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| Elizabeth City Independent, 07-March-1924 |
Pasquotank County is in North Carolina.
Poor, Foolish Men
That little band of foolish men who tied handkerchiefs about their faces and gathered outside the Pasquontank County jail Sunday night calling for the blood of two negro prisoners, must feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves now; and surely they must feel thankful that they did not carry out the heinous crime of lynching that was in their minds.
Happily the mob lacked leadership and sufficient liquor to fire its passions. Given a frenzied leader and an abundance of liquor the mob might have shoved aside protesting citizens, battered down the doors of the jail and engaged in such an orgy of lynching as this county has never known. There hasn't been a lynching in Pasquontank County within the memory of its oldest citizens. It is a late date to sully so fine a record. Lynchings are going out of fashion.
Only brute men and ignorant men engage in lynching. If there were not brutal and ignorant they would never so much think of taking the law in their own hands.
These lynching parties are so pitiably silly. They curse the law because it does not move to suit them. And then they set up a law of their own which convicts its victims without giving them a hearing and kills them without weighing the evidence at all. That mob Sunday night might have killed one negro of a crime of which he is only suspected. They would have killed another negro for a murder which may be proved accidental. Let us hope the would-be lynchers are now thoroughly ashamed and penitent and that Pasquontank will be spared another such demonstration.
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