. Nothing better could have been expected from them, however, as, for the most part, the abolitionists were poor, misguided men and women. Instead of adopting persuasive methods and of showing a fair and conciliatory spirit, they were dictatorial, inflammatory and menacing. And by whatever of higher law or Divine inspiration they may have claimed to be actuated, they failed to recognize the fact that they had to deal with human beings and human institutions.

We met some of those (quite likable) people and institutions in Issue 3. If you haven’t read it yet, may I recommend you do so now? We wouldn’t want our investigations into lynching to be confused and hampered unnecessarily by misconceptions about slavery.

Again, on whatever lofty plane of morality they professed to stand, their propaganda did not comprehend even ordinary honesty. Indeed, it appears as only another illustration, for history affords so many instances, of self-elected good men endeavoring to impose their own half-blind perception of the way of the Lord, or their own ideas of what constitutes righteousness on their open-eyed and superior fellow-men, and exerting themselves to the utmost of their ignorance in such efforts, thus, as is usual in such cases, making hell on earth.

We’ve seen one good example of abolitionist propaganda already. And then there is a certain booklet, ‘The New Reign of Terror,’ which was “published early in 1860, and in all probability compiled by [William Lloyd] Garrison himself” (pp. 14–15):

According to The Liberator, the booklet gave “multiplied newspaper accounts of lynchings, murders, and mob raids of the Black Power of the Slave States within the past year [1859].” Although this was a time of intense excitement throughout the South, — a time when a more bitter feeling was manifested against abolitionists than in any previous period, a careful examination of the “New Reign of Terror” failed to reveal more than one case in which an abolitionist was put to death by lynching.

There is much evidence of a law-abiding spirit in the South (especially in the eastern part) at the beginning of the Anti-Slavery agitation. Indeed, even when lynching was resorted to, it seems to have been done with great reluctance.

Now wait just one minute, you — rotten apologist for lynching! interjects the latter-day abolitionist. What sort of “intense excitement” could possibly make “law-abiding” men just murder — “with great reluctance” — all those hundreds of sweet, kindly — “dictatorial, inflammatory and menacing” — abolitionists — okay, maybe it was only one abolitionist, but whatever — “their propaganda did not comprehend even ordinary honesty” — whose only crime was a burning desire to share their lovely dream — “to impose their own half-blind perception” — of tolerance and equality — “of the way of the Lord, or their own ideas of what constitutes righteousness” — and an immediate end — with “regard for neither law nor common sense” — to awful evil racist slavery by you awful evil racist Southerners?

Who, for some reason, responded with a “bitter feeling.”

What sort of excitement indeed. To answer that question — which is only rhetorical if you see all Southerners as, essentially, comic book villains, twirling their mustaches as they concoct new and imaginatively sadistic methods of tormenting “the Negro” — we turn to Nat Turner’s slave insurrection, and the precarious position of white people in the South (pp. 15–17):

Another thing that had some effect on lynching was the Southampton Slave Insurrection, which occurred in 1831. About sixty white men, women, and children were murdered in cold blood by Negroes. However, not more than one of the fifty or more Negroes concerned in it was lynched. Instead, they were given a fair trial, and disposed of according to law. The Insurrection may have caused an increase in the lynching of Negroes by the fact that it begat a kind of fear and distrust of the blacks everywhere, caused them to be more carefully looked after, and more severely dealt with when refractory or guilty of crime.

This was no more than could be expected. In 1835 there were four great fires in the city of Charleston, — all supposed to have been the work of slaves. Moreover, up to 1860 there were rumors of insurrections, and many minor insurrections did take place. The abolitionists, not without reason, were accused of trying to set the slaves against their masters and of fostering outbreaks of the bondmen.

Such things could hardly be considered lightly, for in many places the whites were practically at the mercy of the Negroes. A quotation from Murray, an English traveler, may be interesting as it gives an example of the situation in many of the Slave States:

“The farms of the two gentlemen whom I visited occupied the whole of the peninsula formed by the James River; they had each two overseers: thus (their families being young) the effective strength of white men on their estates amounted to six: the Negroes were in number about two hundred and fifty: nor was there a village or place within many miles from which help could be summoned.”

Could one reasonably expect that any man so situated would be inclined to be too ceremonious with any person, black or white, however innocent or saintlike his looks, who might be caught tampering with the Negroes and thereby jeopardize the safety of his family and those of his neighbors as well? When one considers the exasperating circumstances, the wonder is not that there were so many lynchings but rather that there were so few, comparatively.

How ceremonious would you be, gentle reader? (It’s okay. No one can hear you think.)

19th century gamblers in California. Potential victims of a lynch mob? Better behave!

“Some Interesting Lynchings”

Let’s take a closer look at the practical facts of lynching before the war, before even that “time of intense excitement throughout the South” (circa 1859–1861), but after “the Anti-Slavery agitation began to attract some attention” (circa 1830) and after Nat Turner’s murderous revolt (1831).

“Some interesting lynchings occurred in 1835,” Collins writes, and “were widely commented upon at the time,” so we begin there (pp. 17–19, 21–22):

One, the case of a mulatto from Pennsylvania, who was supposed to have some connection with the abolitionists, was burned at St. Louis for killing an officer who was trying to arrest him for some crime he had committed. The judge’s charge to the grand jury in reference to the matter is worth consideration as it indicates the attitude toward lynching shown at the time by those in authority:

“He told the jury that a bad and lamentable deed had been committed in burning a man alive without trial, but that it was quite another question whether they were to take any notice of it. If it should prove to be the act of a few, every one of those few ought undoubtedly to be indicted and punished; but if it should be proved to be the act of the many, incited by that electric and metaphysical influence which occasionally carries on a multitude to do deeds above and beyond the law, it was no affair for the jury to interfere with.”

Interesting. Do bear in mind that, according to the abolitionist of today (that is, the progressive), the only real victim here, or at least the only victim worth our attention (by which I mean our mindless fanaticism), is of course the Mulatto. The real criminals, on the other hand, are — well, the lynch mob, obviously, but also the judge, and probably the dead policeman as well (automatic suspect of being a racist white racist). Not to mention the jury, if they failed to convict all of the above.

The same year, 1835, two Negroes were burned near Mobile. The circumstances were these:

Upon the failure of a certain little girl and her brother to return from school at the proper time a search was made and the body of the girl at last found. It appeared that she had been violated, then murdered, and her body hid in order to conceal the crime. Soon after this, two young ladies of Mobile were seized by two Negroes near the place where the body of the little girl was found. The young ladies escaped. At once suspicion pointed to these Negroes as the murderers of the children. They were arrested, tried by the court, and found guilty. The gentlemen of Mobile, it is said, then seized the Negroes, took them to the place of their crime, and burned them. For it was felt that the law did not furnish adequate means of punishment for such fiendish criminality.

Also interesting. Again, our sympathies are supposed to lie entirely with “the Negroes,” who were of course the victims of a terrible crime by those awful racist Southerners (again, redundant).

Another noted instance of lynching took place at Vicksburg in the same year. This time it was not a Negro but whites that were lynched.

For many years the population of the Mississippi Valley had been increasing rapidly. The courts of law were so few, weak, or dilatory, that the better citizens sometimes found it necessary to take the law into their own hands in order to insure for themselves protection. Such was the case at Vicksburg. Some gamblers had lately made this town their home and had established themselves at the low taverns to which they decoyed the young men of the vicinity. These, after being plundered and debauched, often cast their lot with the gamblers and became almost as desperate as their corrupters. After a while all restraint was thrown off, and the gamblers went about the streets even in the daytime armed with deadly weapons, and by their insults, drunkenness, and crimes, made themselves a terror to the inhabitants.

At length the people, having decided to put an end to such conditions, held a meeting and passed resolutions, giving the gamblers notice to leave within twenty-four hours. But, instead of doing so, they garrisoned themselves in a house. This the men of the town surrounded, and breaking open a door, they were fired upon from within, one of the most prominent men of the town being killed. This so enraged the people that they took the house by storm. Five of the gamblers were made prisoners. Then a procession, headed by the leading men of the town, led the gamblers to execution, hung them, and buried them together in a ditch.

Well, they were white, so who cares. On the other hand:

Only a few days before the Vicksburg affair two white men and seven Negroes were lynched about forty miles from Vicksburg on the charge of attempting to organize an insurrection of slaves. Featherstonhaugh quotes the following account of it from a newspaper:

“Twenty miles from this place [Jackson, in Madison County] a company of white men and Negroes were detected before they did any mischief. On Sunday last they hung two steam doctors, one named Cotton and the other Saunders; also, seven Negroes without law or gospel, and from respectable authority we learn that there were two preachers and ten Negroes to be hanged this day.”

That such lynchings were exceptional in the South before about 1855, or even before the war, is shown by the fact that these cases were mentioned by several different travelers and the papers of the time as well.

To make sure of that, Collins “examined with more or less care books of travel too numerous to mention, — scores of them, — for the period between 1830 and 1860. Those travelers, especially, who visited the South between 1838 and 1854 are eloquently silent on the subject” (pp. 22–23).

I examined The Liberator for 1839 and 1840, but found mention of only one Negro who was put to death by a mob. No State was given so I am not sure whether it was in the North or the South. However, it gave five instances of Negroes legally executed in the South; one for rape, one for arson, one for firing on two white men and threatening two others, and two for connection with an attempt at insurrection. Two more cases may be given: that of a Negro in New Orleans suspected of rape and murder, and one sentenced in Kentucky for rape upon two white women.

Again, a search of The Liberator for 1848 and 1849; Niles’ Register, July, 1845–January, 1849; The Vicksburg Sentinel, and The Augusta (Va.) Democrat, July, 1846–January, 1849, reveal out two lynchings: One a Negro “hung by a committee of citizens” at Bentonville, Arkansas; the other, a white man named Yeoman, in Florida, for robbery. The latter was given both by Niles’ Register and a book of travel. However, one Negro was sentenced to death in the South for rape, and ten legally executed, the majority for murder.

As one might naturally expect, The Liberator for 1855 and 1856 shows several lynchings in the South. At least six Negroes were lynched in the South during these years, — two for rape (one of whom was burned) and four for murder (one of whom also was burned). Two of these criminals were lynched in Arkansas by a mob, — after being acquitted by the court, — led by the sons of their master, whom they had killed. Two white men were also lynched: one, in Texas, for stealing Negroes, and the other, in Missouri, for poisoning a spring. Moreover, eighteen Negroes were legally executed in the South: two for rape, and nearly all the others for murder. In addition, seven Negroes were mentioned as under sentence of death.

Rape and murder and more rape and insurrection and more murder and even more rape? It’s almost as if — no, it couldn’t be. Everyone knows that lynching was nothing more than an act of pure racial hatred — that the South was just swarming with these dim-witted, thickly accented, bourbon-swilling, morbidly obese redneck-types (whom you may have never actually met, yet can somehow easily imagine) whose favorite recreational activity was riding around in the nineteenth century equivalent of a Chevy pickup with a Confederate flag bumper sticker, burning random people alive for being too dark. Obviously it’s not possible that the victims, — for the most part, at least, — well … might have had it coming?

We’ll come back to this point again.

“Harper’s Ferry insurrection — Interior of the Engine-House, just before the gate is broken down by the storming party — Col. Washington and his associates as captives, held by Brown as hostages” (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1859)

Insurrection

We haven’t yet made it clear why 1859 was a time of such “intense excitement throughout the South, — a time when a more bitter feeling was manifested against abolitionists than in any previous period.” Collins explains at the end of Chapter 1 (pp. 24–26):

One does not need to go far in order to find the causes of the increase of lynching in the South after 1850, or for the disorder and commotion both North and South as well.

In 1850 the Fugitive Slave law was passed. The endeavor to enforce it gave great impetus to the abolition cause in the North; this reacted on the South. … This great change in the feeling of the North opened the way for the enthusiastic reception of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” when, in 1852, it was published in book form. The author of this book ingeniously made the isolated and exceptional incidents of slavery appear as the general condition of the institution… Nevertheless, this piece of fiction was read by hundreds of thousands both in the North and in foreign countries as if it were “Gospel truth.”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin as abolitionist propaganda — Nehemiah Adams covers the topic in great detail in A South-Side View of Slavery, Chapter 13, but for the sake of brevity (hah) we omitted it from Issue 3. You may want to read it now.

Another thing that added to the excitement and helped the abolitionists was the Dred Scott Decision, given in 1857. Then, in 1859, came “Helpers’ Impending Crisis,” a book of great influence. At last, in 1859, as if to “cap the climax,” the whole country was startled by John Brown’s Raid. After this, the greater part of the South, suddenly, became an extremely unhealthful place for both abolitionists and unruly, criminal, or insurrectionary Negroes.

No wonder, when “in many Southern States there were rumors of Negro insurrections” (pp. 26–28):

In Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama plots of Negro insurrections were discovered in 1860. In Texas, however, the greatest excitement prevailed. What was supposed to be a State-wide insurrection was discovered. Dallas and other towns were partly burned before it was checked.

The excited state of the public mind in some instances may have suspected plots of insurrection when none existed. However that may be, wherever and whenever such a plot was discovered, investigation nearly always pointed to the abolitionists as the instigators. Indeed, even when Negroes were insubordinate and refractory on a plantation, it was often found that they had been tampered with by abolitionists.

Occasionally, when such things were proved against an abolitionist beyond the possibility of a doubt, he would be immediately hanged to the limb of some convenient tree. Several were so dealt with in connection with the insurrection in Texas. As a rule, however, when the proof was not so conclusive, a severe whipping, or a coat of tar and feathers, would be given him, and then he would be forcefully admonished to leave the South.

One cannot but reach the conclusion that the anti-slavery agitation was detrimental to the happiness and welfare of the slaves, and to the free Negroes as well. … Nearly everywhere more stringent regulations and laws were made both for slaves and for free Negroes. The slaves were deprived of many former privileges, the enjoyment of which by the Negroes might be dangerous for the white people. They were more closely guarded and much more harshly dealt with when guilty of offenses or crimes. Indeed, three Negroes in as many States were burned in 1859 for the murder of their masters, — one of these was burned before 1,500 or 2,000 people.

Nevertheless, it is quite evident that throughout the period from 1830 to 1860 the lynching of Negroes was sporadic, — and usually was resorted to only for exceptional reasons. Generally the law was allowed to take its course. However, it is also plain that after 1850 the law was relied on less and less, while the people more and more assumed the initiative in such matters as the excitement increased. What was true as regards the Negro was undoubtedly true also as regards the treatment of the abolitionists.

Then came the war.

Ruins of Atlanta after the War Between the States

The War and Reconstruction

Lynching was almost non-existent during the War of Southern Secession, as Collins explains in Chapter 2, ‘Lynching During the Civil War and the Carpet-Bag Rule’ (pp. 29–32):

During the Civil War those slaves who for any reason had become dissatisfied with their condition embraced the first opportunity to gather in the wake of the Union army, — mainly, no doubt, to shun work.

While this was true as an exception, the great mass of the slaves remained quietly at work on the plantations. Thus, instead of creating antagonism between the two races, the War served rather to foster and cement a good feeling between them; indeed, throughout its darkest days they lived harmoniously side by side. Elizabeth Collins, an Englishwoman, who was in South Carolina the greater part of the War, says:

“In regard to the slave population of Charleston, I may say that they appear to be, almost without exception, happy and contented.”

Indeed, an examination of several Southern newspapers and some books of travel revealed but two possible cases of lynching of Negroes in the South during the War…

In no place was there any mention of any Negroes being lynched for rape in the South during the War. Indeed, it is often said that during the Civil War when the white men were nearly all away from home, leaving the white women almost at the mercy of the slaves, no Negro was guilty of a criminal outrage against them. It may be true. Viewed in the light of the sporadic occurrence of the crime under the restraining influence of slavery before the War, and of its quite frequent occurrence sometime after, it is both remarkable and suggestive.

It may truly be regarded as evidence not only of the generally fair treatment that, according to unprejudiced travelers, they were receiving in slavery, as well as a tribute to their fidelity, but it also makes it obvious that the Negro and the Southern white man might have continued in harmony mutually advantageous after the War, had both been free from outside influences.

With the Confederacy’s defeat, conditions soon changed (pp. 32–34):

Almost immediately after the War, however, the South began to “swarm” with harebrained preachers and teachers from the North, ostensibly to elevate the Negro; as a rule, though, they served no better purpose than to aid in setting the Negro against his former master. For, it seems, they cared not what became of the white man so they secured the “salvation” of the Negro, entirely ignoring that saying of Scripture which is to the effect that those who fail to serve first their own house or people have denied the faith and are worse than infidels.

Such a condition of affairs was promoted by Congress, who, at about the close of the War established the so-called “Freedmen’s Bureau,” and shortly after passed the Civil Rights bill, both of which tended to cause friction between the two races. However, as compared with that of a few years later, the trouble does not appear to have been very serious notwithstanding exaggerated accounts which were reported to Northern papers. In most parts of the South and at most times for something like two years after the War, there was comparative quiet and safety.

The crimes of the Negroes during these years were for the most part of a trifling kind, — petty thievery and robbery. However, it is true they committed crimes of a very serious nature, also. Notwithstanding, the law was generally allowed to have its way. Harriett Martineau observes in one of her books that nothing struck her more than the patience of the slave-owners of the South with their slaves. Even during the first years after the War a patient and even indulgent spirit was often manifested by the leading whites toward the Negroes as to their shortcomings and sometimes it extended to their serious crimes.

For instance, in 1866, near Rome, Georgia, a whole family consisting of a man, wife, and two daughters, were murdered, and one of the women, ravished. The newspaper account ends with:

“It was difficult to restrain the people from inflicting summary punishment upon them.”

For such a crime now [1918], a Negro would likely be burned alive.

And oh, what a terrible tragedy that would be. Quick, someone find me a petition for reparations. I wish to sign it at once. Twice, if possible.

Carpetbagger (Harper’s Weekly, 1872)

Collins compares two three-year periods in detail: 1866–1868, “including the year before and year after the passing of the Reconstruction Act,” and 1873–1875, “when the carpet-bag rule was in full operation” (p. 35):

Although the number of lynchings during the first and second periods are in striking contrast, even this but faintly indicates the great change from the comparative tranquillity of the first (as illustrated by newspapers) to the confusion, chaos, and crime of the second.

First the “comparative tranquillity” of 1866–1868 (pp. 35–37):

In 1866, one Negro was lynched in the South for attempted rape, another was sentenced to death for rape, and one was sentenced to the penitentiary for a like crime. Also, near Smithfield, Ohio, Negroes committed outrages on two girls. In Kentucky three white men were lynched for murder, and three more were put to death by a band of regulators. …

The following occurred in 1867: one Negro lynched in Missouri by Germans for the murder of a German; a Negro given sixty lashes in Delaware for assaulting two white women; three Negroes legally hanged at Charleston, S. C., for outrage. In the North, two or more Negro soldiers, deserters, lynched in Kansas for the rape of a white woman; four white men lynched in Indiana for murder and robbery; thirty men hanged in three Kansas counties by Vigilantes during the winter and spring.

For 1868: Two Negroes who confessed to the horrible murder of a white family in Mississippi were taken from a sheriff by a band of Negroes and burned; one Negro was lynched in Kentucky for rape and another in Maryland for attempted rape; two Negroes, in jail for murder, lynched in Mississippi after boasting that the Loyal League would prevent their execution, even if convicted; a man lynched in Tennessee after he had confessed to the murder of three men at different times. In North Carolina over thirty Negro desperadoes, who confessed to several murders and robberies, were captured and put in jail. Ten Adam’s Express robbers were lynched in Indiana; two men lynched for murder in Illinois and one for stealing horses in Colorado.

Now the “confusion, chaos, and crime” of 1873–1875 (pp. 37–40):

In 1873, however, six Negroes were lynched in the South for rape; three were legally executed for the same crime; one, condemned to be hung, and three awaiting trial — in all, thirteen Negroes charged with rape. In Louisiana, three Negroes were lynched in the presence of 1,000 people for an atrocious murder; four men were also lynched in Louisiana for cattle-stealing, and another in the same State for arson. Also, one white man was lynched in Tennessee by fifteen Negroes. Two Negroes were legally hanged for murder, — one in Kentucky, the other in Virginia. …

During the year 1874, eleven Negroes and one white man were lynched in the South for rape, while two Negroes were legally executed for the crime. In two instances, — one in Arkansas, the other in Missouri, — both Negroes and whites took part in lynching Negroes. Three Negroes were also lynched in the South for murder and two for riot; and four Negroes in Tennessee for threatening to kill some whites and to sack and burn a town. In addition, ten white men were lynched, four in Arkansas and one in Missouri for horse-stealing, the others in the States of the Southwest for scandalous murders. In the North, two Negroes were lynched for murder, and two Negroes in Pennsylvania and one white man in Kansas for rape. In the North, also, seven white men, one Mexican and one Chinaman were lynched for murder, and one white man for horse-stealing and another for thievery.

In 1875, the last year of the second period, — nine Negroes were lynched in the South for rape and four for attempted rape; also, one Negro guilty of rape, and another who attempted rape, escaped, — in all, fifteen rape cases.* One man and two Negroes were lynched for murder. Also one Negro was legally executed for rape, eleven for murder, and one case cause not given. In the North, one Negro was lynched, cause not given, and one Negro guilty of rape, escaped. Three men, also, were lynched for murder, one for arson, and one in New York for robbery.

*Collins adds: “In 1875, there was another interesting case in which both Negroes and whites, about equal in number, lynched a Negro for attempted rape of a white woman.”

By comparing the two three-year periods it will be found that during 1866–8 there were seven cases of rape or attempted rape by Negroes in the South. In three instances they were lynched and in four, the law was allowed to take its course. While for 1873–5, twenty-six Negroes were lynched for rape, and four for attempted rape. Six Negroes were legally executed for rape, one was under sentence of death for the crime, three were awaiting trial and two escaped — in all forty-two Negroes in the South were charged with rape during the second period. This was just six times as many as for the first period. Further, ten times the number of Negroes were lynched for rape in the South during 1873–5 as during 1866–8, or but 43– per cent of those charged with the crime during the first period as against 73+ percent for the second.

It seems like once “the carpet-bag rule was in full operation,” although the so-called victims of lynching still pretty much had it coming, there were a whole lot more of them who had it coming, and the ones who had it coming were way more likely than before to actually get lynched. Now why might that have been?

Anti-Republican poster. (American politics used to be pretty interesting.)

“Taking the Law into Their Own Hands”

Who or what is to blame for the staggering Reconstruction Era surge in black crime, particularly the rape of white women, and the resulting increase in lynching? Collins is typically direct (pp. 39–42):

That this wonderful change was due almost wholly to misgovernment at Washington, no one can doubt. Surely, History was never obliged to record a more colossal blunder in statesmanship than that of Congressional Reconstruction. Nor is it likely that any civilized people were ever before called upon to endure a system of misrule and legalized plunder equal to that which such legislation, maybe unwittingly, paved the way for inaugurating at the South.

The confusion, turmoil, and strife that it created is only too well known. Not only did it result in a cleavage of the social structure, setting one part against the other, but it also caused as much or more financial damage to the South than the War itself. …

It was made easy for political-fortune hunters from the North, with little concern for the good of either the whites or the blacks of the South, to gain position and power through cultivating the friendship of the ignorant, credulous, newly enfranchised Negroes. This they assiduously did from the start. At the same time they left nothing undone which might create and foster among the Negroes a feeling of ill will against and distrust of the Southern whites. If their former masters came into power, the Negroes were sometimes told, they would be reduced to slavery. The Negroes’ love of display was appealed to by encouraging them to form secret societies, to make public parades, and hold celebrations which tended to create a race consciousness and race solidarity. This, of course, was for the purpose of helping the carpet-baggers in perpetuating their power. If one considers the conditions, what else could be expected but riots and lynchings?

Well, thank goodness “political-fortune hunters” no longer seek “to gain position and power” by encouraging black people “to form secret societies, to make public parades, and hold celebrations which tended to create a race consciousness and race solidarity” — oh, wait (citation hardly needed).

If the control of the Negroes in slavery times, with all the advantages to such end embodied in the institution of slavery, had often been one of anxiety to the South, how fearful must have been the conditions now that they were not only free from such control but enfranchised and taught by their new friends to be self-assertive, even if not sometimes encouraged in acts of violence against the Southern white people? It does, indeed, seem that a great part of the Negroes almost ran wild — for they were free, but did not understand how to use their freedom. So, lazy, worthless, robbing, murdering gangs of them went prowling through the South. For it is as natural for the Negro to sit in idleness, or shoot crap, to go on marauding expeditions or connive at insurrections, as it is for the white man to establish courts, collect libraries, and found schools.

Can History prove that the Negro, during his thousands of years of contact with superior races, has ever yet risen to the dignity of stable and progressive self-government? Even Liberia, with all the help that has been given her, is gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding barbarism. And what of San Domingo? Indeed, everywhere the tendency of the pure Negro is to fall when the white man’s props are removed.

Today, the list of examples includes Detroit, New Orleans, Jamaica, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Congo, and many more.

To return: If there ever was a time when the best elements in a society were justified in taking the law into their own hands, that time was during carpet-bag rule. The wonder now is that such a people as those of the South should have acted with even the moderation that appears.

Collins’ reports of miscarriage of justice, and general Reconstruction Era misrule, are entirely consistent with our findings in Issues 6 and 8 (pp. 42–43):

That some of the carpet-bag governments were absolutely corrupt goes without saying. “Get all you can in any way you can” seemed to be the idea. Justice was for sale. In some instances, it is said, the criminal elements knew that any one could commit crime and escape punishment for a money consideration. A few examples may be of interest: A man who was accused of outrageously murdering a woman, although caught and imprisoned, was released, it is said, without even a trial, for $800. Moreover, a Negro who had been sentenced by a court to the penitentiary was released and returned home on the same train as the sheriff who took him there. Indeed, the accusation was made that a certain carpet-bag governor, in order to help the Republican Party, connived at the killing of a number of Negroes in such a way that the blame might fall on the Southern whites. At one place, a court in passing judgment on a convicted Negro rapist merely sent him to the penitentiary, which so enraged the people of the community that they took him from jail and hanged him near the place of his crime.

“In order that one may the better understand the reason for the development of the lynching spirit in the South,” Collins offers some newspaper articles (pp. 43–35). From an 1875 editorial in the St. Louis Republican, for example:

“The right of a robbed people to revolt against robbery. … In Edgefield, S. C., a few days ago the country was startled by a resolution adopted at a meeting of the citizens of the county, which declared that, ‘Parties black or white who may be caught in the act of firing any house in this county shall be dealt with in accordance with the precedents of Lynch law, which is a part of the unwritten law of America.’

“Edgefield people present a statement of facts which while not justifying resort to Lynch law shows a strong provocation for it. Just before the November election, the most prominent white Radical of the county is said to have advised the Negroes to burn the houses of the whites; and that this advice was not lost on them seems to be proved by the fact that thirteen citizens were burned out of their homes by incendiaries between the 7th and 19th of December. The Radicals have a large majority and they have used their power without mercy.

“No security for persons or property, for the Negroes and poor whites who act with them had a majority on every jury so that it was impossible to convict one of their number no matter how plain the evidence. And even if convicted was promptly pardoned by the infamous executive, Moses. To such an extent was this carried that Carpenter, the Republican Judge of the circuit, announced that he would not permit the State to be put to the expense of trying criminals who were pardoned as soon as convicted. The citizens assert that Lynch law is the only remedy for the evils they endure and therefore they proclaim it. They may be wrong but they are more sinned against than sinning.”

From the same paper, later that year:

“Augusta, Ga., Aug. 23. — Several prominent Negroes connected with the troubles in the counties below have made confessions. Jake Moorman, First Lieutenant of a Negro company, testifies on oath that 19 counties were to be embraced in the insurrection. All white men and ugly white women were to be killed. Pretty white women were to be spared and the land and spoils were to be divided among the Negroes.* All who have so far confessed testify to substantially the same as Jake Moorman.”

*Collins notes: “This recalls an account of the Texan Negro insurrection of 1860 as quoted by The Liberator of July 21, 1860: “The old females were to be slaughtered along with the men, and the young and handsome women were to be parcelled out among those infamous scoundrels. They had even gone so far as to designate their choice. … The Negroes have been incited to these infernal proceedings by the abolitionists.”

However, in some States, for instance, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, where the Southern whites had control, order was preserved and comparative quiet prevailed, while the lynching of Negroes was sporadic, not only during this early period, but even until the present. Discord and collisions between the two races have been almost unknown.

And so we arrive at a quite astonishing truth about lynching, one which you are unlikely to learn from any government-approved “history” class or Hollywood movie: that lynch mobs in the former slave states during the Reconstruction Era generally were nothing more or less than coalitions of otherwise law-abiding white people who tried to preserve order and carry out justice under Republican misrule and in the face of skyrocketing black crime.

One crime in particular stands out as a cause — can we call it a justification? — of lynching.

This and murder were the main causes of lynching.

Lynching and Rape

Chapter 3, ‘Lynching from the End of Carpet-Bag Rule to the Present Time,’ starts with statistics from the Chicago Daily Tribune (pp. 48–52). We in the Carlyle Club despise statistics and practice them only in self-defense. As this is clearly such a case, here is a fair sample: the complete list of “Lynchings and Legal Executions” for the years 1911 through 1914.

During these four years there were 235 lynchings in the United States. 11, North; 224, South. In the North, 5 Negroes and 6 whites were lynched; in the South, 215 Negroes, 8 whites, and 1 Mexican. The causes for the lynching of Negroes in the South were as follows: 33, rape; 8, attempted rape; 2, alleged rape, — total, 43 for rape; 117, murder; 14, murderous assault; 3, complicity in murder;

That’s 75 percent of lynchings right there.

1, suspicion of murder; 1, alleged murder; 5, arson; 5, race prejudice; 8, insulting white women; 11, by night riders in Kentucky; 1, refusal to pay note; 1, race troubles; 1, threat to kill; 1, assault and robbery; 1, horse-stealing; 1, annoying white women; remainder, cause not given.

Race prejudice! exclaims our old friend, the noisy abolitionist. You see? Annoying white women! Horse-stealing! Night riders! Race prejudice! You said that already. See below.

The number of legal executions in the whole country for the four years, were 381. Of these 136 were Negroes, 112 in the South, and 24 for murder in the North. In the South: 93, murder; 10, rape; 2, attempted rape; 1, burglary; 4, cause not given.

After a few more pages of statistics such as these, a pattern emerges (pp. 52–58):

Now, adverting to the statistics for 1873–5, — not far removed from the beginning of the Negro-lynching disorder, — it is found that of the 44 Negroes lynched in the South during the three years, 30, or 70– per cent, were lynched for rape; while but 14, or 30+ per cent, were lynched for all other causes combined. Thus it is seen that at this time rape was practically the only cause for the lynching of Negroes in the South.

Moreover, it is quite evident from the statistics above given, beginning with 1885, that rape has continued to be, if not the whole cause for the lynching of Negroes in the South, anyhow almost that, with other crimes as merely incidental… [A] Negro is more than seven times as liable to be lynched in the South for rape than even for murder.

Indeed, the belief of the average white man of the South that lynching is the most effective way of dealing with the Negro for his crime against white women also seems to be borne out by the statistics: In 1892–3, 88 Negroes were lynched for rape; in 1901–2, 59; while for the four years 1911–14, only 43.

That this great reduction in rape cases and lynchings was not due to legal executions is shown by the fact that during the same time but 36 Negroes were legally executed, only 12 of these being for the four years 1911–14. Thus as a consequence of a reduction in the crime of rape by Negroes is noted a great reduction in the lynching of Negroes, — from 287 in 1892–3; 185, 1901–2; 129, 1906–7; to 91 for 1913–14.

However, during 1915 and 1916, 104 Negroes were lynched in the South as compared with 91 for 1913 and 1914. The increased number lynched for rape is very marked: being only 13 for 1913 and 1914, but twice the number, or 26, for 1915 and 1916. During the former two years, also, 6 Negroes were legally hanged for rape as compared to 12 for the latter. The proportion remains the same: thus during 1913 and 1914, 19 Negroes in the South were put to death for rape as compared with 38 for 1915 and 1916.

Although the legal execution of 12 Negroes in the South for rape during 1915 and 1916 may show a tendency to allow the law to take its course in such cases, may not the above statistics also indicate that when for a few years but few lynchings occurred, especially for the crime of rape, that the effect of such immediate and fearful punishment — consisting of burning as it sometimes does — gradually fades from the mind of the Negro inclined to such crime, with a great increase of rape as a consequence?

And might this go some way toward explaining black crime rates today, when as a sort of sick joke we pretend to rehabilitate brutes and thugs instead of punishing them; when the death penalty is considered to be somehow uncivilized?

Remember: it’s okay. No one can hear you think.

Again, in extenuation of lynching, it is important to observe, that, as a result of most crimes against the body, such as murder, but little, if any, humiliation attaches. But it is quite different in rape cases. Not only is there often great physical injury, but also an unutterable humiliation. Our civilization teaches that one should hold certain personal rights and considerations even more dear than life itself. To have in mind such ideas and live up to them measures our reach above lower peoples. That this feeling or spirit should be encouraged, rather than risk its check, is not to be questioned. Therefore, the average Southern white man does not believe that the innocent rape victim of a Negro should be obliged to endure further humiliation incident upon her appearance in a court of law.

In this connection, a set of resolutions published by those who lynched a Negro at Annapolis, Md., in 1875, are interesting. These resolutions, which set forth the causes of the act, were drawn up before the lynching took place and show serious consideration. I quote:

“Fellow Citizens: In view of the fact that we are about to take into our hands the sword of justice to do to death one who is now incarcerated in our county jail, it is meet that we should give some reason for the purpose we hope to consummate. First, then: While we can but honor the deep feeling of interest manifested by those who are the proper guardians of our lives, our property, and our honor; and while we, as true and loyal citizens of the State of Maryland, and of Anne Arundel County, do bend to the supreme majesty of the law and acknowledge trials by jury as the very arch-stone in the grand edifice of human rights, still we know the vilest criminal is accorded the same rights under the law that belong to the petty thief, nor can this devil incarnate, should he claim his rights, be denied the privilege of a change of venue, such a circumstance might probably rob the gallows of its due and foil the aims of the law. Before God we believe in the existence of a higher code than that which is dignified by the great seal of a Commonwealth and that the high and holy time to exercise it is when the chastity of our women is tarnished by the foul breath of an imp from hell and the sanctity of our homes invaded by a demon.

“Secondly, admitting that in the event of a trial by a jury he shall be hanged — a highly probable result — yet would his execution be as illegal as though done by a band of wronged citizens; for must not a juror be a peer, and with a mind, free of bias, and where can a man be found competent to try this case? Who can be found of his level, and who that has heard has not already convicted him in his mind? At best, that which would be done under the semblance of law would be a mere sham by force of all the circumstances connected with this horrible deed, and if under the law the penalty is death, and we know the deed was committed by him — we claim that there is no moral difference in the means of destroying him, and we act upon this conviction.

“Thirdly, we are not willing that the victim shall be dragged into court to tell over and over again the story of her terrible wrongs, or that her name shall be entered upon the records of our criminal jurisprudence for future reference.”

“Further comment on this lynching,” Collins adds, “is unnecessary” — so we offer only this:

Those who speak of “racism and sadism,” of “murder committed in the name of justice,” of “racial domination” and “white supremacy,” “shameless hypocrisy,” “trivial reasons,” and “the basest hatreds of white Americans” — they have never read the resolutions of the citizens of Annapolis, and they wouldn’t know a sword of justice or a higher code if it came up and hanged them from a tree branch.

But you’ve read them, and maybe you would.

If your ancestors evolved in an environment like the one on the left, they might have put more of an emphasis on running quickly, fighting aggressively, and breeding prodigiously than on, say, planning ahead for the sort of icy winters that affected those who evolved in an environment like the one on the right. We call this ‘selection pressure’, and in particular ‘r/K selection’ — unless of course it’s applied to human beings, in which case we call it ‘evil racist white racism,’ for reasons that are not entirely clear to me.

The Necessity of Lynching

Now the gloves are really off, as we near the end of Chapter 3 and Winfield Collins marshals human evolutionary history and human biological diversity to help us understand a uniquely Southern theory of law enforcement, particularly extrajudicial capital punishment (p. 59):

… [T]he Negro, child of Africa, but lately removed from the jungle, because of the necessity of the habitat of his origin, has had developed in him by nature, possibly, stronger sexual passion than is to be found in any other race.

“To make up for the high death rate,” Collins notes.

But he is infinitely lacking in the high mental, moral, and emotional qualities that are especially characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, and it is a grievous mistake to attribute such high qualities to him. When proper restraint is removed from the Negro he gets beyond bounds. The Anglo-Saxon, indeed, or members of that race, has a way of meeting extraordinary conditions with extraordinary means — hence lynching in order to hold in check the Negro in the South.

Indeed, a country occupied by two races so widely apart in origin, characteristics, and development as the whites and the Negroes of the Southern States — one race of the highest mental endowments and culture, the other of the lowest — one having a civilization that reaches back hundreds, if not thousands, of years, the other in the early dawn of civilization — might reasonably have two codes of law suited, as nearly as possible, to each race, respectively.

A mode of punishment that would be out of place as to the white man may be well suited to the Negro. Small-pox is not to be treated as chicken-pox. Barbarous criminals require barbarous laws. The innocent and law-abiding citizens of a State have rights as well as the criminals — at least, the right to protection from the criminals. But let some crafty scoundrel finally get in jail, and he will be flooded with letters of consolation and sympathy from sentimental women and soft-headed men. And let some Negro brute, guilty of rape, suffer the punishment he so richly deserved at the hands of an outraged community, and one would think, if he considered the bitter censure from distant quarters, that the foundations of the government were being undermined, or that a poor lamb was set upon by a pack of howling wolves, thirsting for its blood, but not a word of commiseration for the family, or the victim, of the fiendish Negro’s unbridled bestiality. …

Again, in connection with the lynching of Negroes in the South, one must not lose sight of the conditions that are peculiar to that section. The greater the number of Negroes in proportion to the whites in any State or community the easier it is for the Negro to commit crime and escape. And the Negro criminal does often escape. Seldom is it found that the Negro will aid in the detection of the Negro criminal, rather otherwise. Even the hope of escape is a wonderful encouragement to the criminally inclined. …

Moreover, the population of several Southern States is nearly half Negro, while in two, — South Carolina and Mississippi, — it is even more than half Negro, being 55+ per cent and 56+ per cent, respectively. Indeed, in 53 counties of the South the Negro population of each exceeds 75 per cent. … Such conditions should be readily appreciated. Is it any wonder that the white man thinks it necessary to strike terror into the soul of the possible or incipient Negro criminal by any method that may cause him to stand in fear of an immediate and dreadful death?

Further, the origin of a great part of these Negroes, especially those of the farther South, is, also, worthy of consideration.

During the operation of the internal slave trade, it was usually the most undesirable, unruly, and the criminally inclined Negroes of the border slave States that were sold to the States of the farther South; nor should it be forgotten that between 1808 and 1860 the farther South received around 270,000 Negroes from outside the United States. It seems likely that the greater part of these were barbarous Negroes, directly from Africa. It was these criminal and barbarous Negroes, along with their children and grand-children, who by the fortune of war, without home or master, were turned loose on the South.

Thus it is that the white woman is obliged to be constantly on her guard against the Negro, — otherwise rape cases would be multiplied. An idea of the necessity of this and the hardship of it may be had from the following quotation:

“In a population about evenly divided in North Carolina was a family of unpretending intelligent people.

“There was a school house only a mile and a half away, but they could not let their two daughters go to it. They could not let them stir away from home unprotected. They had to pay for their education at home, while at the same time they were being taxed for the education of the Negro children of the district.

“‘Do you think,’ was asked a leading Negro educator, ‘that those girls could safely have gone to school?’

“‘It would depend upon the district,’ was the reply. ‘In some districts the girls could have gone to school safely enough; in others, no.’

“This I think was a terrible admission.”

As the world is to be made safe for democracy, so ought the South to be made free for white women. Is it not the business of the South to endeavor to make the South safe for white women by whatever method appears to be most effective? The women of the South should be just as free to go when, where, and as they please as women in other sections of the country and not be, as has been so aptly put by John Temple Graves, “prisoners to danger and fear”:

“In a land of light and liberty, in an age of enlightenment and law, the women of the South are prisoners to danger and fear. While your women may walk from suburb to suburb, and from township to township, without escort and without alarm, there is not a woman of the South, wife or daughter, who would be permitted or who would dare to walk at twilight unguarded through the resident streets of a populous town, or to ride the outside highways at midday.

“The terror of the twilight deepens with the darkness, and in the rural regions every farmer leaves his home with apprehension in the morning, and thanks God when he comes from the fields at evening to find all well with the women of his home.”

Put yourself in that farmer’s shoes. Our objective, as always, is to understand.

15-year-old Dominique Lane; 17-year-old De’Marquise Elkins; his mother, 36-year-old Karimah Elkins; and his sister, 19-year-old Sabrina Elkins

“Extraordinary Conditions”

From CNN (March 2013): ‘Dozens of Leads in Georgia Baby Shooting Case.’

Brunswick, Georgia (CNN) — Two teen boys in this coastal city were charged with murder Friday, accused in the fatal shooting of a 13-month-old boy who was in a stroller being pushed by his mother.

The teen boys in question: 17-year-old De’Marquise Elkins and 15-year-old Dominique Lane (above).

Police said they received a suspect description from Sherry West, the baby’s mother. … West earlier told reporters that the incident occurred at 9 a.m. Thursday as she was walking home from the post office, pushing her son, Antonio, in a stroller. She said she saw two boys. “A boy approached me and told me he wanted my money, and I told him I didn’t have any money. And he said, ‘Give me your money or I’m going to kill you and I’m going to shoot your baby and kill your baby,’ and I said, ‘I don’t have any money,’ and ‘Don’t kill my baby.'”

The boy tried to grab her purse and opened fire when she said tried to tell him she had no money, West said, with the shot grazing her head. She said the boy then shot her in the leg. West continued, “And then, all of a sudden, he walked over and he shot my baby in the face.”

Antonio Santiago, 2012–2013; shot in the face for no reason

According to police spokesman Todd Rhodes,

crime is not common in the residential neighborhood where West said her child was shot. “It’s a nice area, it’s a clean area, it’s an area where law-abiding citizens not only live, they also work and play.

“Much like every other city in these United States, from time to time we will have a glitch. Unfortunately, this happened here in Brunswick, Georgia.”

The city’s website describes Brunswick, with a population of about 15,000, as “one of the most unique, historic and visually stunning places in the world.” It boasts 19th century Victorian-style homes, century-old oaks and magnolia tree-lined streets.

Yet in spite of all those conveniently placed trees, Brunswick no longer boasts a 19th century Victorian-style justice system.

Meanwhile, De’Marquise’s mother and sister, Karimah and Sabrina Elkins (above), “are charged with trying to dispose of the gun… in a saltwater pond about two miles away from the killing” (News 4 Jax).

The judge said no bond was granted because of their past history, and they will have to wait for a full bond hearing. … Karimah Elkins and Katrina Elkins were arrested earlier this week on charges of lying to police. Investigators said they created false alibis for De’Marquise Elkins at the time of the shooting.

Speaking of “secret societies… which tended to create a race consciousness and race solidarity”:

While none of the Elkins’ family members went to see their relatives in court Friday, the New Black Panther Party spoke out on behalf the family and the teens accused of murder. “We didn’t come for five minutes of fame. We came because we understand that these are children, these are juveniles here, and they deserve the same rights,” James Muhammad said.

Deserving or not, they do have those rights. As the citizens of Annapolis wrote in 1875, right before they took the “sword of justice” into their own hands:

… [W]hile we, as true and loyal citizens of the State of Maryland, and of Anne Arundel County, do bend to the supreme majesty of the law and acknowledge trials by jury as the very arch-stone in the grand edifice of human rights, still we know the vilest criminal is accorded the same rights under the law that belong to the petty thief. … Before God we believe in the existence of a higher code than that which is dignified by the great seal of a Commonwealth.

I think that, to the open-minded reader, this perspective ought to be, if nothing else, thought-provoking.

“When Proper Restraint Is Removed”

“When proper restraint is removed from the Negro,” Winfield Collins wrote, “he gets beyond bounds.”

For variety, let’s take a trip to the North. From NBC (April 2013; links in original): ‘28 Arrested in Weekend Mag Mile Mob Violence.’ I’ve added some relevant information that the official press (or ‘mainstream media’) generally omits.

More than two dozen [black] teens were arrested Saturday night after dozens of groups began randomly attacking [white] pedestrians on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. …

Police said 28 [black] teens were arrested during the incident and charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct and battery and later released, according to Police News Affairs. Eleven other [black] teens were charged with misdemeanor charges after they allegedly attacked a group of [white] women on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Red Line, police said.

“You have over three to four hundred [black] teenagers with mob action, jumping on [white] individuals that are downtown,” community activist Andrew Holmes said. “Multiple people have been arrested and I caution those parents that get this call about your child being arrested — maybe you need to check your child.” …

It is not clear if the attacks are related to a similar [black] mobbing of Ford City Mall last month. Residents were concerned that this could be the first in a long line of [black] attacks after warm weather brought on a string of similar instances last year. “It’s been happening a lot around here,” said Eric Baldinger, who works along the Mag Mile. “Just keep your wallet close and your purse closer.”

There were indeed many “similar instances” in 2012, meaning mobs of black people attacking random white people and the occasional Asian doctor (CBS, June 2012):

Eight [black] teenagers have been charged with mob action, after four people [three white, one Asian] were hurt in at least three mob attacks in and near downtown over the weekend.

[T]he most recent attack happened Sunday night in the 800 block of North Dewitt Place in the Gold Coast neighborhood. A 36-year-old [Asian] man was walking home from work around 10 p.m. Sunday, when police say he was robbed and attacked by anywhere from 10 to 20 [black] people. The man was taken to the hospital with a head injury…

People living in and near downtown said it seems like every year, when schools let out for the summer, they see an increase in these kinds of mob attacks by [black] teenagers. … The victim from Sunday’s attack told police had no idea why he was targeted. The randomness of the attack had many people living in the area worried about their own safety.

“If the control of the Negroes in slavery times, with all the advantages to such end embodied in the institution of slavery, had often been one of anxiety to the South, how fearful must have been the conditions now that they were not only free from such control but enfranchised and taught by their new friends to be self-assertive, even if not sometimes encouraged in acts of violence against the Southern white people?” Quiet, Winfield! Don’t you know that’s incredibly “racist,” or something?

When a group of [black] people attacked two [white] men in the 500 block of North State Street shortly before 10 p.m., one victim was left with a broken jaw, the other suffered a cut lip. The suspected muggers were in a group that fled southbound after the attacks, Mirabelli said, but officers were able to catch up to the group on Kinzie Street between State Street and Wabash Avenue. Ten people were arrested.

Mitchell Coradarrowe

Who is this young man? The victim of a mob attack? Why, no:

One adult — 18-year-old Mitchell Coradarrowe, of the 5900 block of South Indiana Avenue — was charged with felony mob action and aggravated battery. Seven others, ages 13 to 16 [all black, obviously], were charged as juveniles with felony mob action.

A second attack reportedly happened about 10:30 p.m. Saturday at the State/Lake Red Line subway station, when a [black] mob attacked a [white] couple near the Chicago Theatre. No one was arrested in that attack.

The arrests in Saturday’s first attack did little to provide comfort for many people living downtown, who said more needs to be done to curb the violence.

“More needs to be done”? Well, I have a Mr. Collins on the line with an interesting public policy proposal. It’s drastic, he admits, but its success rate is impressive.

One woman, who asked that her name not be used, said there are times she’s afraid to walk in Streeterville. She said mob-style attacks are especially troubling for people who walk alone. “It definitely can escalate quickly if you even dare talk back, or put up any sort of resistance with that mob mentality,” she said. “You’re outnumbered. It’s just not wise.”

It sounds like she needs to stop being outnumbered. Or is that not the problem we’re supposed to be solving?

The latest incidents bring back some bad memories for [white] Chicagoans from around this time last year, when series of [black] mob attacks in and around the downtown area left several [white] people [and one Asian doctor] injured.

Among the most high-profile incidents were a pair of attacks by [black] mobs in Streeterville — one on a [white] man who was parking his scooter in the 300 block of East Chicago Avenue, the other of whom [also white] was assaulted while riding his bicycle at Lake Shore Drive and Huron Street. Less than a week later, two [white] teens were attacked by a large mob of [black] teens at Chicago and Wabash avenues in a fight [sic] that began at the Oak Street Beach. The attack shocked and terrified many people on the street corner. Also last summer, the developmentally disabled brother of Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan was attacked by a [black] mob while riding the CTA Red Line subway near Chicago Avenue.

Violent attacks by [black] teen mobs also made headlines elsewhere in the country last year. In one headline-grabbing incident, 24 [black] teens were arrested after violent mob attacks [on whites] marred the Wisconsin State Fair in suburban Milwaukee.

Indeed, in 2011, black mobs subjected Chicago to over a week of brutal attacks against whites and, again, the occasional Asian doctor (yes, really). The Chicago Tribune responded with no fewer than four editorials in which they attempted to explain (a) why they chose to omit every single reference to race from their coverage, and (b) that the readers are all a bunch of damn racists for complaining about it (Unamusement Park, June 2011):

1. ‘When race is relevant in news coverage’
2. ‘When a news story omits race, do we really know any less?’
3. ‘Mob attacks: Fear, too, is often skin deep’
4. ‘Race and the “flash mob” attacks’

Oh, and I almost forgot the Independence Day black mob violence in 2012 (CBS, July 2012):

… [A]t least 28 [black] people were arrested overnight for a series of violent attacks across the city, including 11 arrested for beating a [white] man leaving the July 4th fireworks at Navy Pier.

Brandon Trebbien

Now who might this other young man be? A vicious ‘flash mob’ attacker? Not quite:

Among the victims was [white] college student Brandon Trebbien, who was beaten and hit in the face by a group of [black] juveniles near Dearborn and Huron streets just after 11 p.m. Wednesday night. Trebbien was leaving the city’s July 4th fireworks show at Navy Pier, which had just ended a short time before the attack.

After beating Trebbien, the assailants ran off, but police caught 11 suspects. One of the teens allegedly resisted arrest, and punched and kicked several officers as he was taken into custody. That 15-year-old faces several juvenile charges, including one felony count of aggravated battery, two felony counts of aggravated battery to a police officer, and three felony counts of resisting arrest.

… Trebbien suffered bruising to his face, a cut to his ear, and two fractured teeth. In a phone interview, Trebbien said he was walking with some [presumably white] friends in the River North area when they were approached by a group of [black] teenagers. One teen then bumped into Trebbien, then punched him twice for no apparent reason. “The second blow actually disoriented me quite a bunch, and then my head hit some bricks, and knocked me out for probably a minute or so,” Trebbien said. “I was actually unconscious according to the police.”

According to a police report, the same teens were darting in and out of traffic just before the attack, causing a commotion about a block away. Police officers who were directing traffic told them to stop repeatedly. Then, members of the group dared each other to carry out a random attack, as police were nearby. “They still were just bold enough to come up and start doing that,” Trebbien said. “It didn’t even phase them” that police were standing right there, he added.

According to the police report, as the teens ran away, they laughed about the attack while pushing other pedestrians to the ground, and jumping on top of passing cars. “I don’t think it was funny at all,” he said. “There’s plenty other ways to have fun than just seeking out violence.” …

Downtown [black] mob attacks have been making headlines this summer for the second year in a row, particularly during one steamy weekend back in early June.

See above. And here’s some more detail on two attacks we’ve seen already (link in original):

In one attack, a 36-year-old [Asian] doctor from Northwestern Memorial Hospital was attacked by a mob of 10 to 20 [black] teenagers on the night of Sunday, June 10 as he was walking home from work along Dewitt Place, near the Museum of Contemporary Art. That man suffered a head injury, but was able to walk on his own after the attack.

CTA Red Line mob

The night before, a 23-year-old [white] man was beaten up on the CTA Red Line near the State-Lake stop by a group of about six [black] teenagers. The teens had just stolen the man’s 27-year-old [white] female friend’s iPhone 4S. She had dropped the phone, and a teen had picked it up and taken it for himself. The man told the teen to give his wife her iPhone back. But they instead began punching him in the face.

Now there may well be, as bright young college student Brandon Trebbien suggests, “plenty other ways to have fun than just seeking out violence” — for normal people, that is, as opposed to those who are, for whatever reason, “infinitely lacking in the high mental, moral, and emotional qualities,” as Collins put it. As for the latter, I am reminded once again of Winfield’s insight: “Barbarous criminals require barbarous laws.”

“Not a Word of Commiseration for the Family, or the Victim”

Speaking of rape: ‘feminism’ and ‘anti-racism’ collide in this unusual case from 2011 (ABC, Los Angeles Times, True Crime Report, March 2011; GQ, September 2011). When nineteen black males, aged 14 to 26, took turns raping an 11-year-old Mestizo girl (while filming it) in a trailer in the town of Cleveland, Texas, the New York Times (March 2011) was quick to offer its usual brand of what Collins called “bitter censure from distant quarters,” in ‘Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town’:

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?

“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a [black] hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.” …

Residents [presumably black] in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?” …

The arrests have left many wondering who will be taken into custody next. Churches have held prayer services for the victim. The students who were arrested have not returned to school, and it is unclear if they ever will.

“… [O]ne would think… that the foundations of the government were being undermined, or that a poor lamb was set upon by a pack of howling wolves, thirsting for its blood, but not a word of commiseration for the family, or the victim, of the fiendish Negro’s unbridled bestiality.”

Scene of the crime

On this occasion, though, the New York Times (March 2011) may have gone too far: ‘Gang Rape Story Lacked Balance’.

The story quickly climbed The Times’s “most emailed” list but not just because of the sensational facts of the crime involved. … The viral distribution of the story was, at least in part, because of the intense outrage it inspired among readers who thought the piece pilloried the victim.

My assessment is that the outrage is understandable. The story dealt with a hideous crime but addressed concerns about the ruined lives of the perpetrators without acknowledging the obvious: concern for the victim. …

Philip Corbett, standards editor for The Times, told me earlier today that the story focused on the reaction of [black] community residents and that there was no intent to blame the victim. He added, “I do think in retrospect we could have done more to provide more context to make that clear.” …

The Times, I have been told, is working on a followup story. I hope it delves more deeply into the subject because the March 8 story lacked a critical balancing element. If upon further reporting it is found that the community of Cleveland, Tex., universally believes that the 11-year-old girl was culpable in this crime, then that would be remarkable indeed.

Remarkable, yes — but for those of us who like to stay informed on such matters, not entirely unexpected. “Seldom is it found that the Negro will aid in the detection of the Negro criminal, rather otherwise,” Collins wrote. According to the Houston Chronicle (March 2011): “Someone has been making phone calls to [the victim’s mother] Maria’s house. Police fear they’re coming from people seeking retribution.”

He murdered a cop. For God’s sake string him up already.

A “Race Prejudice” Lynching

By now, we hope that you, the gentle reader, can appreciate that up until the First World War at least, hardly any lynchings at all were motivated by race prejudice. Still, it’s time we looked at the handful that were. Collins offers a few words on “the minor causes of lynching,” including racial prejudice, at the end of Chapter 3 (pp. 66–69):

In reading the annual summary of lynchings given by the Chicago Tribune, one may get the impression that Negroes are often lynched for very trifling things. Investigation, however, is apt to show that back of any such lynching was something much more serious than what appears on the face. Many illustrations might be given but one may suffice: thirteen Negroes lynched in Arkansas, March 26, 1904, cause, race prejudice. The following account of this affair is abbreviated from an Arkansas paper:

“Dewitt (Ark.), March 25. — Five Negroes who had been arrested as a result of the race troubles at St. Charles, were taken from the guards by a crowd of men last night and shot to death. … The five victims make nine Negroes that have been killed within the past week in the vicinity of St. Charles. …

“A few days ago a difficulty occurred over a trivial matter at St. Charles between a white man by the name of Searcy and two Negroes by the names of Henry and Walker Griffin. One of the Negroes threatened to knock Searcy in the head with a beer bottle. The trouble was stopped for the time being, but on Monday last the two Negroes met Searcy and his brother in the store of Woolfords and Marsworthy in St. Charles, and the difficulty was renewed. One of the Negroes without warning, struck both of the Searcy boys over the head with a table leg, rendering them unconscious and fracturing their skulls, one of them to such an extent that he may die. The Deputy Sheriff, … James Kirkpatrick, attempted to arrest the Negroes and he, too, was knocked down.

“The Negroes then gathered and defied the officers, declaring that ‘No white man could arrest them.’ Their demonstrations aroused the fear of the citizens of St. Charles and they phoned to this place for a posse to come out and protect the town. P. A. Douglass, deputy sheriff, went out with five men, Wednesday morning. Constable L. C. Neely went forward with a posse of several men to capture the Griffin Negroes. The constable met three Negroes … in the road. He inquired of them if they knew where the Griffins were and one of them replied that they did, but ‘would tell no —— white ——’ the Negroes then attempted to draw their pistols, but the posse fired, killing all three of them.

“Yesterday sixteen men left this place for the scene of the trouble. … Large crowds in from Roc, Ethel, and Clarenden. During the day while the Sheriff’s posse was searching for the Griffin Negroes, they were fired upon by a Negro … from ambush. Three of the posse were hit, but the shot used were small, and no serious damage resulted. The posse returned the fire, and a shot … felled the Negro to the ground. Several other shots were fired into him, killing him instantly.

“Five other Negroes … who were the Negroes that had defied the officers, were arrested, and last night a crowd of men took them away from the guards and shot them to death.” The next issue of the same paper stated that two more Negroes had been killed, and the Daily Arkansas Democrat, March 29, reported that the Griffins who were the cause of the original trouble had been killed, completing the list of thirteen.

The above quotation is given merely as an example of a state of affairs so apt to exist in connection with what usually passes as trivial causes for lynching. May those at a distance from such conditions the better understand!

That means us.

The famous Stanford marshmallow experiment

Lynching Solutions

“Of remedies for lynching,” Collins writes, “I have none” (pp. 70–71):

Of proposed remedies, I have only to say that those which seem in any way practicable might result in unmerited hardship to whites and an increase in rape cases as well. Any hope of escape or mitigation of punishment that even unintentionally may be held out to the criminal serves as a wonderful stimulant to crime. The positive knowledge on the part of those criminally inclined that punishment will be immediate, sure, and adequate, is the best deterrent. The Negro is a creature that lives in the present and even postponement of punishment robs it of much of its force. The law sanctions personal self-defense. The white man in lynching a Negro does it as an indirect act of self-defense against the Negro criminal as a race.

When the abnormally criminal Negro race (partly so, no doubt, because he is not yet adjusted to his environment) puts himself in harmony with our civilization, if ever, through assimilating our culture and making our ideals its own, then may it be hoped that his crimes will be reduced to normal and lynching will cease, the cause being removed.

Regrettably, instead of removing the cause of lynching, the government of the United States of America opted to promote the “hope of escape or mitigation of punishment” to a virtual certainty, to instruct its white citizens that “personal self-defense” is a form of ‘hate crime,’ and thus to raise the “unmerited hardship to whites” to levels inconceivable to Collins and his contemporaries. Ah, well.

(The US is no aberration: ‘The Barbarians Inside Britain’s Gates’ (Wall Street Journal, August 2011).)

… [A]ll the young rioters will have had long experience of the prodigious efforts of the British criminal justice system to confer impunity upon law breakers. First the police are far too busy with their paperwork to catch the criminals; but if by some chance — hardly more than one in 20 — they do catch them, the courts oblige by inflicting ludicrously lenient sentences.

A single example will suffice, but one among many. A woman got into an argument with someone in a supermarket. She called her boyfriend, a violent habitual criminal, “to come and sort him out.” The boyfriend was already on bail on another charge and wore an electronic tag because of another conviction. (Incidentally, research shows that a third of all crimes in Scotland are committed by people on bail, and there is no reason England should be any different.)

The boyfriend arrived in the supermarket and struck a man a heavy blow to the head. He fell to the ground and died of his head injury. When told that he had got the “wrong” man, the assailant said he would have attacked the “right” one had he not been restrained. He was sentenced to serve not more than 30 months in prison. Since punishments must be in proportion to the seriousness of the crime, a sentence like this exerts tremendous downward pressure on sentences for lesser, but still serious, crimes.

“Southern man, better keep your head/Don’t forget what your good book said/Southern change gonna come at last/Now your crosses are burning fast” (Neil Young).

The Southerner’s Problem

Thomas Nelson Page’s book The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem (1904) substantially agrees with Winfield Collins’ The Truth about Lynching and the Negro in the South (1918). So much so, in fact, that we offer just a few excerpts from Chapter 4, ‘The Lynching of Negroes — Its Cause and Its Prevention,’ in the former (pp. 86–119):

Though criminal assaults had been sufficiently common at one time for many of the States to adopt laws of Draconian severity relating to them, yet during the later period of slavery, the crime of rape did not exist, nor did it exist to any considerable extent for some years after emancipation. During the war the men were away in the army, and the Negroes were the loyal guardians of the women and children. On isolated plantations and in lonely neighborhoods, women were as secure as in the streets of Boston or New York, indeed, were more secure.

Then came the period and process of Reconstruction, with its teachings. Among these was the teaching that the Negro was the equal of the white, that the white was his enemy, and that he must assert his equality. The growth of the idea was a gradual one in the Negro’s mind. This was followed by a number of cases where members of the Negro militia ravished white women; in some instances in the presence of their families.

The result of the hostility between the Southern whites and Government at that time was to throw the former upon reliance on their own acts for their defence or revenge, with a consequent training in lawless punishment of acts which should have been punished by law. And here lynching, in its post-bellum stage, had its evil origin. …

The first instance of rape, outside of these attacks by armed Negroes, and of consequent lynching, that attracted the attention of the country after the war was a case which occurred in Mississippi, where the teaching of equality and of violence found one of its most fruitful fields. A Negro dragged a woman down into the woods and, tying her, kept her bound there a prisoner for several days, when he butchered her. He was caught and was lynched.

With the resumption of local power by the whites came the temporary and partial ending of the crimes of assault and of lynching.

Note that this confirms one of Collins’ remarkable points: that “in some States, for instance, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, where the Southern whites had control, order was preserved and comparative quiet prevailed, while the lynching of Negroes was sporadic, not only during this early period, but even until the present.”

As the old relation, which had survived even the strain of Reconstruction, dwindled with the passing of the old generation from the stage, and the “New Issue” with the new teaching took its place, the crime broke out again with renewed violence. The idea of equality began to percolate more extensively among the Negroes. In evidence of it is the fact that since the assaults began again they have been chiefly directed against the plainer order of people, instances of attacks on women of the upper class, though not unknown, being of rare occurrence.

“It is significant,” Page notes, “that, on large plantations where the Negroes, though in large numbers, are still in the position of old plantation servants, the crime of assault is almost unknown.”

Conditions in the South render the commission of this crime peculiarly easy. The white population is sparse, the forests are extensive, the officers of the law distant and difficult to reach; but, above all, the Negro population have appeared inclined to condone the fact of mere assault.

Twenty-five years ago, women went unaccompanied and unafraid throughout the South, as they still go throughout the North. To-day, no white woman, or girl, or female child, goes alone out of sight of the house except on necessity; and no man leaves his wife alone in his house, if he can help it. Cases have occurred of assault and murder in broad day, within sight and sound of the victim’s home. Indeed, an instance occurred not a great while ago in the District of Columbia, within a hundred yards of a fashionable drive, when, about three o’clock of a bright June day, a young girl was attacked within sight and sound of her house, and when she screamed her throat was cut. So near to her home was the spot that her mother and an officer, hearing her cries, reached her before life was extinct.

For a time, the ordinary course of the law was, in the main, relied on to meet the trouble; but it was found that, notwithstanding the inevitable infliction of the death-penalty, several evils resulted therefrom. The chief one was that the ravishing of women, instead of diminishing, steadily increased. The criminal, under the ministrations of his preachers, usually professed to have “got religion,” and from the shadow of the gallows called on his friends to follow him to glory. So that the punishment lost to these emotional people much of its deterrent force, especially where the real sympathy of the race was mainly with the criminal rather than with his victim.

Another evil was the dreadful necessity of calling on the innocent victim, who, if she survived, as she rarely did, was already bowed to the earth by shame, to relate in public the story of the assault — an ordeal which was worse than death. Yet another was the constant delay in the execution of the law.

With these, however, was one other which, perhaps, did more than all the rest taken together to wrest the trial and punishment from the courts and carry them out by mob-violence. This was the unnamable brutality with which the causing crime was, in nearly every case, attended. The death of the victim of the ravisher was generally the least of the attendant horrors. In Texas, in Mississippi, in Georgia, in Kentucky, in Colorado, as later in Delaware, the facts in the case were so unspeakable that they have never been put in print. They simply could not be put in print.

It is these unnamable horrors which have outraged the minds of those who live in regions where they have occurred, and where they may at any time occur again, and, upsetting reason, have swept from their bearings cool men and changed them into madmen, drunk with fury and the lust of revenge.

See: the “unnamable brutality” of the ‘Knoxville Horror’ (here, here, here, and here), the “unnamable horrors” of the ‘Wichita Massacre’ (here, here, here, here, here, and here), the “unspeakable” Pearcy massacre (here), and so many more excellent reasons to reinstate the time-honored practice of extrajudicial capital punishment.

Not unnaturally, such barbarity as burning at the stake has shocked the sense of the rest of the country, and. Indeed, of the world. But it is well for the rest of the country, and for the world, to know that it has also shocked the sense of the South, and, in their calmer moments, even the sense of those men who. In their frenzy, have been guilty of it. Only, a deeper shock than even this is at the bottom of their ferocious rage — the shock which comes from the ravishing and butchery of their women and children. …

For a time, a speedy execution by hanging was the only mode of retribution resorted to by the lynchers; then, when this failed of its purpose, a more savage method was essayed, born of a savage fury at the failure of the first, and a stern resolve to strike a deeper terror into those whom the other method had failed to awe.

The following may serve as an illustration. Ten or twelve years ago, the writer lectured one afternoon in the early spring in a town in the cotton-belt of Texas — one of the prettiest towns in the Southwest. The lecture was delivered in the Court-house. The writer was introduced by a gentleman who had been a member of the Confederate Cabinet and a Senator of the United States, and the audience was composed of refined and cultured people, representing, perhaps, every State from Maine to Texas.

Two days later, the papers contained the account of the burning at the stake of a Negro in this town. He had picked up a little girl of five or six years of age on the street where she was playing in front of her home, and carried her off, telling her that her mother had sent him for her; and when she cried, he had soothed her with candy which, with deliberate and devilish prevision, he had bought for the purpose. When the child was found, she was unrecognizable. Her little body was broken and mangled and he had cut her throat and thrown her into a ditch.

A strong effort was made to save the wretch for the law, but without avail: the people had reverted to the primal law of personal and awful vengeance. Farmers came from fifty miles around to see that vengeance was exacted. They had resolved to strike terror into the breasts of all who might contemplate so hideous a crime, so that such a thing should never occur again.

This was, perhaps, the second or third instance of burning in the country after the war. …

For a time, the assaults by Negroes were confined to young women who were caught alone in solitary and secluded places. The company even of a child was sufficient to protect them. Then the ravishers grew bolder, and attacks followed on women when they were in company. And then, not content with this, the ravishers began to attack women In their own homes. Sundry instances of this have occurred within the last few years. As an illustration, may be cited the notorious case of Samuel Hose, who, after making a bet with a Negro preacher that he could have access to a white woman, went into a farmer’s house while the family, father, mother, and child, were at supper; brained the man with his axe; threw the child into a corner with a violence which knocked it senseless, ravished the wife and mother with unnamable horrors, and finally butchered her. He was caught and was burned.

Another instance, only less appalling, occurred two years ago in Lynchburg, Va., where the colored janitor of a white female school, who had been brought up and promoted by the Superintendent of Schools, and was regarded as a shining example of what education might accomplish with his race, entered the house of a respectable man one morning, after the husband, a foreman in a factory, had gone to his work; ravished the wife, and, then putting his knee on her breast, coolly cut her throat as he might have done that of a calf. There was no attempt at lynching; but the Governor, resolved to preserve the good name of the Commonwealth, felt it necessary to order out two regiments of soldiers, in which course he was sustained by the entire sentiment of the State.

These cases were neither worse nor better than many of those which have occurred in the South in the last twenty years, and in that period hundreds of women and a number of children have been ravished and slain. …

As the crime of rape of late years had its baleful renascence in the teaching of equality and the placing of power in the ignorant Negroes’ hands, so its perpetuation and increase have undoubtedly been due in large part to the same teaching. The intelligent Negro may understand what social equality truly means, but to the ignorant and brutal young Negro, it signifies but one thing: the opportunity to enjoy, equally with white men, the privilege of cohabiting with white women. This the whites of the South understand; and if it were understood abroad, it would serve to explain some things which have not been understood hitherto. It will explain, in part, the universal and furious hostility of the South to even the least suggestion of social equality.

A close following of the instances of rape and lynching, and the public discussion consequent thereon, have led the writer to the painful realization that even the leaders of the Negro race — at least, those who are prominent enough to hold conventions and write papers on the subject — have rarely, by act or word, shown a true appreciation of the enormity of the crime of ravishing and murdering women. Their discussion and denunciation have been almost invariably and exclusively devoted to the crime of lynching.

Underlying most of their protests is the suggestion that the victim of the mob is innocent and a martyr. Now and then, there is a mild generalization on the evil of law-breaking and the violation of women; but, for one stern word of protest against violating women and cutting their throats, the records of Negro meetings will show many resolutions against the attack of the mob on the criminal.

And, as to any serious and determined effort to take hold of and stamp out the crime that is blackening the good name of the entire Negro race to-day, and arousing against them the fatal and possibly the undying enmity of the stronger race, there is, with the exception of the utterances of a few score individuals like Booker T. Washington, who always speaks for the right, Hannibal Thomas, and Bishop Turner, hardly a trace of such a thing. A crusade has been preached against lynching, even as far as England; but none has been attempted against the ravishing and tearing to pieces of white women and children. …

One who reads the utterances of Negro orators, editors and preachers on the subject of lynching, and who knows the Negro race, cannot doubt that, at bottom, their sympathy is generally with the “victim” of the mob, and not with his victim.

Basically the state of race relations in America today. Do read the whole thing.

Victory, Western-Style

For the proper historical perspective on the most notorious of all lynchers, the Ku Klux Klan, we turn to Jean Raspail’s great novel The Camp of the Saints (Issue 5). In Chapter 2, old Professor Calgues is watching the Third World invasion fleet from his home when he is startled by what we might well call a latter-day carpetbagger:

Noiselessly, the young man had come up the five little steps from the road and onto the terrace. Feet bare, hair long and dirty, flowered tunic, Hindu collar, Afghan vest…

“I’ve just been down there,” he said. “Fantastic! I’ve been waiting five years for something like this!”

“Are you alone?”

“So far. Except for the ones who were already here. But there’s lots more on the way. They’re all coming down. And walking, too. All the pigs are pulling out and heading north! I didn’t see a single car in this direction! Man, they’re going to be bushed, but this is too good to miss. Going to smoke, and shoot dope, and walk all the way. Make it down here on their feet, not on their butts.”

“Did you get a close look down there?”

“Real close. Only not for long. I got smashed a couple of times. Some soldier, with his gun. Like I was trash. But I saw a bunch of other soldiers crying. It’s great! I’m telling you, tomorrow this country’s going to be something else. You won’t know it. It’s going to be born all over.”

“Did you see the people on the boats?”

“You bet I did!”

“And you think you’re anything like them? Look, your skin is white. You’re a Christian, I imagine. You speak our language, you have our accent. You probably even have family hereabouts, don’t you?”

“So what! My real family’s all the people coming off those boats. Here I am with a million of my brothers, and sisters, and fathers, and mothers. And wives if I want them. I’ll sleep with the first one that lets me, and I’ll give her a baby. A nice dark baby. And after a while I’ll melt into the crowd.”

“Yes, you’ll disappear. You’ll be lost in that mass. They won’t even know you exist.”

“Good! That’s just what I’m after. I’m sick of being a tool of the middle class, and I’m sick of making tools of people just like me, if that’s what you mean by existing. My parents took off this morning. And my two sisters with them. Afraid of getting raped, all of a sudden. They went and dressed up like everyone else. These real square clothes, I mean. Things they haven’t put on in years, like neat little skirts, and blouses with buttons. So scared, you wouldn’t know them. Well, they won’t get away. Nobody’s going to get away. Let them try to save their ass. They’re finished, all of them. Man, you should have seen it! My father, with his arms full of shoes from his store, piling them into his nice little truck. And my mother, bawling her head off, figuring out which ones to take, picking out the expensive ones and leaving the rest. And my sisters, already up front, huddling together and staring at me, scared to death, like maybe I was the first one in line to rape them. And meanwhile I’m laughing and having myself a ball, like when my old man pulls down the grille in front of the store and sticks the key in his pocket. ‘Listen,’ I told him, ‘a lot of good that’s going to do! I can open your door myself without a key. And I will, tomorrow. And you know what they’ll do with your goddamn shoes? They’ll probably use them to piss in. Or maybe they’ll eat them. Because they all go barefoot!’ Then he gave me a look, and he spit on me. So I spit back and got him in the eye with a big one. And that’s how we said good-bye.”

“And what brings you here? Why this village? Why my house?”

“I’m looting, that’s why. I sponged off society while it was alive, so now that it’s dead, I’m going to pick its bones. It’s a change. I like it. Because everything’s dead. Except for the army, and you, and a few of my friends, there’s no one around for miles. So I’m looting, man. But don’t worry, I’m not hungry. I’ve already stuffed myself. And anyway, I don’t need much. Besides, everything’s mine now. And tomorrow I’m going to stand here and let them have it all. I’m like a king, man, and I’m going to give away my kingdom. Today’s Easter, right? Well, this is the last time your Christ’s going to rise. And it won’t do you any good this time, either, just like all the rest.” […]

“One last question. When they go smashing everything to bits, they won’t know any better. But why you?”

“Why? Because I’ve learned to hate all this. Because the conscience of the world makes me hate all this, that’s why. Now fuck off! You’re beginning to get on my ass!”

“If you insist. There’s really no point in staying. You’re not making very much sense. I’m sure you have an excellent brain, but I do think it’s been a trifle muddled. Someone has done a fine job. Well now, I’ll be on my way. Just let me get my hat.”

The old gentleman stepped inside. He came out a moment later with a shotgun.

“What’s that for?” the young man asked.

“Why, I’m going to kill you, of course! My world won’t live past morning, more than likely, and I fully intend to enjoy its final moments. And enjoy them I shall, more than you can possibly imagine! I’m going to live myself a second life. Tonight, right here. And I think it should be even better than the first. Of course, since all of my kind have left, I intend to live it alone.”

“And me?”

“You? Why, you’re not my kind. We couldn’t be more unlike. Surely I don’t want to ruin this one last night, this quintessential night, with someone like you. Oh no, I’m going to kill you.”

“You can’t. You won’t know how. I bet you’ve never killed anyone.”

“Precisely. I’ve always led a rather quiet life. A professor of literature who loved his work, that’s all. No war ever called me to serve, and, frankly, the spectacle of pointless butchery makes me ill. I wouldn’t have made a very good soldier, I’m afraid. Still, had I been with Actius, once upon a time, I think I would have reveled in killing my share of Hun. And with the likes of Charles Martel, and Godfrey of Bouillon, and Baldwin the Leper, I’m sure I would have shown a certain zeal in poking my blade through Arab flesh. I might have fallen before Byzantium, fighting by Constantine Dragasès’s side. But God, what a horde of Turks I would have cut down before I gasped my last! Besides, when a man is convinced of his cause, he doesn’t die quite so easily! See, there I am, springing back to life in the ranks of the Teutons, hacking the Slav to shreds. And there, leaving Rhodes with Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and his peerless little band, my white cloak blazoned with the cross, my sword dripping blood. Then sailing with Don Juan of Austria, off to even the score at Lepanto. Ah, what a splendid slaughter! … But soon there’s nothing left for me to do. A few trifling skirmishes now and again, none of them too well thought of these days. Like the War Between the States, when my side is defeated and I join the Ku Klux Klan to murder myself some blacks. A nasty business, I admit. Not quite so bad with Kitchener, though, skewering the Mahdi’s Moslem fanatics, spilling their guts. … But the rest is all current events, a sad little joke. Most of it has already slipped my mind. Perhaps I’ve done my bit, killing a pinch of Oriental at the Berlin gates. A dash of Vietcong here, of Mau Mau there. A touch of Algerian rebel to boot. At worst, some leftist or other, finished off in a police van, or some vicious Black Panther. Yes, it’s all become so terribly ugly. No fanfares anymore, no flags, no hosannas… Oh well, you’ll have to excuse an old professor’s pedantic prattle. But you see, I too have stopped thinking and just want to tell you where I stand. You’re right, I’ve never killed a soul. Much less any of the types I’ve just conjured up, all of them standing here before me, at last, in your flesh, all rolled into one. But now I’m going to live those battles over, all at once, those battles that I feel so much a part of, deep in my soul, and I’m going to act them out, right here, all by myself, with one single shot. Like this!”

The young man collapsed in a graceful glide along the railing where he had been leaning, and wound up in a squat, arms hanging by his sides, in a position that seemed quite natural for him. The red spot over his left breast spread out a little, but the blood stopped quickly. It was a nice, tidy death. As his eyes closed beneath the professor’s gentle thumb and finger, they didn’t even look surprised. No flags, no fanfares. Just a victory Western style, as complete as it was absurd and useless. And, utterly at peace with himself — more exquisitely at peace than he remembered ever being — old Monsieur Calgues turned his back on the corpse and went inside.

Putting the KKK in its proper place: at the end of Western civilization.

Recommended Reading

Want to learn more about the topics covered in this issue of Radish? We recommend the following resources. (We do not, however, necessarily endorse all opinions expressed in them: some are not nearly extreme enough.)

The Mason-Dixon Number Rises

• ‘The KKKrazy Glue That Holds the Obama Coalition Together’
• ‘KKK is the New UFO’

Evolution and Race

• ‘Darwin: Are the races of man separate species or merely separate subspecies?’
• ‘The Current Understanding’

The Necessity of Lynching

For obvious reasons, I’ve included only a small assortment of very recent crimes. The interested reader should be able to easily expand this list ten- or a hundredfold.

• ‘Georgia mom who watched baby mercilessly shot in the face weeps for son she will never see grow’
• ‘How Liberal Brain Damage Produced the Steubenville School Rape Video’
• ‘More than 60 Harlem gangsters felled by their own social media posts: cops’
• ‘Yet another hate crime murder in Tulsa’
• ‘New horror in New Orleans: Crimes inside of churches’
• ‘Possible mega-serial killer charged’
• ‘Chicago Mobs and the Case For High Capacity Magazines’
• ‘GPD: Downtown teen rampage; man assaulted, restaurant vandalized’ (South Carolina)
• ‘Hate crime mob attack caught on film in New Orleans’
• ‘Attorney General Eric Holder: Jail time for blacks is too long’
• ‘Teen Suspect’s Grandmother in Baby Stroller Killing: “He’s the Victim”’

Assorted, Tangential & Miscellaneous

• ‘The Emmett Till Murder Trial: An Account’
• ‘Towson U. Student Patrol Sparks Racism Charges’
• ‘White Men Don’t Count’
• ‘A Day Without A Caucasian’
• ‘D.C. Hate Crime Hoax’