America’s Lynch Law

Inangahua Times, 11 December 1929, Page 4

America’s Lynch Law

4,951 Cases in 45 Years Negroes Persecuted The number of people lynched in the United States between 1882, the first year for which full figures are available, and 1927, was 4,951. Of these 3,513 were negroes, and 3,672 of the lynrhings took place in the 10 southern-most States of America, says the Daily Fxpress.Ol These figures are revealed in an authoritative and well-documented study of the subject, which is published under the title of “ Rope and Faggot, a biography of Judge Lynch,” by Walter Whit* (Knopf). Mr White is assistant secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, and is himself a Southerner. His facts are either the results of personal observation and investigation, or are quoted from contemporary reports in the anti-negro Press. They may be assumed, therefore, to be correct. I The r ystrmatic persecution of negroes bpgan with the treeing of the slaves, after the American Civil War. The Southern planters, enraged at losing their cheap labour and frightened of the blacks wreaking vengeance on them foi their past tyranny tried, through the Ku-Klux-Klan and similar societies, to terrorise their old slaves into submission. The negroes began to prosper a< time went on, and in some ease* they gained positions of important in their home towns. In the grea war hi at Jc soldiers fought side bi side with white men in the Ameri can Arinv. and the result has beei still further to enrage the “pool whites ” of the Southern Spates. In 1919, ten black soldiers, wb< had just returned from the front were lynched, some of them stil wearing their American uniform 4 and two of them were burned alive The fiendish and obscene cruelt shown by the lynching mobs i indescribable, and would beincred ible in a civilised race unless the were supported by first* han evidence j Many of the cases quoted by M White are so disgusting that the I cannot be piinted, and in particula 1 »he lynchings and torture ol blac I women.