Mob Rule in New Orleans by Ida B. Wells Barnett
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Ida B. Wells Barnett >> Mob Rule in New Orleans
Nothing could be further from the truth. Copies of any and all of them may
be secured by writing to D.J. Flummer, who is President and in charge of
the home office in Birmingham, Alabama. Three of the pamphlets found in
Charles's room are named respectively:
First, _Prospectus of the Liberian Colonization Society_; which pamphlet
in a few brief pages tells of the work of the society, plans, prices and
terms of transportation of colored people who choose to go to Africa.
These pages are followed by a short, conservative discussion of the Negro
question, and close with an argument that Africa furnishes the best asylum
for the oppressed Negroes in this country.
The second pamphlet is entitled _Christian Civilization of Africa_. This
is a brief statement of the advantages of the Republic of Liberia, and an
argument in support of the superior conditions which colored people may
attain to by leaving the South and settling in Liberia.
The third pamphlet is entitled _The Negro and Liberia_. This is a larger
document than the other two, and treats more exhaustively the question of
emigration, but from the first page to the last there is not an
incendiary line or sentence. There is not even a suggestion of violence in
all of its thirty-two pages, and not a word which could not be preached
from every pulpit in the land.
If it is true that the workman is known by his tools, certainly no harm
could ever come from the doctrines which were preached by Charles or the
papers and pamphlets distributed by him. Nothing ever written in the
_Voice of Missions_, and nothing ever published in the pamphlets above
alluded to in the remotest way suggest that a peaceable man should turn
lawbreaker, or that any man should dye his hands in his brother's blood.
In order to secure as far as possible positive information about the life
and character of Robert Charles, it was plain that the best course to
pursue was to communicate with those with whom he had sustained business
relations. Accordingly a letter was forwarded to Mr. D.J. Flummer, who is
president of the colonization society, in which letter he was asked to
state in reply what information he had of the life and character of Robert
Charles. The result was a very prompt letter in response, the text of
which is as follows:
Birmingham, Ala., Aug. 21, 1900
Mrs. Ida B. Wells Barnett, Chicago, Ill.:
Dear Madam--Replying to your favor of recent date requesting me to write
you giving such information as I may have concerning the life, habits
and character of Robert Charles, who recently shot and killed police
officers in New Orleans, I wish to say that my knowledge of him is only
such as I have gained from his business connection with the
International Migration Society during the past five or six years,
during which time I was president of the society.
He having learned that the purpose of this society was to colonize the
colored people in Liberia, West Africa, and thereby lessen or destroy
the friction and prejudice existing in this country between the two
races, set about earnestly and faithfully distributing the literature
that we issued from time to time. He always appeared to be mild but
earnest in his advocacy of emigration, and never to my knowledge used
any method or means that would in the least appear unreasonable, and had
always kept within the bounds of law and order in advocating emigration.
The work he performed for this society was all gratuitous, and
apparently prompted from his love of humanity, and desires to be
instrumental in building up a Negro Nationality in Africa.
If he ever violated a law before the killing of the policemen, I do not
know of it.
Yours, very truly,
D.J. Flummer
Besides this statement, Mr. Flummer enclosed a letter received by the
Society two days before the tragedy at New Orleans. This letter was
written by Robert Charles, and it attests his devotion to the cause of
emigration which he had espoused. Memoranda on the margin of the letter
show that the order was filled by mailing the pamphlets. It is very
probable that these were the identical pamphlets which were found by the
mob which broke into the room of Robert Charles and seized upon these
harmless documents and declared they were sufficient evidence to prove
Charles a desperado. In the light of subsequent events the letter of
Charles, which follows, sounds like a voice from the tomb:
New Orleans, July 30,1900
Mr. D.J. Flummer:
Dear Sir--I received your last pamphlets and they are all given out. I
want you to send me some more, and I enclose you the stamps. I think I
will go over in Greenville, Miss., and give my people some pamphlets
over there.
Yours truly,
Robert Charles
The latest word of information comes from New Orleans from a man who knew
Charles intimately for six years. For obvious reasons, his name is
withheld. In answer to a letter sent him he answers as follows:
New Orleans, Aug. 23, 1900
Mrs. Ida B. Wells-Barnett:
Dear Madam--It affords me great pleasure to inform you as far as I know
of Robert Charles. I have been acquainted with him about six years in
this city. He never has, as I know, given any trouble to anyone. He was
quiet and a peaceful man and was very frank in speaking. He was too much
of a hero to die; few call be found to equal him. I am very sorry to
say that I do not know anything of his birthplace, nor his parents, but
enclosed find letter from his uncle, from which you may find more
information. You will also find one of the circulars in which Charles
was in possession of which was styled as a crazy document. Let me say,
until our preachers preach this document we will always be slaves. If
you can help circulate this "crazy" doctrine I would be glad to have you
do so, for I shall never rest until I get to that heaven on earth; that
is, the west coast of Africa, in Liberia.
With best wishes to you I still remain, as always, for the good of the
race,
----
By only those whose anger and vindictiveness warp their judgment is Robert
Charles a desperado. Their word is not supported by the statement of a
single fact which justifies their judgment and no criminal record shows
that he was ever indicted for any offense, much less convicted of crime.
On the contrary, his work for many years had been with Christian people,
circulating emigration pamphlets and active as agent for a mission
publication. Men who knew him say that he was a law-abiding, quiet,
industrious, peaceable man. So he lived.
So he lived and so he would have died had not he raised his hand to resent
unprovoked assault and unlawful arrest that fateful Monday night. That
made him an outlaw, and being a man of courage he decided to die with his
face to the foe. The white people of this country may charge that he was a
desperado, but to the people of his own race Robert Charles will always be
regarded as the hero of New Orleans.
+BURNING HUMAN BEINGS ALIVE +
Not only has life been taken by mobs in the past twenty years, but the
ordinary procedure of hanging and shooting have been improved upon during
the past ten years. Fifteen human beings have been burned to death in the
different parts of the country by mobs. Men, women and children have gone
to see the sight, and all have approved the barbarous deeds done in the
high light of the civilization and Christianity of this country.
In 1891 Ed Coy was burned to death in Texarkana, Ark. He was charged with
assaulting a white woman, and after the mob had securely tied him to a
tree, the men and boys amused themselves for some time sticking knives
into Coy's body and slicing off pieces, of flesh. When they had amused
themselves sufficiently, they poured coal oil over him and the women in
the case set fire to him. It is said that fifteen thousand people stood by
and saw him burned. This was on a Sunday night, and press reports told how
the people looked on while the Negro burned to death.
Feb. 1, 1893, Henry Smith was burned to death in Paris, Texas. The entire
county joined in that exhibition. The district attorney himself went for
the prisoner and turned him over to the mob. He was placed upon a float
and drawn by four white horses through the principal streets of the city.
Men, women and children stood at their doors and waved their handkerchiefs
and cheered the echoes. They knew that the man was to be burned to death
because the newspaper had declared for three days previous that this would
be so. Excursions were run by all the railroads, and the mayor of the town
gave the children a holiday so that they might see the sight.
Henry Smith was charged with having assaulted and murdered a little white
girl. He was an imbecile, and while he had killed the child, there was no
proof that he had criminally assaulted her. He was tied to a stake on a
platform which had been built ten feet high, so that everybody might see
the sight. The father and brother and uncle of the little white girl that
had been murdered was upon that platform about fifty minutes entertaining
the crowd of ten thousand persons by burning the victim's flesh with
red-hot irons. Their own newspapers told how they burned his eyes out and,
ran the red-hot iron down his throat, cooking his tongue, and how the
crowd cheered wild delight. At last, having declared themselves satisfied,
coal oil was poured over him and he was burned to death, and the mob
fought over the ashes for bones and pieces of his clothes.
July 7, 1893, in Bardwell, Ky., C.J. Miller was burned to ashes. Since his
death this man has been found to be absolutely innocent of the murder of
the two white girls with which he was charged. But the mob would wait for
no justification. They insisted that, as they were not sure he was the
right man, they would compromise the matter by hanging him instead of
burning. Not to be outdone, they took the body down and made a huge
bonfire out of it.
July 22, 1893, at Memphis, Tenn., the body of Lee Walker was dragged
through the street and burned before the court house. Walker had
frightened some girls in a wagon along a country road by asking them to
let him ride in their wagon. They cried out; some men working in a field
near by said it was at attempt of assault, and of course began to look for
their prey. There was never any charge of rape; the women only declared
that he attempted an assault. After he was apprehended and put in jail and
perfectly helpless, the mob dragged him out, shot him, cut him, beat him
with sticks, built a fire and burned the legs off, then took the trunk of
the body down and dragged further up the street, and at last burned it
before the court house.
Sept. 20, 1893, at Roanoke, Va., the body of a Negro who had quarreled
with a white woman was burned in the presence of several thousand persons.
These people also wreaked their vengeance upon this helpless victim of the
mob's wrath by sticking knives into him, kicking him and beating him with
stones and otherwise mutilating him before life was extinct.
June 11, 1898, at Knoxville, Ark., James Perry was shut up in a cabin
because he had smallpox and burned to death. He had been quarantined in
this cabin when it was declared that he had this disease and the doctor
sent for. When the physician arrived he found only a few smoldering
embers. Upon inquiry some railroad hands who were working nearby revealed
the fact that they had fastened the door of the cabin and set fire to the
cabin and burned man and hut together.
Feb. 22, 1898, at Lake City, S.C., Postmaster Baker and his infant child
were burned to death by a mob that had set fire to his house. Mr. Baker's
crime was that he had refused to give up the post office, to which he had
been appointed by the National Government. The mob had tried to drive him
away by persecution and intimidation. Finding that all else had failed,
they went to his home in the dead of night and set fire to his house, and
as the family rushed forth they were greeted by a volley of bullets. The
father and his baby were shot through the open door and wounded so badly
that they fell back in the fire and were burned to death. The remainder of
the family, consisting of the wife and five children, escaped with their
lives from the burning house, but all of them were shot, one of the number
made a cripple for life.
Jan. 7, 1898, two Indians were tied to a tree at Maud Post Office, Indian
Territory, and burned to death by a white mob. They were charged with
murdering a white woman. There was no proof of their guilt except the
unsupported word of the mob. Yet they were tied to a tree and slowly
roasted to death. Their names were Lewis McGeesy and Hond Martin. Since
that time these boys have been found to be absolutely innocent of the
charge. Of course that discovery is too late to be of any benefit to them,
but because they were Indians the Indian Commissioner demanded and
received from the United States Government an indemnity of $13,000.
April 23, 1899, at Palmetto, Ga., Sam Hose was burned alive in the
presence of a throng, on Sunday afternoon. He was charged with killing a
man named Cranford, his employer, which he admitted he did because his
employer was about to shoot him. To the fact of killing the employer was
added the absolutely false charge that Hose assaulted the wife. Hose was
arrested and no trial was given him. According to the code of reasoning of
the mob, none was needed. A white man had been killed and a white woman
was said to have been assaulted. That was enough. When Hose was found he
had to die.
The Atlanta Constitution, in speaking of the murder of Cranford, said that
the Negro who was suspected would be burned alive. Not only this, but it
offered $500 reward for his capture. After he had been apprehended, it was
publicly announced that he would be burned alive. Excursion trains were
run and bulletins were put up in the small towns. The Governor of Georgia
was in Atlanta while excursion trains were being made up to take visitors
to the burning. Many fair ladies drove out in their carriages on Sunday
afternoon to witness the torture and burning of a human being. Hose's ears
were cut off, then his toes and fingers, and passed round to the crowd.
His eyes were put out, his tongue torn out and flesh cut in strips by
knives. Finally they poured coal oil on him and burned him to death. They
dragged his half-consumed trunk out of the flames, cut it open, extracted
his heart and liver, and sold slices for ten cents each for souvenirs, all
of which was published most promptly in the daily papers of Georgia and
boasted over by the people of that section.
Oct. 19, 1889, at Canton, Miss., Joseph Leflore was burned to death. A
house had been entered and its occupants murdered during the absence of
the husband and father. When the discovery was made, it was immediately
supposed that the crime was the work of a Negro, and the motive that of
assaulting white women.
Bloodhounds were procured and they made a round of the village and
discovered only one colored man absent from his home. This was taken to be
proof sufficient that he was the perpetrator of the deed. When he returned
home he was apprehended, taken into the yard of the house that had been
burned down, tied to a stake, and was slowly roasted to death.
Dec. 6, 1899, at Maysville, Ky., Wm. Coleman also was burned to death. He
was slowly roasted, first one foot and then the other, and dragged out of
the fire so that the torture might be prolonged. All of this without a
shadow of proof or scintilla of evidence that the man had committed the
crime.
Thus have the mobs of this country taken the lives of their victims within
the past ten years. In every single instance except one these burnings
were witnessed by from two thousand to fifteen thousand people, and no one
person in all these crowds throughout the country had the courage to raise
his voice and speak out against the awful barbarism of burning human
beings to death.
Men and women of America, are you proud of this record which the
Anglo-Saxon race has made for itself? Your silence seems to say that you
are. Your silence encourages a continuance of this sort of horror. Only by
earnest, active, united endeavor to arouse public sentiment can we hope to
put a stop to these demonstrations of American barbarism.
+LYNCHING RECORD+
The following table of lynchings has been kept year by year by the Chicago
Tribune, beginning with 1882, and shows the list of Negroes that have been
lynched during that time:
1882, Negroes murdered by mobs 52
1883, Negroes murdered by mobs 39
1884, Negroes murdered by mobs 53
1885, Negroes murdered by mobs 164
1886, Negroes murdered by mobs 136
1887, Negroes murdered by mobs 128
1888, Negroes murdered by mobs 143
1889, Negroes murdered by mobs 127
1890, Negroes murdered by mobs 171
1891, Negroes murdered by mobs 192
1892, Negroes murdered by mobs 241
1893, Negroes murdered by mobs 200
1894, Negroes murdered by mobs 190
1895, Negroes murdered by mobs 171
1896, Negroes murdered by mobs 131
1897, Negroes murdered by mobs 156
1898, Negroes murdered by mobs 127
1899, Negroes murdered by mobs 107
Of these thousands of men and women who have been put to death without
judge or jury, less than one-third of them have been even accused of
criminal assault. The world at large has accepted unquestionably the
statement that Negroes are lynched only for assaults upon white women. Of
those who were lynched from 1882 to 1891, the first ten years of the
tabulated lynching record, the charges are as follows:
Two hundred and sixty-nine were charged with rape; 253 with murder; 44
with robbery; 37 with incendiarism; 4 with burglary; 27 with race
prejudice; 13 quarreled with white men; 10 with making threats; 7 with
rioting; 5 with miscegenation; in 32 cases no reasons were given, the
victims were lynched on general principles.
During the past five years the record is as follows:
Of the 171 persons lynched in 1895 only 34 were charged with this crime.
In 1896, out of 131 persons who were lynched, only 34 were said to have
assaulted women. Of the 156 in 1897, only 32. In 1898, out of 127 persons
lynched, 24 were charged with the alleged "usual crime." In 1899, of the
107 lynchings, 16 were said to be for crimes against women. These figures,
of course, speak for themselves, and to the unprejudiced, fair-minded
person it is only necessary to read and study them in order to show that
the charge that the Negro is a moral outlaw is a false one, made for the
purpose of injuring the Negro's good name and to create public sentiment
against him.
If public sentiment were alive, as it should be upon the subject, it would
refuse to be longer hoodwinked, and the voice of conscience would refuse
to be stilled by these false statements. If the laws of the country were
obeyed and respected by the white men of the country who charge that the
Negro has no respect for law, these things could not be, for every
individual, no matter what the charge, would have a fair trial and an
opportunity to prove his guilt or innocence before a tribunal of law.
That is all the Negro asks--that is all the friends of law and order need
to ask, for once the law of the land is supreme, no individual who commits
crime will escape punishment.
Individual Negroes commit crimes the same as do white men, but that the
Negro race is peculiarly given to assault upon women, is a falsehood of
the deepest dye. The tables given above show that the Negro who is saucy
to white men is lynched as well as the Negro who is charged with assault
upon women. Less than one-sixth of the lynchings last year, 1899, were
charged with rape.
The Negro points to his record during the war in rebuttal of this false
slander. When the white women and children of the South had no protector
save only these Negroes, not one instance is known where the trust was
betrayed. It is remarkably strange that the Negro had more respect for
womanhood with the white men of the South hundreds of miles away, than
they have today, when surrounded by those who take their lives with
impunity and burn and torture, even worse than the "unspeakable Turk."
Again, the white women of the North came South years ago, threaded the
forests, visited the cabins, taught the schools and associated only with
the Negroes whom they came to teach, and had no protectors near at hand.
They had no charge or complaint to make of the danger to themselves after
association with this class of human beings. Not once has the country been
shocked by such recitals from them as come from the women who are
surrounded by their husbands, brothers, lovers and friends. If the Negro's
nature is bestial, it certainly should have proved itself in one of these
two instances. The Negro asks only justice and an impartial consideration
of these facts.