CHAPTER XIV.
LYNCHING OF NEGROES.
Miss Schofield had great confidence in the ultimate conversion of the white people of the South to the cause which she represented and looked to the support of her work by them as one of the essentials to the achievements of the highest success. She, however, went about securing the cooperation of the whites in a manner entirely different from the means employed by Booker T. Washington in accomplishing the same end. She drew attention of the white people to the necessity for her work by making them mad; by expressing to them the inconsistencies of their position on the race question and demonstrating to them the hypocrisy of their actions, she caused a great deal to be done for the Negroes that would have been delayed for years had more persuasive measures been taken to reach them. She told the Christian missionary workers that the presence of the Negroes here provided the best means possible for them to show by actual demonstration rather than by words of mouth, tongue or pen, that Christianity was literally and figuratively true. That it really did mean the showering of blessings on men of all kinds and races. “If the Negro is an enemy” she told them, “show the benighted heathen here and carry the message to his friends in China that thee love thine enemy. By your actions before his eyes here in this country prove to him that thee are the people that tell the truth; that Christians will not take advantage of even Negroes; that thee are patient, kind and generous in thy dealings with that part of thy own population that is ignorant and benighted. Above all prove to him by thy treatment of the Negro that thee has no prejudice on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude. Let them see by thy relation to the Negroes that thee looks upon mankind as brethren, indeed, in whose service thee are not only willing to work but to suffer for the good thee may do not alone to the Negro but to the heathen as well.”
She went to the intelligent, cultured white people, leaders of the churches, schools and Southern civilization itself, all that she could reach, and told them plainly and bluntly that any course other than that outlined would surely bring Christianity into disrepute, especially if they themselves approved a different course, or permitted a different course to be pursued without their protest. She showed them their responsibility and their duty both as a Christian and a member of civilized society, and left them without a single prop upon which to stand in defense of the position taken to keep the Negro down.
Having no patience with anyone who for gain would sacrifice righteousness or who would not suffer pain that justice be done she was rather uncharitable in her criticisms of the Southern white people. But the sternness and rough, rugged honesty and sincerity she used in expressing her convictions appealed to them, as they are a people essentially frank in their manners and actions. One of the great men in the United States Senate from the South has won and retained the respect of the people of the whole country by reason of his frankness on this question of race prejudice. His radicalism is common to most of the people of the South and seeing this characteristic of the people, Miss Schofield pandered to it early in her work and drew to herself a large measure and esteem and respect that could have been earned in no other way. She made people respect her by respecting herself in holding fast to her conception of the principles of honesty.
Miss Schofield was not less severe on the people of the North than of the South in her arraignment of the prostitution of the power of government in permitting the commission of outrages and injustices to go unpunished. In assailing the sin of race prejudice and hypocrisy in the Southern people she was assailing with equal force the same thing wherever it existed and as it is more prevalent at the North that section of the country really received the burden of her denunciation. The fact that the power to punish the crimes against the Negro race lay in the hands of the people of the North but was seldom exercised, gave her greater cause for denouncing her folks, which she did unmercifully. She felt that the crime of lynching Negroes could be largely suppressed by the Federal authorities and was not reluctant in advocating the intercession of the general government in the enforcement of the Federal statutes guaranteeing every citizen the protection of life and liberty, even if “States’ Rights” were trampled under foot. Being absolutely honest in all her promises she did not look for dishonesty in others, especially not in the people of the North who had spilled so much blood and expended hundreds of millions of dollars in extending the guarantee of life, freedom and liberty to the Negroes. Their failure to make their promises in this matter good was shocking to her sense of honor and inspired her greatest contempt.
In words of eloquence, made eloquent by both the truth in them and the manner of delivery, she told the people of the North that the rights of man rose above the rights of state government as the Alps rise above the valleys; that government, both state and national, is only good in so far as it respects and protects human rights. “If a state government fails to measure up to its duty in its functions affecting the most vital rights of the people,” said she in an address in the North, “then it becomes the duty of the general government to interfere. If the latter likewise fails then it is the duty of the people to overthrow it, not, indeed, by powder and shot and shell but by the votes of citizens.
“But in the South thousands and thousands entitled to vote under authority of the general government are disfranchised; their rights are not being respected by either the general government or the state. If this is permitted to continue thee can not respect thyself, much less expect those perpetrating the fraud to respect thee. During the last quarter of a century the number of deaths at the hands of mobs in this country has averaged 184 annually, eighty to ninety per cent. of which has occurred in the South.
“Can thee respect thyself or expect the respect of the Southerners if these crimes are allowed to go unpunished?
“If the government of the several States were sincere in the representations of their attempt at government that would not be any excuse for no action being taken by the general government. Failure to govern is alone sufficient for action.
“We can not permit incompetency to triumph on the basis that the rulers of the South are sincere in their attempts at law enforcement. Too much emphasis can not be laid on this fact. Respect for the law must be demanded and enforced at all hazards.
“The spread of lynch law all over the land may be looked for if this is done.”
How prophetic these words uttered years ago as the records kept will show.
Before the war and immediately after, Negroes were now and then put to death but the law was generally allowed to take its course.
For rape or attempted rape there were only four Negroes lynched between the years 1830 and 1840. It was not until 1850 to 1860 that lynch law attained any high degree of danger to the success of free government. Out of forty-six Negroes put to death during this time, twenty-six were lynched and twenty legally executed. Nine of those destroyed by mobs were burned at the stake. The crimes with which they were charged were murders of owners and overseers. It does not appear that rape, which is now made the cause of nearly every lynching was very frequent before the war.
It has become the cause or the alleged cause of mob violence only since the year 1871 to any great extent.
Had Martha Schofield’s suggestion, for the interference of the national government in the enforcement of the laws of the country wherever the State proved inefficient to do so been adopted and put into practice, the shame and disgrace which now attaches to American civilization would have no basis or foundation. There would not be as many orphans as there are; there would not be the humiliation and injustices that there are; neither would there be the poverty and misery among the blacks and whites that there are.
The remissness of the national government to supervise wisely the execution of the laws has permitted the officials to do what they accuse the Negro of desiring to do, to take a foot for every inch and a mile for every yard; Discriminatory laws affecting the most vital interest of the colored race have been enacted and generally enforced without the suggestion of a protest from the federal authorities, and many of the national laws that enforced would give great relief to the oppressed are apparently “dead letters,” so far as their practical application is concerned.
In 1885 there were 184 people lynched in this country, 106 white and 78 colored. Ten years later mobs murdered 112 Negroes and 56 whites; in 1892, 100 whites and 155 blacks, making a total of 255. The year following exactly 200 were lynched. In 1905 two were burned at the stake. In 1906 civilized Atlanta, Ga. murdered 28 in one night.
Less than one-third of these lynchings, nearly all of which occurred in the Southern States, were for the alleged crime of rape. No offense at all had been committed by anyone of those mobbed in Atlanta in 1906.
In the Atlanta riot no attempt was made by any of the rioters to conceal their identity. They slew every Negro in sight openly and before the eyes of the officers charged with the enforcement of the laws against disorderly conduct and murder, yet not a single individual of the mob was ever punished. The governor of the State took no action to apprehend the guilty and execute the laws he had sworn to uphold and execute.
At Statesboro, Ga., in 1905, the boldness of the mob was only exceeded by the heinousness of the crime committed. Two negroes being tried for murder under guard of a company of State militia soldiers, were removed from the court room during the progress of the trial and burned at the stake.
Although the sheriff of the county and every officer of the law in that section knew personally numbers of the mob no prosecution was ever attempted by them.
During the winter of 1916 five Negro prisoners were taken from the county jail at Sylvester, Ga. and hanged to the same tree. Later the criminal who committed the crime for which the five were lynched was also summarily put to death.
Six lives of Negroes, five of whom were in no wise connected with the crime for which vengeance was wreaked, in retaliation for the life of one white man!
The case has too many parallels for recitation here.
In none of the open, undisguised atrocious crimes against the blacks is prosecution even remotely probable.
With like impunity are almost all the laws respecting the welfare of the Negro violated throughout the Southern States. Especially notable are the violations of the act to make effective the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States adopted by Congress May 31, 1870.
This act declares, that all citizens who are or shall become qualified by law to vote at any election shall not be denied the right to vote at all elections, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude, by any constitution, law, custom, usage or regulation any State or territory may make.
Various subterfuges in the guise of law are resorted to in the effort to disqualify the Negroes, but as the race is becoming able to qualify rapidly discrimination in the application of the registration laws are openly admitted by the authorities.
All the laws for qualification of voters contemplate the qualification of a sufficient majority of the whites as to make the Negro a nullity in the elections, and this even in those communities where the Negroes out-number in population and wealth the whites by large majorities.
There are tax tests, property tests, educational tests, grand-father clauses and understanding and character clauses. Of course under the educational tests such requirements as a constitutional lawyer might not be able to meet could be made with the same facility that requirements which a fifteen year old boy could meet are made. The former requirements are for the educated and ignorant Negroes alike, while the latter, if occasion demands it, are for the whites of all degrees of intelligence. The intention of all the laws regulating the registration of voters is to disqualify as many Negroes as possible. No attempt is made to conceal the true intent of the laws by their authors or by those charged with the duty of their application.
There are members of the United States Senate owing their elevation to the disfranchisement laws of the Southern States who will not only acknowledge that their States are nullifying some of the acts of Congress but boast that they have done so and defy the executive department of the government to interfere.
Miss Schofield was greatly affected by the tendency of the government to ignore its solemn duty respecting the enforcement of many of the acts intended to degrade and humiliate the Negro race, because she said it could mean only the degradation and humiliation of all mankind. Vanderbilt and Rockefeller in their palaces of gold, she maintained, had no more right to protection than the humblest Negro in his little log hut. Humanity with her was a sacred thing and she believed in protecting it. She looked to the exercise of the franchise as the only means of securing this protection, and when she saw the right to it being stolen openly and the theft acknowledged and the court defied to do its worst by the guilty themselves, no wonder her confidence of the manhood in men was seriously shocked.
But she never ceased to hope nor ever lost an opportunity to fight for the rights which she demanded of the government for all men. One of the proposals to minimize the number of lynchings, original with her, is now a statute of some of the States. It makes the county in which the lynching of a person occurs liable to the members of the deceased family for his or her loss, and recovery may be had by action in the courts. Another important measure advocated strenuously by her was the reduction in the representatives in Congress from those States limiting the suffrage of its citizens.
