NEGRO REIGN OF TERROR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 74, 10 November 1911, Page 3

NEGRO REIGN OF TERROR.

WHITES SLAYING AND BURNING REVENGE RUN RIOT.

In Ddnaldsonville, Georgia (says a dispatch dated towards the close of August), there is a reign of terror among the negroes, owing to the efforts of the whites to avenge the murder of Marshal Newberry, of Jakin by a negro preacher. The whites are going through the countryside in Damls shooting and whipping the negroes and burning their churches and schoolhouses. At least six negroes have been killed since the trouble started on Wednesday night of last week, and nearly one hundred have been whipped. Five negro lodge rooms, six churches and four schoolhouses were burned. The whites are seeking the slayer of Marshal Newberry, hut the negro preacher lias apparently escaped. The negroes are lleeing as rapidly as possible, and it is predicted, says the “Now York inn’s” correspondent that not a negro will be left in the Donaldsonville district of Georgia in a week. It is alleged by the whites that the murder of 'Newberry was decreed at a negro lodge meeting, and that the Rev. Jim, i Western negro leader, was appointed his exceptor. Several big industries have been obliged to close because of the scarcity of negro labour.

In the meantime Joseph Schwartz and a man called Millcndorfer have been arrested at Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and charged with burning the negro Walker, as already described in our columns. Schwartz, a millhand, admits carrying straw and wood for the pyre. Public opinion unites in declaring that the burning of Walker was a disgrace to the State, and demands that the participants of the crime shall be heavily punished. “If Europeans understood the negro character as well as Am’erican do they might not lie* so free to condemn the occasional resort to lynch law,” commented a well-informed American traveller to a “Standard” representative concerning the burning of a negro at Coatesville, Pennsylvania. “At the same time,” he continued, “I do not want to give the impression that the American people are any more lawless than other nations, or that their more or less frequent lynching of negro law-breakers is the result of hysterical race prejudice. Sometimes, of course, impatience over the ordinarily tardy justice of the Courts helps to bring matters to a head, but the real cause behind every case is selfprotection. This applies particularly to the Southern States, where most of the lynchings occur. There are now over ten million negroes in the United States, and fully two-thirds of these are to be fofund in the South. Every Southern city, town, and village has its negro district, the population of which outnumbers the while population in the ratio of ten to one. Although they furnish the majority of the plantation labour of the South, especially in the cotton belt, the black men are proverbially lazy; and will not work while there are any chickens left to bo stolen or h vote to be sold.. ‘ Tile 'former slave-own-ers knew how to handle the negro and keep him in his place, hut his enfranchisement, after Rife Civil War gave him a political power that turned his head. i • ■ ■ •

“Thq cry of ‘Shotgun Government!’ aroused the unthinking! sympathies of the Northern States, and all sorts of societies were organised for the ’education (?f the,negro and the betterment of his conditions. This was a fatal mistake, for education gave the new generation of black men an idea of his .importance. His idea of improvement was equality with the white race, and Ids chief conception of the equality was the possession of a white wife. From that time on it was unsafe for a white woman, or even a child l ,l to go out unescorted after dark. They were insulted on the streets and murdered in the country districts whenever! found alone. Ordinary convictions' and prison sentences failed to chock this epidemic of crime in the black belt of the South. Lynchings were accordingly resorted to. Many negroes were hanged and others were shot, while a few were burned at the sfca-kod Americans as a whole do not approve the latter barbaric mode of punishment, but some of these cases arc so horribly brutal and shocking that only burning seems to fit the crime, it is often necessary to strike terror into the heart of the negro before ho can bo controlled. It finally became necessary to segregate the negro entirely in the South. He was barred from living in the same neighbourhood as the white man, and compelled to ride in separate compartments on tramcars and railway trains. Only the galleries of theatres were open to him, and he had to have his own churches and public-houses. “This method of treatment, served to check the criminal tendencies of the black man in a measure,, but eternal vigilence was still the price of safety. Attracted by the sentimental sympathy to ho found there, the younger negroes began to migrate to the Northern States, where they rewarded the kindness shown them with increasing indolence. Now York today is lull of them, and the insulting of white women on the streets by fhvslily-drossed negroes is a. matter of common occurrence. Up on the west aide, between Fifty-Seventh and SixtyNinth Streets sanguinary battles between negro gangs and the police occur almost every week, while white men who wander into the neighbourhood are frequently robbed and beaten, sometimes murdered. “It was not very dong ago that even New York finally lost its patience, and when a popular police hero was deliberately and brutally murdered in Eighth Avenue, a general riot broke out. Self-constituted Vigilence Committees patrolled the streets, and whenever a negro was seen he was driven to cover. A few were even shot and wounded, though none were killed. The lesson was a salutory one at the time, but the negro quickly forgets, and conditions are again ripening for a serious climax there. It was probably a similar situation of long-standing that Jed to the recent lynching in Pennsylvania, the first th.lt ever occurred in that State, founded liy William Penn an 1 his peaceful associates. There is ■by the way a peculiar significance in this last lynching that should nob he overlooked. It shows that the Northern Stales, which heaped so much abuse up m 'the South for its harsh treatmeat, are at last beginning to unde, stand the real nature of the black man, and that no amount of education can lift him above the limitations placed upon him by Nature. By the black man I mean the negro, not the Indian. It is a question of race, not of colour. Even the most enlightened negro will some time or other show a sudden reversion to type, especially in his attitude towards women. England will realise this some day, for the word has been spread abroad through the United States that England is a paradise for the black man. Here he is received mi an equal footing and even welcomed into your houses. As a consequence, every steamer is bringing more American negroes to tin's country. They are well enough behaved now, 1 dare say, but wait until their rapidly increasing number gives them more confidence in themselves.”