LYNCHED NEGRO

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21663, 1 December 1933, Page 11

LYNCHED NEGRO

BURNED WHILE ALIVE MUCH PUBLIC EXCITEMENT NEW YORK. Nov. 29 The feeling aroused by recent lynchings continued unabated to-day, in fact it was increased as a result of the affair at St. Joseph. Missouri, in which it was revealed that the negro was literally burned alive and not hanged, while madly laughing women shouted encouragement to the lynchers. The sheriff explained that he turned the prisoner over to the mob for fear of 10 other negroes and 60 white men in the gaol being also subjected to mob hysteria, and that an innocent prisoner might have been killed. The Governor of Missouri, Mr. G. B. Park, announced to-day that he would make a thorough investigation of the affair. "There is no justification for lynching, which is a dangerous blow to our constitution, our laws and to civilisation," he said. "I want the mob leaders prosecuted.'' Habeas corpus proceedings have resulted in the return of four prisoners who formed the cause of the scene in Salisbury, Maryland, yesterday. The people have started a boycott against Baltimore goods as a protest against the action of the Governor, Mr. A. C. Ritchie, in having the four men arrested.

The Governor, in a formal statement to-day, said: "It is my plain duty, as Governor of Maryland, to see that the law is supreme, and it was only when the local officials failed to perform their duties that I acted." In Kansas a white prisoner, who yesterday killed a negro gaolor in an attempt to escape, had to be spirited away from the county gaol to the State penitentiary in order to save him from, the threats'of a mob. Something of a psychological condition brought about everywhere in the aroused public is I'eflected, incidentally, in a comparison, made to-day by a New York Roman Catholic prelate in attacking Father Couglilin's speech on the money policy, between those viho listened to him and a "lynching mob," showing how the lynching incidents have stirred up all minds. , f