KILLING OF NEGROES

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 172, 17 April 1937, Page 9

KILLING OF NEGROES

Mississippi Lynchings DEMAND FOR PUNISHMENT OF OFFENDERS By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copvrig,... Wasliington, April 15. Mr. Summers, Chairman of the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, telegraphed Governor 11. L. White, of Mississippi, that he would consider him an accessory to the lynchings unless he moved speedily to punish the officers of the lynchers. Mr. Summers said the occurrence was a dastardly and brutal one. “It is a sorry thing,” he said, “and makes it difficult for us here who are trying to protect the governmental sovereignty of the States.” The Gavagan anti-Lynching Bill passed the House of Representatives by 227 votes to 119, after a six-hour debate in which there was much sectional bitterness. It provides Federal punishment for officers who permit prisoners to be taken from them and injured or killed. The Bill now goes to the Senate. Mr. Summers led the opposition and insisted that the South, had a race problem with which the north was unfamiliar. Lynchings were diminishing rapidly. The measure would make conditions worse and result in lynchings before arrest. He said that the measure was plainly unconstitutional. The galleries were crowded with many negroes. A New York cable dated April 13 reported that a message from Winona, Mississippi, stated that two negroes were tortured and lynched by a mob of 100 white men two hours after they had pleaded not guilty before the circuit court to a charge of murdering a white storekeeper. Both were tied to stakes and tortured with the flame of a blow-torch. One died at the stake and the other was shot dead after torture and his body burned. A third negro, suspected of complicity in the murder, was severely whinped and chased from the county.’