Protagonists of National Anti-Lynching Law Rally Again as Mob Crimes Continue -- July 13, 2023

Chicago Tribune, 09-July-1923

Missouri Representative Leonidas C Dyer first introduced his anti-lynching bill in 1918. In most cases, it passed in the House, but got filibustered by southerners in the Senate, who supported what we now call domestic terrorism. 

PROTAGONISTS OF NATIONAL ANTI-LYNCHING LAW

RALLY AGAIN AS MOB CRIMES CONTINUE

By NEA Service

Washington, July 9 -- Proponents of the much-filibustered Dyer anti-lynching bill are renewing their efforts to inscribe it on the federal statute books as reports of mob killings trickle in from all over the country.

Failure of Congress to enact the measure at the last session is regarded by supporters of the Dyer proposal as a partial condonement of mob rule.

Plans to shove the bill through the next session are being formulated now. Leaders declare the fight will be waged with renewed vigor when the speaker’s gavel falls on the House rostrum when the lawmakers return to their tasks.

Mob Still Busy

During the first three months of this year, four men were lynched by unidentified mobs, official statistics reveal. Three were negroes. One was white.

Thirteen persons -- six whites and seven negroes -- were killed in riots.

Nineteen, including two white women, were flogged publicly. Four were victims of masked mobs.

In 1922, 57 persons were stolen out of their jail cells and summarily executed by gangs of infuriated citizens who took the law into their hands.

South Shakes Off Yoke

Judge Lynch, cold unreasoning advocate of old Virginia, had come back to the bench.

But observers believe mob violence is on the wane in the south. The number of lynchings in Dixieland have decreased somewhat in recent years.

This is due, according to those who have studied the situation, to two things:

Migration of thousands of negroes to the north.

And a reaction from the agitation for a federal anti-lynching bill, such as that introduced by Representative L. C. Dyer of St. Louis.

Women Take Up Cudgel

Women in Louisiana have banded together to blot out lynchings. They’ve organized the Louisiana Race Relations Committee. Similar steps are being taken by their sisters in other southern states.

The American Civil Liberties Union of New York, together with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has been working tirelessly in behalf of the Dyer measure. So is the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Tuskegee, Ala.

The latter institution has compiled figures showing Texas, in 1922, led all other states in the number of lynchings within its borders. It had 18 victims.

Official Report

Reports of the Civil Liberties Union list these lynchings for 1923:
LOUSIANA. Leslie Leggett, a negro accused of associating with white women, was kidnapped and lynched at Sheroveport on Jan. 4. Police had been unable to obtain evidence warranting his arrest.
ARKANSAS: E. C. Gregor, a railroad striker, was lynched on Jan. 13 by a mob of farmers at Harrison, who visited his home in search of evidence in connection with destruction of property of the Missouri & North Arkansas railroad.
TEXAS: Dr. John Smith, a negro physician, was burned to death at Bishop after his hands and feet had been cut off by unknown persons. He had been arrested for injuring a woman while driving his automobile.

Appeal to Religion

GEORGIA: An unidentified negro was lynched in a swamp near Devereux on Feb. 3 by a posse which accused him with robbing stores and killing William Renfroe, county constable.

Meanwhile clergymen and social workers are appealing to religious instincts to stop these wholesale murders.

"Let the law take its course," they advise. "Our courts are for the protection of man’s rights. And they will see that justice is meted out. The guilty will be punished and the innocent will go free.

"Judge Lynch is no longer the prototype of Twentieth Century Justice."

Chicago Tribune, 09-July-1923

The Shame of America -- November 16, 2022

Washington Evening Star, 23-November-1922

The NAACP ran this ad calling for people to support Senator Dyer's anti-lynching bill. 

Grand Jury in Georgia Indicts Five Lynchers -- September 17, 2022

Norwich Bulletin, 02-September-1922

As we saw last month, the Saint Paul-based Northwestern Bulletin was an African-American owned newspaper. On September 12, the four identified lynchers were tried and found innocent. 

GRAND JURY IN

GEORGIA INDICTS

FIVE LYNCHERS

Five Prominent Whites Indicted

For Lynching John Glover

In Monroe county.

BONDS ARE PLACED FROM

S1,000 TO $3,000 EACH

Mobbers Oveprowered Sheriffs to

Lynch Prisoner -- N. A. A. C. P. Starts Probe.

New York, Sept. 1 -- Five prominent white men of Macon, Ga. have been indicted for lynching John (Cocky) Glover recently by the Bibb County Grand Jury, according to an announcement made here today by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Glover was lynched in Monroe County, Ga., after he had shot and killed Deputy Sheriff Walter C. Byrd who was attempting to place Glover under arrest.

The five men indicted are among the most prominent men in Macon. Herbert Block, one of them, is manager of the Hotel Demsey, the leading hotel in Macon. H. L. McSwain, another of the men indicted is president of the Southern Co-Operative Fire Insurance Co.

N. Unice is a merchant and Guy Jones is a city fireman. The fifth man indicted was unnamed as he had not been located, having fled from town. Bond was set at amounts ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 each. Other indictments are expected to follow.

The indictment charging rioting read in part:
"Block, McSwain, Unice and the other party, did unlawfully and with force and arms together with persons unknown to the grand Jury do a certain unlawful act of violence to wit: take from William Branan, a deputy sheriff, and from J. L. Mullally, a deputy sheriff, a certain prisoner lawfully in charge of these officers, John Glover alias Cocky Glover, for the purpose of mobbing and lynching Glover, and did in a violent and tumultuous manner, after taking Glover in charge transport him across the line between Monroe and Bibb counties for the purpose of lynching and killing Glover."

The N. A. A. C. P. Is carefully following these indictments to see if trials and convictions follow, or if the indictments are not to be pressed as has been the custom in the few cases where lynchers have been indicted in Southern states.

Fewer Necktie Parties in 1922 -- July 11, 2022

Daily Ardmoreite, 05-July-1922

This newspaper items quotes a report from the NAACP that lynchings were down in the first six months of 1922. Note how the report spells "Tuskegee." Monroe N Work was a sociologist who pioneered in collecting information about lynchings.

FEWER NECKTIE PARTIES IN 1922

Twenty-eight Negroes and

Two Whites Pay Penalty

at Hands of Mob,

Records Reveals.

TUSKAGEE, Ala. -- There were six less lynchings in the United States for the first six months of this year than there were for similar months of the year 1921, according to records compiled by Monroe N. Work, in charge of the Records and Research department of the Tuskagee Institute.

Of the 30 put to death, 10, or 63 per cent, were in two states, Mississippi and Texas.

Of those lynched 2 were whites and 28 negroes. Five of those put to death were burned to death at the stake and 3 were put to death and then their bodies burned.

The state in which lynching occurred and the number in each state are as follows: Alabama, 1; Arkansas, 2; Florida, 1; Georgia, 4; Louisiana, 1; Mississippi, 7; South Carolina, 1; Oklahoma, 1; and Texas. 12.

Vernon Jordan, RIP -- March 2, 2021

 

Civil rights leader Vernon Jordan has died. I have been hearing and reading about him my whole life. 

Increase in Lynching -- December 8, 2020

 

listal.com

James Weldon Johnson was a poet, a writer, a diplomat and a civil rights activist. He wrote "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Every anti-lynching bill considered by the US Congress was filibustered by southern senators. 

INCREASE IN LYNCHING.

(By the Associated Negro Press.)

New York, Dec. 8. -- The terrible extent to which lynching is taking hold of the United States is set forth in a special appeal by James Weldon Johnson, executive secretary, N. A. A. C. P., through the Associated Negro Press.

Mr. Johnson says:
Two days before Thanksgiving Day a Mississippi mob battered down the doors of a courtroom, seized a prisoner who was being tried at a special term of the court, and dragged him at the end of a rope tied to the rear of an automobile, finally hanging the lifeless body and riddling it with bullets.

On Thanksgiving Day a New York newspaper published the following headline:

"LYNCH NEGRO BY MISTAKE."
"Georgia Posse Shoots Brother of Man Who Killed White."

In Mississippi the sanctity of a courtroom was violated. In Georgia an innocent man was brutally murdered. No one will be punished for participation in these or the fifty other atrocities which have disgraced the United States before the world in 1920.

The American people are now given opportunity to end this disgrace. Senator Curtis and Representative Dyer have introduced in Congress a federal anti-lynching bill which provides:

1. For a $10,000 fine to be paid by any county in which a lynching occurs;
2. For prosecution of negligent state and county officers in the United States courts;
3. For trial on charge of murder in a United States Court of all participation in lynchings.

May we, through the Associated Negro Press ask those citizens who want lynching in the United States stopped, to write their senators or representatives urging the enactment of federal anti-lynching legislation?

Yours very truly,
James Weldon Johnson, Secretary.

WEB DuBois 150 -- February 23, 2018

www.listal.com

WEB DuBois, the smartest perspn in the room whatever room he entered, was born 150 years ago today, on 23-February-1868.  He was a founder of the NAACP and edited The Crisis for many years.  He fought for equality and against racism and lynching.  He attended the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations.

I don't think I ever heard his name spoken in high school and probably not in college.  In fact, I thought it was pronounced in the French manner until I heard someone talking about  him on the radio years later.  I read The Souls of Black Folk about 25 years ago and found it moving.  I still have to read Black Reconstruction.