Untitled

Evening Star, Issue 22683, 24 June 1937, Page 8

I BURNED WITH TORCH. * | 1 , Bootjack M'Daniels, a lanky negro with powerful shoulders, was asked to confess first. He gibbered that he was innocent A mobster stepped forward with a plumber’s torch and ht it. Another ripped M'Daniel’s shirt off. Again he refused to confess. Then the blue-whit© flam© of\the torch stabbed into his black chest. He screamed with agony. The torch was withdrawn. He reiterated his innocence. Again the torch was turned on him and the smell of burned flesh floated through the woods Ap- : n he screamed, and when it was wi. ;.n this time he was ready to confess. Ho was with Townes, he sobbed, when Townes poked a shotgun through the grocery window and fired into the grocer’s back. When his confession was delivered in sufficient detail the lynchers fell back, and a volley of bullets crashed into , Bootjack M'Daniels, 1937’s lynching victim No. 2. “ QUIETLY AND ORDERLY.” Despite what ho had just witnessed, Townes was not yet ready to repeat the confession which county officers nan said he signed with his X after he was arrested. But the blow torch soon burned the story out of him. As hung limp in his chains, some or mob went off to get another negr named as an accomplice. Back tney came with one Shorty Dorroh. After he satisfied them that he had hothmgto do with the murder, they horsewhipped him and ordered him out of the S • Then they piled brush high about sobbing negro Townes, gasoline and, touching him off 1 lynching victim No. 3. . , , , Back in Winona, the judge who iad heard the negroes’ pleas of not promised a grand jury lu'est gation but the sheriff and his men said they had not recognised,any of jnobsteis , who seized their prisoners Said Deputy Sheriff Hugh Curtis:-” It was all done very quickly, quietly, and ' ° r in rl Washington the House debate , rose to a furious crescendo after a ■ Press report of what had just happened j ' at Duck Hill had bfien read. Negroes | in the gallery, who had cheered and ap- | plauded intermittently throughout the , ' day when one of their cnampions made I ' a good noint on the floor were shocked into silence. 'Two days later, with all : but 17 Southern representatives out of 123 voting against it, the Gavagan anti- ’ lynching "bill, which would make mobsters and law officers who yield up their prisoners liable to stiff Federal prosecution, was passed by the Honse. |