Story of a Bold Judge

When the murderer of the peddler Waldrop was arrested, therefore, the thoughtful and progressive people of the city—the kind who are creating the New South—took immediate steps to prevent mob disturbance. The city was fortunate in having an able, energetic young man as its circuit judge—a judge, the son of a judge, who saw his duty clearly, and who was not afraid to act, even though it might ruin his immediate political future, as, indeed, it did. Rare qualities in these days! The murder was committed Tuesday, September 6th, the Negro was arrested Wednesday, Judge Speake impanelled a special grand jury without waiting a moment, and that very afternoon, within six hours after the Negro’s arrest and within twenty hours after the crime was committed, the Negro was formally indicted. Arrangements were then made to call a special trial jury within a week, in the hope that the prospect of immediate punishment would prevent the gathering of a mob.

A Record of Homicide as a Cause of Lynching

But, unfortunately, we find here in Madison County not only a history of lynching—a habit, it may be called—but there existed the same disregard for the sacredness of human life which is the common characteristic of most lynching communities, South or North. I made a careful examination of the records of the county. In the five years preceding this lynching, no fewer than thirty-three murder and homicide cases were tried in the courts, besides eight murderers indicted, but not arrested. This is the record of a single county of about forty thousand people. Notwithstanding this record of crime, there had not been a legal hanging in the county, even of a Negro, for nineteen years. It was a fact—well known to everybody in the county—that it was next to impossible to convict a white man for killing. Murderers employed good lawyers, they appealed their cases, they brought political friendships to bear, and the relationships between the old families were so far extended that they reached even into the jury room. As a consequence, nearly every white murderer went free. Only a short time before the lynching, Fred Stevens a white man, who shot a white man in a quarrel over a bucket of water, was let out with a fine of $50, costs, and thirty days in jail. This for a killing. And the attorney for Stevens actually went into court afterward and asked to have the costs cut down.

Negroes who committed homicide, though more vigorously punished than white murderers, yet frequently escaped with five or ten years in the penitentiary—especially if they had money or a few white friends. All this had induced a contempt of the courts of justice—a fear that, after all, through the delays and technicalities of the law and the compassion of the jury, the murderer of Waldrop would not be punished as he deserved. This was the substance of the reasoning I heard repeatedly: “That Negro, Maples, ought to have been hanged; we were not sure the jury would hang him; we hanged him to protect ourselves.”

I met an intelligent farmer during a drive through Madison County. Here are some of the things he said, and they voiced closely what I heard in one form or another from many people in all walks of life:

“Life is cheap in Madison County. If you have a grudge against a man, kill him; don’t wound him. If you wound him, you’ll likely be sent up; if you kill him, you can go free. They often punish more severely for carrying concealed weapons or even for chicken stealing in Madison County than they do for murder.”

So strong was the evidence in one murder case in an adjoining circuit that Judge Kyle instructed the jury to find the murderer guilty; the jury deliberately returned a verdict, “Not guilty.” The Alabama system of justice is cursed by the professional juror chosen by politicians, and often open to political influences. This, with the unlimited right of appeal and the great number of peremptory challenges allowed to the defence in accepting jurymen, gives such power to the lawyers for the defendant that convictions are exceedingly difficult. Oftentimes, also, the prosecuting attorney is a young, inexperienced lawyer, ill-paid, who is no match for the able attorneys employed by the defendant.

No, it is not all race prejudice that causes lynchings, even in the South. One man in every six lynched in this country in 1903—the year before the lynching I am describing—was a white man. It is true that a Negro is often the victim of mob-law where a white man would not be, but the chief cause certainly seems to lie deeper, in the widespread contempt of the courts, and the unpunished subversion of the law in this country, both South and North. This, indeed, would probably be the sole cause of lynching, were it not for the crime of rape, of which I wish to speak again a little later.

Composition of the Mob at Huntsville

Well, a mob began gathering in Huntsville before the grand jury had ceased its labours. It was chiefly composed of the workmen from the cotton-mills. These are of a peculiar class—pure American stock, naturally of high intelligence, but almost wholly illiterate—men from the hills, the descendants of the “poor white trash,” who never owned slaves, and who have always hated the Negroes. The poor whites are and have been for a long time in certain lines the industrial competitors of the Negroes, and the jealousy thus engendered accounts in no small degree for the intensity of the race feeling.

Anticipating trouble, Judge Speake ordered the closing of all the saloons—there were then only fifteen to a population of some twenty-one thousand—and called out the local military company. But the mob ran over the militiamen as though they were not there, broke into the jail, built a fire in the hallway, and added sulphur and cayenne pepper. Fearing that the jail would be burned and all the prisoners suffocated, the sheriff released the Negro, Maples, and he jumped out of a second-story window into the mob. They dragged him up the street to the square in the heart of the city. Here, on the pleasant lawn, the Daughters of America were holding a festival, and the place was brilliant with Japanese lanterns. Scattering the women and children, the mob jostled the Negro under the glare of an electric light, just in front of the stately old court-house.

Here impassioned addresses were made by several prominent young lawyers—J. H. Wallace, Jr., W. B. Bankhead, and Solicitor Pettus—urging the observance of law and order. A showing of hands afterward revealed the fact that a large proportion of those present favoured a legal administration of justice. But it was too late now.

A peculiarly dramatic incident fired the mob anew. The Negro was suddenly confronted by the son of the murdered peddler. “Horace,” he demanded, “did you kill my old dad?”

Quivering with fright, the Negro is said to have confessed the crime. He was instantly dragged around the corner, where they hanged him to an elm-tree, and while he dangled there in the light of the gala lanterns, they shot him full of holes. Then they cut off one of his little fingers and parts of his trousers for souvenirs. So he hung until daylight, and crowds of people came out to see.

Effort to Punish the Lynchers

But the forces of law and order here had vigour and energy. Judge Speake, communicating with the Governor, had troops sent from Birmingham, and then, without shilly-shallying or delaying or endeavouring to shift responsibility, he ordered a special grand jury to indict the lynchers the very next day and he saw to it that it was composed of the best citizens in town. When it met, so deep and solemn was its feeling of responsibility that it was opened with prayer, an extraordinary evidence of the awakened conscience of the people. More than this, the citizens generally were so aroused that they held a mass meeting, and denounced the lynching as a “blot upon our civilisation,” and declared that “each and every man taking part” with the mob was “guilty of murder.” Bold words, but no bolder than the editorials of the newspapers of the town or of the state. Every force of decency and good order was at work. Such strong newspapers as the Birmingham Age-Herald, the Ledger, and the News, the Montgomery Advertiser, the Chattanooga News, and, indeed, prominent newspapers all over the South united strongly in their condemnation of the lynchers and in their support of the efforts to bring the mob to justice.

Southern Newspapers on Lynching

The Huntsville Mercury spoke of the “deep sense of shame felt by our good citizens in being run over by a few lawless spirits.”

“There is no justification,” said the Birmingham News, “for the mob who, in punishing one murderer, made many more.”

“This lynching,” said the Birmingham Ledger, “is a disgrace to our state. The Ledger doesn’t put its ear to the ground to hear from the North, nor does it care what Northern papers say. The crime is our own, and the disgrace falls on us.”

“Where, in fact,” said the Age-Herald, “does such business lead to? The answer is summed up in a word—anarchy!”

It would be well if every community in this country could read the full report of Judge Speake’s grand jury. It is a work of the sort struck off only by men stirred to high things by what they feel to be a great crisis; it is of the same metal as the Declaration of Independence. Here is a single paragraph:

Ten members of the mob were indicted—and not for mere rioting or for breaking into the jail, but for murder. The jury also charged Sheriff Rodgers, Mayor Smith, and Chief of Police Overton with wilful neglect and incompetence, and advised their impeachment. No one not understanding the far-reaching family and political relationships in these old-settled Southern communities, and the deep-seated feeling against punishment for the crime of lynching, can form any adequate idea of what a sensation was caused by the charges of the grand jury against the foremost officials of the city. It came like a bolt from a clear sky; it was altogether an astonishing procedure, at first not fully credited. When the utter seriousness of Judge Speake came to be fully recognised, a good many men hurriedly left town. The Birmingham soldiers, led by a captain with backbone, arrested a number of those who remained. Judge Speake ordered a special trial jury, and appointed an able lawyer to assist Prosecutor Pettus in bringing the lynchers to justice. The very next week the trials were begun.

Difficulty of Breaking the Lynching Habit

By this time, however, the usual influences had begun to work; the moral revulsion had carried far, and the rebound had come. The energetic judge and his solicitors found themselves face to face with the bad old jury system, with the deep-seated distrust of the courts, with the rooted habit of non-punishment for lynchers. Moreover, it was found that certain wild young men, with good family connections, had been mixed up in the mob—and all the strong family and political machinery of the country began to array itself against conviction. A community has exactly as hard a road to travel in breaking a bad habit as an individual. The New South is having a struggle to break the habits of the Old South. It was found, also, that the great mass of people in the country, as well as the millworkers in the city, were still strongly in favour of punishment by lynching. One hundred and ten veniremen examined for jurors to try the lynchers were asked this question; “If you were satisfied from the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant took part with or abetted the mob in murdering a Negro, would you favour his conviction?” And seventy-six of them answered, “No.”

In other words, a large majority believed that a white man should not be punished for lynching a Negro. And when the juries were finally obtained, although the evidence was conclusive, they acquitted the lynchers, one after another. Only one man in one jury stood out for conviction—a young clerk named S. M. Blair, a pretty good type of the modern hero. He hung the jury, and so bitter was the feeling against him among the millworkers that they threatened to boycott his employer.

Relation of Lynching to the “Usual Crime”

This is the reasoning of many of the men chosen as jurors; I heard it over and over again, not only in Huntsville but, in substance, everywhere that I stopped in the South:

“If we convict these men for lynching the Negro, Maples, we shall establish a precedent that will prevent us from lynching for the crime of rape.”

Every argument on lynching in the South gets back sooner or later to this question of rape. Ask any high-class citizen—the very highest—if he believes in lynching, and he will tell you roundly, “No.” Ask him about lynching for rape, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he will instantly weaken.

“If my sister or my daughter—look here, if your sister or your daughter——”

Lynching, he says, is absolutely necessary to keep down this crime. You ask him why the law cannot be depended upon, and he replies:

“It is too great an ordeal for the self-respecting white woman to go into court and accuse the Negro ravisher and withstand a public cross-examination. It is intolerable. No woman will do it. And, besides, the courts are uncertain. Lynching is the only remedy.”

Yet the South is deeply stirred over the prevalence of lynching. The mob spirit, invoked to punish such a crime as rape, is defended by some people in the North as well as in the South; but once invoked, it spreads and spreads, until to-day lynching for rape forms only a very small proportion of the total number of mob hangings. It spreads until a Negro is lynched for chicken stealing, or for mere “obnoxiousness.” In the year 1903, out of 103 lynchings, only 11 were for rape and 10 for attempted rape, while 47 were for murder, 15 for complicity in murderous assault, 4 for arson, 5 for mere “race prejudice,” 2 for insults to whites, 1 for making threats, 5 for unknown offenses, 1 for refusing to give information, and 3 were wholly innocent Negroes, lynched because their identity was mistaken. It is probable that lynching in the South would immediately be wiped out, if it were not for the question of rape. You will hear the problem put by thinking Southerners very much in this fashion:

“We must stop mob-law; every month we recognise that fact more clearly. But can we stop mob-law unless we go to the heart of the matter and stop lynching for rape? Is there not a way of changing our methods of legal procedure so that the offender in this crime can be punished without subjecting the victim to the horrible publicity of the courts?”

Governor Cunningham—A Real Leader

But I have wandered from my story. In Acting-Governor Cunningham, the people of Alabama had a leader who was not afraid to handle a dangerous subject like lynching. He sent a court of inquiry to Huntsville, which found the local military company “worthless and inefficient,” because it had failed to protect the jail. Immediately, upon the receipt of this report, the Governor dismissed the Huntsville company from the service, every man in it. Quite a contrast from the action at Statesboro! The Governor then went a step further: he ordered the impeachment of the sheriff. A little later Federal Judge Jones took up the case, charged his jury vigorously, and some of the mob rioters were indicted in the federal courts.

Governor Cunningham took a bold stand against mob-law everywhere and anywhere in the state:

“I am opposed to mob-law,” he said, “of whatsoever kind, for any and all causes. If lynching is to be justified or extenuated for any crime, be it ever so serious, it will lead to the same method of punishment for other crimes of a less degree of depravity, and through the operation of the process of evolution, will enlarge more and more the field of operation for this form of lawlessness.”

It means something also when citizens, in support of their institutions and out of love of their city, rise above politics. Judge Speake had been nominated by the Democrats to succeed himself. A Democratic nomination in Alabama means election. After his vigorous campaign against the lynchers, he became exceedingly unpopular among the majority of the people. They resolved to defeat him. A committee waited on Shelby Pleasants, a prominent Republican lawyer, and asked him to run against Judge Speake, assuring him a certain election.

“I will not be a mob’s candidate,” he said. “I indorse every action of Judge Speake.”

The committee approached several other lawyers, but not one of them would run against the judge, and the Republican newspaper of the town came out strongly in support of Judge Speake, even publishing his name at the head of its editorial columns. Before he could be elected, however, a decision of the State Supreme Court, unconnected in any way with the lynching, followed like fate, and deprived Madison County of his services. He was now a private citizen, and even if he had come up for nomination to any political office, he would undoubtedly have been defeated. The New South is not yet strong enough to defy the Old South politically.

Influences Tending to Prevent Future Lynchings in the South

The influences against lynching in the South are constantly growing stronger. With most (not all) of the newspapers, the preachers and the best citizens united against it, the outlook is full of hope. And rural free delivery and country telephones, spreading in every direction, are inestimable influences in the quickening of public opinion. Better roads are being built, the country is settling up with white people, schools are improving and the population generally, after a series of profitable cotton crops, is highly prosperous—all influences working toward the solution of this problem.

When I went South I shared the impression of many Northerners that the South was lawless and did not care—an impression that arises from the wide publication of the horrible details of every lynching that occurs, and the utter silence regarding those deep, quiet, and yet powerful moral and industrial forces which are at the work of rejuvenation beneath the surface—an account of which I have given. I came away from the South deeply impressed with two things:

That the South is making fully as good progress in overcoming its peculiar forms of lawlessness as the North is making in overcoming its peculiar forms.

II.—LYNCHING IN THE NORTH

Having looked, into two Southern lynching towns, let us now see what a Northern lynching is like. The comparison is highly interesting and illuminating.

Springfield, O., is one of the most prosperous of the smaller cities of the state. It is a beautiful town having, in 1904, some 41,000 people. It has fine streets, fine buildings, busy factories, churches, an imposing library. Some of the older families have resided there for nearly a century. It is the seat of government of one of the most fertile and attractive counties in the state: an altogether progressive, enlightened city. Of its population in 1904 over 6,000 were Negroes (about one-seventh), a considerable proportion of whom are recent settlers. Large numbers of Negroes, as I have shown in former chapters, have been migrating from the South, and crowding into Northern towns located along the Ohio or in those portions of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and other states, which border on the Old South. Many of the Negroes in Springfield came from Kentucky. We discover in these Northern towns exactly as in the South, the two classes of Negroes: the steady, resident class, more or less known to the whites, and a restless, unstable, ignorant class, coming to one neighbourhood to-day to help build a bridge, and going elsewhere to-morrow to dig a canal. For years no such thing as race prejudice existed in Springfield; but with the growth of Negro population it increased with rapidity. For instance, a druggist in Springfield refused to sell soda-water to a Negro college professor, the typesetters in a publishing house compelled the discharge of Negro workmen, a Negro physician visited the high-school, found the half-dozen Negro pupils sitting by themselves and, angrily charging discrimination, ordered his child to sit among the white children. This feeling of race repulsion was especially noticeable between the working class of white men and the Negroes who come more or less into industrial competition with them. The use of Negroes for breaking strikes in the coalfields and elsewhere has been a fertile source of discord, kindling the fire of race prejudice in places where it never before existed.

How the Negroes Sold Their Votes

In Springfield there were about 1,500 Negro voters, many of whom were bought at every election. The Democrats and the Republicans were so evenly divided that the city administration was Democratic and the county administration Republican. The venal Negro vote went to the highest bidder, carried the elections, and, with the whiskey influence, governed the town. Springfield, enlightened, educated, progressive, highly American, had 145 saloons—or one to every 285 people. Before the lynching, nine of these were Negro saloons—some of them indescribably vile. A row of houses along the railroad tracks, not three blocks from the heart of the city, was known as the Levee. It was a Negro row composed of saloons and disorderly houses, where the lowest of the low, Negro men and both Negro and white women, made a general rendezvous. Just back of it was one of the foremost Catholic churches in town; hardly a block away were the post-office, the public library, and the foremost club of the city, and within three or four hundred yards were the back doors of some of the city’s most aristocratic residences. For years, the ineffective good citizen had protested against these abominable resorts, but when the Republicans wanted to win they needed the votes from these places, and when the Democrats wanted to win they needed them. Burnett, the Democratic boss, said in a tone of real injury to a gentleman—a Democrat—who protested against the protection of the Levee:

“Don’t you want the party to win? We’ve got to have those sixty or eighty votes from Hurley”—Hurley being the notorious Negro proprietor of a dive called the Honky Tonk.

Corrupt Politics and the Negro Question

So these vile places remained open, protected by the police, breeding crime, and encouraging arrogance, idleness, and vice among the Negroes.

And yet one will hear good citizens of Springfield complaining that the Negroes make themselves conspicuous and obnoxious at primaries and elections, standing around, waiting, and refusing to vote until they receive money in hand.

“To my mind,” one of these citizens said to me, “the conspicuousness of the Negro at elections is one of the chief causes of race prejudice.”

But who is to blame? The Negro who accepts the bribe, or the white politician who is eager to give it, or the white business man who, desiring special privileges, stands behind the white politician, or the ordinary citizen who doesn’t care? Talk with these politicians on the one hand, and the impractical reformers on the other, and they will tell you in all seriousness of the sins of the South in disfranchising the Negro.

“Every Negro in Springfield,” I was told, “exercises his right to vote.”

If you were to tell these men that the Negroes of Springfield are disfranchised as absolutely as they are anywhere in the South, they would stare at you in amazement. But a purchased voter is a disfranchised voter. The Negroes have no more real voice in the government of Springfield than they have in the government of Savannah or New Orleans. In the South the Negro has been disfranchised by law or by intimidation: in the North by cash. Which is worse?

Story of the Crime that Led to the Lynching

A few months before the lynching a Negro named Dixon arrived in Springfield from Kentucky. He was one of the illiterate, idle, floating sort. He had with him a woman not his wife, with whom he quarrelled. He was arrested and brought into court.

I am profoundly conscious of the seriousness of any charge which touches upon our courts, the last resort of justice, and yet it was a matter of common report that “justice was easy” in Clark County, that laws were not enforced, that criminals were allowed to escape on suspended sentence. I heard this talk everywhere, often coupled with personal accusations against the judges, but I could not discover that the judges were more remiss than other officials. They were afflicted with no other disease.

Even in a serious sociological study of Clark County by Professor E. S. Tood, I find this statement:

When the Negro Dixon was brought into court he was convicted and let out on suspended sentence. He got drunk immediately and was again arrested, this time serving several weeks in jail. The moment he was free he began quarrelling with his “wife,” in a house directly across the street from police headquarters. An officer named Collis tried to make peace and Dixon deliberately shot him through the stomach, also wounding the woman.

This was on Sunday. Dixon was immediately placed in the county jail. Collis died the next morning.

Human Life Cheap in Clark County

I have called attention to the fact that the lynching town nearly always has a previous bad record of homicide. Disregard for the sacredness of human life seems to be in the air of these places. Springfield was no exception. Between January 1, 1902, and March 7, 1904, the day of the lynching, a little more than two years, no fewer than ten homicides were committed in the city of Springfield. White men committed five of these crimes and Negroes five. Three of the cases were decided within a short time before the lynching and the punishment administered was widely criticised. Bishop, a coloured man who had killed a coloured man, was fined $200 and sentenced to six months in the workhouse. This was for killing a man. O’Brien, a white man, who killed a white man, got one year in the penitentiary. And only a week before the lynching, Schocknessy, a white man who killed a white man, but who had influential political friends, went scott-free!

On the morning after the Collis murder, the Daily Sun published a list of the recent homicides in Springfield in big type on its first page and asked editorially:

“What are you going to do about it?”

It then answered its own question:

“Nothing.”

The following morning, after the lynching, the same paper printed in its headlines:

I cite these facts to show the underlying conditions in Springfield; a soil richly prepared for an outbreak of mob law—with corrupt politics, vile saloons, the law paralysed by non-enforcement against vice, a large venal Negro vote, lax courts of justice.

Gathering of the Lynching Mob

Well, on Monday afternoon the mob began to gather. At first it was an absurd, ineffectual crowd, made up largely of lawless boys of sixteen to twenty—a pronounced feature of every mob—with a wide fringe of more respectable citizens, their hands in their pockets and no convictions in their souls, looking on curiously, helplessly. They gathered hooting around the jail, cowardly, at first, as all mobs are, but growing bolder as darkness came on and no move was made to check them. The murder of Collis was not a horrible, soul-rending crime like that at Statesboro, Ga.; these men in the mob were not personal friends of the murdered man; it was a mob from the back rooms of the swarming saloons of Springfield; and it included also the sort of idle boys “who hang around cigar stores,” as one observer told me. The newspaper reports are fond of describing lynching mobs as “made up of the foremost citizens of the town.” In few cases that I know of, either South or North, except in back country neighbourhoods, has a mob been made up of what may be called the best citizens; but the best citizens have often stood afar off “decrying the mob”—as a Springfield man told me—and letting it go on. A mob is the method by which good citizens turn over the law and the government to the criminal or irresponsible classes.

And no official in direct authority in Springfield that evening, apparently, had so much as an ounce of grit within him. The sheriff came out and made a weak speech in which he said he “didn’t want to hurt anybody.” They threw stones at him and broke his windows. The chief of police sent eighteen men to the jail but did not go near himself. All of these policemen undoubtedly sympathised with the mob in its efforts to get at the slayer of their brother officer; at least, they did nothing effective to prevent the lynching. An appeal was made to the Mayor to order out the engine companies that water might be turned on the mob. He said he didn’t like to; the hose might be cut. The local militia company was called to its barracks, but the officer in charge hesitated, vacillated, doubted his authority, and objected finally because he had no ammunition except Krag-Jorgenson cartridges, which, if fired into a mob, would kill too many people! The soldiers did not stir that night from the safe and comfortable precincts of their armoury.

A sort of dry rot, a moral paralysis, seems to strike the administrators of law in a town like Springfield. What can be expected of officers who are not accustomed to enforce the law, or of a people not accustomed to obey it—or who make reservations and exceptions when they do enforce it or obey it?

Threats to Lynch the Judges

When the sheriff made his speech to the mob, urging them to let the law take its course they jeered him. The law! When, in the past, had the law taken its proper course in Clark County? Some one shouted, referring to Dixon:

“He’ll only get fined for shooting in the city limits.”

“He’ll get ten days in jail and suspended sentence.”

Then there were voices:

“Let’s go hang Mower and Miller”—the two judges.

This threat indeed, was frequently repeated both on the night of the lynching and on the day following.

So the mob came finally, and cracked the door of the jail with a railroad rail. This jail is said to be the strongest in Ohio, and having seen it, I can well believe that the report is true. But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.

They murdered the Negro in cold blood in the jail doorway; then they dragged him to the principal business street and hung him to a telegraph-pole, afterward riddling his lifeless body with revolver shots.

Lesson of a Hanging Negro

That was the end of that! Mob justice administered! And there the Negro hung until daylight the next morning—an unspeakably grizzly, dangling horror, advertising the shame of the town. His head was shockingly crooked to one side, his ragged clothing, cut for souvenirs, exposed in places his bare body: he dripped blood. And, with the crowds of men both here and at the morgue where the body was publicly exhibited, came young boys in knickerbockers, and little girls and women by scores, horrified but curious. They came even with baby carriages! Men made jokes: “A dead nigger is a good nigger.” And the purblind, dollars-and-cents man, most despicable of all, was congratulating the public:

“It’ll save the county a lot of money!”

Significant lessons, these, for the young!

But the mob wasn’t through with its work. Easy people imagine that, having hanged a Negro, the mob goes quietly about its business; but that is never the way of the mob. Once released, the spirit of anarchy spreads and spreads, not subsiding until it has accomplished its full measure of evil.

Mob Burning of Negro Saloons

All the following day a rumbling, angry crowd filled the streets of Springfield, threatening to burn out the notorious Levee, threatening Judges Mower and Miller, threatening the “niggers.” The local troops—to say nothing of the police force—which might easily have broken up the mob, remained sedulously in their armouries, vacillating, doubtful of authority, knowing that there were threats to burn and destroy, and making not one move toward the protection of the public. One of the captains was even permitted to go to a neighbouring city to a dance! At the very same time the panic-stricken officials were summoning troops from other towns. So night came on, the mob gathered around the notorious dives, some one touched a match, and the places of crime suddenly disgorged their foul inhabitants. Black and white, they came pouring out and vanished into the darkness where they belonged—from whence they did not return. Eight buildings went up in smoke, the fire department deliberating—intentionally, it is said—until the flames could not be controlled. The troops, almost driven out by the county prosecutor, McGrew, appeared after the mob had completed its work.

Good work, badly done, a living demonstration of the inevitability of law—if not orderly, decent law, then of mob-law.

For days following the troops filled Springfield, costing the state large sums of money, costing the county large sums of money. They chiefly guarded the public fountain; the mob had gone home—until next time.

Efforts to Punish the Mob

What happened after that? A perfunctory court-martial, that did absolutely nothing. A grand jury of really good citizens that sat for weeks, off and on; and like the mountain that was in travail and brought forth a mouse, they indicted two boys and two men out of all that mob, not for murder, but for “breaking into jail.” And, curiously enough, it developed—how do such things develop?—that every man on the grand jury was a Republican, chosen by Republican county officers, and in their report they severely censured the police force (Democratic), and the mayor (Democratic), and had not one word of disapproval for the sheriff (Republican). Curiously enough, also, the public did not become enthusiastic over the report of that grand jury.

But the worst feature of all in this Springfield lynching was the apathy of the public. No one really seemed to care. A “nigger” had been hanged: what of it? But the law itself had been lynched. What of that? I had just come from the South, where I had found the people of several lynching towns in a state of deep excitement—moral excitement if you like, thinking about this problem, quarrelling about it, expelling men from the church, impeaching sheriffs, dishonourably discharging whole militia companies. Here in Springfield, I found cold apathy, except for a few fine citizens, one of whom, City Solicitor Stewart L. Tatum, promptly offered his services to the sheriff and assisted in a vain effort to remove the Negro in a closed carriage and afterward at the risk of personal assault earnestly attempted to defeat the purposes of the mob. Another of these citizens, the Rev. Father Cogan, pleaded with the mob on the second night of the rioting at risk to himself; another withdrew from the militia company because it had not done its duty. And afterward the city officials were stirred by the faintest of faint spasms of righteousness: some of the Negro saloons were closed up, but within a month, the most notorious of all the dive-keepers, Hurley, the Negro political boss, was permitted to open an establishment—through the medium of a brother-in-law!

If there ever was an example of good citizenship lying flat on its back with political corruption squatting on its neck, Springfield furnished an example of that condition. There was no reconstructive movement, no rising and organisation of the better sort of citizens. Negro dives gradually reopened, the same corrupt politics continued: and the result was logical and inevitable. About two years later, in February, 1906, another race riot broke out in Springfield—worse in some ways than the first. On February 26th, Martin M. Davis, a white brakeman, was shot in the railroad yards near a row of notorious Negro houses, by Edward Dean, a coloured man. The Negro was at once removed from the city and a mob which had gathered in anticipation of another lynching, when it was cheated of its victim, set fire to a number of houses in the Negro settlement. The militia was at once called out, but the following night the mob gathered as before and visiting the Negro settlement, tried to set fire to other buildings.

It is significant that on the very night that this riot occurred the city council had under consideration an ordinance prohibiting the use of screens or other obstructions to the view of the interior of saloons after closing hours on week days or during Sundays. A committee of the council, favourable to the saloon interests, had recommended that the ordinance be not acted upon by council but referred to the people at a distant election, a proposition wholly illegal. While Stewart L. Tatum the city solicitor to whom I have already referred, argued to the council the illegality of the proposal made by the committee the noise of the mob reached the council chamber and the friends of the ordinance seized the opportunity to adjourn and delay action that would evidently result in the defeat of the ordinance.

Finally, as a result of both these riots, the city was mildly stirred; a Civic League was formed by prominent citizens and the attack on property vigorously deprecated; the passage of the screen ordinance was recommended and at the next meeting of the council this ordinance, which had been vetoed by the mayor of the previous administration and had excited considerable public interest during a period of two years, was passed and has proved of great assistance to the police department in controlling the low saloons where the riot spirit is bred.

I turn with pleasure from the story of this lynching to another Northern town, where I found as satisfying an example of how to deal with a mob as this country has known.

In Springfield we had an exhibition of nearly complete supineness and apathy before the mob; in Statesboro, Ga., we discovered a decided law-and-order element, not strong enough, however, to do much; in Huntsville, Ala., we had a tremendous moral awakening. In Danville, Ill., we find an example of law vindicated, magnificently and completely, through the heroism of a single man, backed up later by wholesome public opinion.

Character of Danville, Ill.

Danville presented many of the characteristics of Springfield, O. It had a growing Negro population and there had been an awakening race prejudice between the white workingmen and the Negroes, especially in the neighbouring coal mines.

As in other places where lynchings have occurred, I found that Vermilion County, of which Danville is the seat, had also a heavy record of homicide and other crime. They counted there on a homicide every sixty days; at the term of court preceding the lynching seven murder trials were on the docket; and in all its history the county never had had a legal hanging, though it had suffered two lynchings. The criminal record of Vermilion County was exceeded at that time only by Cook County (Chicago), and St. Clair County (East St. Louis), where the horrible lynching of a Negro schoolmaster took place (at Belleville) in the preceding summer.

Story of a Starved Negro

The crime which caused the rioting was committed by the familiar vagrant Negro from the South—in this case a Kentucky Negro named Wilson—a miserable, illiterate, half-starved creature who had been following a circus. He had begged along the road in Indiana and no one would feed him. He came across the line into Illinois, found a farmhouse door open, saw food on the table, and darted in to steal it. As he was leaving, the woman of the house appeared. In an animal-like panic, the Negro darted for the door, knocking the woman down as he escaped. Immediately the cry went up that there had been an attempted criminal assault, but the sheriff told me that the woman never made any such charge and the Negro bore all the evidence of the truthfulness of the assertion that he was starving; he was so emaciated with hunger that even after his arrest the sheriff dared not allow him a full meal.

Hot Weather and Mobs

But it was enough to stir up the mob spirit. It was Saturday night, July 25th, and the usual crowd from all over the county had gathered in the town. Among the crowd were many coal miners, who had just been paid off and were drinking. As in Springfield, the town had a very large number of saloons, ninety-one within a radius of five miles, to a population of some 25,000. Most Northern towns are far worse in this respect than the average Southern town. It was a hot night; mobs work best in hot weather. Statistics, indeed, show that the great majority of lynchings take place in the summer, particularly in July and August.

It was known that the sheriff had brought his Negro prisoner to the jail, and the crime was widely discussed. The whole city was a sort of human tinder-box, ready to flare up at a spark of violence.

Well, the spark came—in a saloon. Metcalf, a Negro, had words with a well-known white butcher named Henry Gatterman. Both had been drinking. The Negro drew a revolver and shot Gatterman dead. Instantly the city was in a furor of excitement. The police appeared and arrested Metcalf, and got him finally with great difficulty to the police station, where he was locked up. A mob formed instantly. It was led, at first, by a crowd of lawless boys from sixteen to eighteen years old. Rapidly gathering strength, it rushed into the city hall, and although the mayor, the chief of police, and nearly the entire police force were present, they got the Negro out and hanged him to a telegraph-pole in the main street of the town, afterward shooting his body full of holes.

Intoxicated by their swift success and, mob-like, growing in recklessness and bloodthirstiness, they now turned upon the jail determined to lynch the Negro Wilson. It was a much uglier mob than any I have hitherto described; it was a drunken mob, and it had already tasted blood. It swarmed around the jail, yelling, shooting, and breaking the windows with stones.

A “Strict” Sheriff

Sheriff Hardy H. Whitlock of Vermilion County had never been looked upon as an especially remarkable man—except, as I was told everywhere, he had a record as a strict sheriff, as a man who did his best to enforce the law in times of peace. He and the state’s attorney were so industrious that they caught and punished four times as many criminals in proportion to population as were convicted in Chicago. The sheriff was a big, solid, deliberate man with gray eyes. He was born in Tennessee. His father was an itinerant Presbyterian preacher, always poor, doing good for everybody but himself, and stern in his conceptions of right and wrong. His mother, as the sheriff related, made him obey the law with peach-tree switches. His history was the commonest of the common; not much education, had to make his living, worked in a livery stable. He was faithful at that, temperate, friendly. They elected him constable, an office that he held for seven years. He was faithful at that. They elected him sheriff of the county. He went at the new task as he had at all his other work, with no especial brilliancy, but steadily doing his duty, catching criminals. He found a great deal to learn and he learned. The extradition laws of the states troubled him when he wanted to bring prisoners home. There was no compilation of the laws on the subject. Here was work to be done. Although no lawyer, he went at it laboriously and compiled a book of five hundred pages, containing all the extradition laws of the country, and had it published at his own expense.

Defending a Jail With a Riot-gun

And when the crisis came that night with the mob howling around his jail, Hardy Whitlock had become so accustomed to doing his duty that he didn’t know how to do anything else. Here was the jail to be protected: he intended to protect it. He sent for no troops—there was no time anyhow—nor for the police. He had a couple of deputies and his wife. Though the mob was breaking the windows of the house and the children were there, his wife said:

“Give me a gun, Hardy, and I’ll stay by you.”

The sheriff went out on the porch, unarmed, in his shirt-sleeves, and made them a little speech. They yelled at him, threw stones, fired revolvers. They brought a railroad rail to break in the door. He went out among them, called them Bill, and Jim, and Dick, and persuaded them to put it down; but others took it up willingly.

“Are you going to open the door?” they yelled.

“No!” said the sheriff.

Then he went in and got his riot-gun, well loaded with duck-shot. He was one man against two thousand. They began battering on the iron door, yelling and shooting. It was not an especially strong door, and it began to give at the bottom, and finally bent inward enough to admit a man’s body. The crucial moment had come: and the sheriff was there to meet it. He stuck his riot-gun out of the opening and began firing. The mob fell back but came charging forward again, wild with passion. The sheriff fired again, seven times in all, and one of his deputies opened with a revolver. For a time pandemonium reigned; they attempted the house entrance of the jail; the sheriff was there also with his riot-gun; they threatened dynamite and fire. They cut down the Negro, Metcalf, brought him in front of the jail, piled straw on the body and attempted to burn it. Part of the time they were incited to greater violence by a woman who stood in a waggon-box across the street. So they raged all night, firing at the jail, but not daring to come too near the man with the riot-gun.

“On Sunday,” the sheriff told me, “I realised I was up against it. I knew the tough element in town had it in for me.”

How a Real Sheriff Punished a Mob

They even threatened him on the street. A large number of men had been wounded by the firing, some dangerously, though no one, fortunately, was killed. The sheriff stood alone in the town. A lesser man might still have failed ignominiously. But Whitlock went about the nearest duty: punishing the rioters. He had warrants issued and arrested every man he could find who was streaked or speckled with shot—indubitable evidence of his presence in the mob at the jail door. Many fled the city, but he got twenty or thirty.

Vermilion County also had a prosecuting attorney who knew his duty—J. W. Keeslar. Judge Thompson called a grand jury, Attorney Keeslar pushed the cases with great vigour, and this was the result: thirteen men and one woman (the disorderly woman of the waggon-box) were sent to the penitentiary, eight others were heavily fined. At the same time the Negro, Wilson, came up for trial, pleaded guilty, and was legally punished by a term in the penitentiary.