RACE HATRED IN AMERICA

Otago Witness, Issue 2757, 16 January 1907, Page 29

RACE HATRED IN AMERICA

BLOODSHED PREDICTED. NEW \UftK, January 14. In the United States Senate, Senator Tillman, in a bitter and vehement speech, predicted that blood would flow like water over the race question, which was 1 more threatening now than in 1861. He declared that so long as negToes ravished white women the people of South Carolina would continue to lynch them. It is feared the speech will inflame race hatred. According to a recent cablegram 70 negroes were lynched in the United States during 1906. The barbarous treatment of negro offenders in the Southern States is an old story. A few month* ago serious race nota o< rurred in Atlanta, the chief cny of Georgia. Duiing the four or five weeks immediately preceding se\eral ntgroes had been lynched m adjoining States for assaults upon white women or \oung girls. In two or three instance*) Governors had pleaded in vain with the mobs. All this excited the lawless white element in Atlanta. In that city, moreover, there had been half a dozen similar assaults within a few weeks, two of them of a. peculiarly atrocious character, and not cne of the offending negroes had been captured. One of the city newspapers was calling daily for lynch law, and was e\en offering a reward to those who should be the first to lynch a negro in Atlanta. Thus it came about, one Saturday evening, after the issue of sensational extra editions of newspapers reporting two new cases of serious assault by negroes, that the riots began in the streets of Atlanta. All the negroes in sight were attacked. Tliere was no discrimination. For example, two negro barbers, at work by their chairs, were dragged from their little shop and murdered. When at last order was restored by 2000 militia, at least 18 negroes had been killed, and there was no evidence than any one of them had committed a. crime. The utterances of leading men in the South usually add fuel to the" fire. Some time ago Senator Tillman, of South Carolina, t <hJ£refsd gubiio addressee, in whist he re-

sented the criticism of Northern people. Southern whites, he remarked, should " go ahead, and do what they believe to be right, regardless of all the Yankees."