Southern Horrors by Ida B. Wells Barnett
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Ida B. Wells Barnett >> Southern Horrors
[Transcriber's Note: This pamphlet was first published in 1892 but was
subsequently reprinted. It's not apparent if the curiosities in spelling
date back to the original or were introduced later; they have been
retained as found, and the reader is left to decide. Please verify with
another source before quoting this material.]
Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases
1892, 1893, 1894
By Ida B. Wells-Barnett
PREFACE
The greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the
_New York Age_ June 25, 1892, in explanation of the editorial which the
Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destruction
of my paper, the _Free Speech_.
Since the appearance of that statement, requests have come from all parts
of the country that "Exiled" (the name under which it then appeared) be
issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for that
purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5
have enabled me to comply with this request and give the world a true,
unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South.
This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogether
a defense for the poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves
to be betrayed by white Delilahs. It is a contribution to truth, an array
of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great
American Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall.
It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here
exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned
against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. The
awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, not
only because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the
victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it places
against the good name of a weak race.
The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in
any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of
the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and
punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a
service. Other considerations are of minor importance.
IDA B. WELLS
_New York City_, Oct. 26, 1892
To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love,
earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York,
on the night of October 5, 1892--made possible its publication, this
pamphlet is gratefully dedicated by the author.
HON. FRED. DOUGLASS'S LETTER
_Dear Miss Wells:_
Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination
now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has
been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word
is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual
knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity
and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves.
Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can
neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half
alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if
American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of
outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and
indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.
But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions
favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by
earth and Heaven yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the
power of a merciful God for final deliverance.
Very truly and gratefully yours,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
_Cedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C._, Oct. 25, 1892
1 _The_ OFFENSE
Wednesday evening May 24, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled with
excitement. Editorials in the daily papers of that date caused a meeting
to be held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for the
editors of the _Free Speech_ an Afro-American journal published in that
city, and the only reason the open threats of lynching that were made were
not carried out was because they could not be found. The cause of all this
commotion was the following editorial published in the _Free Speech_ May
21, 1892, the Saturday previous.
Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the _Free Speech_ one at
Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke(?)
into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one
near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for
killing a white man, and five on the same old racket--the new alarm
about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting
bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.
Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie
that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful,
they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a
reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging
to the moral reputation of their women.
The _Daily Commercial_ of Wednesday following, May 25, contained the
following leader:
Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of individuals of
their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind are
playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand
that there is no mercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his
defenders. A negro organ printed in this city, in a recent issue
publishes the following atrocious paragraph: "Nobody in this section of
the country believes the old thread-bare lie that negro men rape white
women. If Southern white men are not careful they will overreach
themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction; and a conclusion
will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of
their women."
The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such
loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of evidence as to the
wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had enough of it.
There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and
the obscene intimations of the foregoing have brought the writer to the
very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough.
The _Evening Scimitar_ of same date, copied the _Commercial_'s editorial
with these words of comment:
Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes
themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of
those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies
to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in
the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation
with a pair of tailor's shears.
Acting upon this advice, the leading citizens met in the Cotton Exchange
Building the same evening, and threats of lynching were freely indulged,
not by the lawless element upon which the deviltry of the South is usually
saddled--but by the leading business men, in their leading business
centre. Mr. Fleming, the business manager and owning a half interest the
_Free Speech_, had to leave town to escape the mob, and was afterwards
ordered not to return; letters and telegrams sent me in New York where I
was spending my vacation advised me that bodily harm awaited my return.
Creditors took possession of the office and sold the outfit, and the _Free
Speech_ was as if it had never been.
The editorial in question was prompted by the many inhuman and fiendish
lynchings of Afro-Americans which have recently taken place and was meant
as a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them charged with
rape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and education
more brutalizing than slavery, and the world knows that the crime of rape
was unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of the
South were at the mercy of the race which is all at once charged with
being a bestial one.
Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home because
of that editorial, the issue has been forced, and as the writer of it I
feel that the race and the public generally should have a statement of the
facts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for the
Afro-Americans Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white
Delilahs.
The whites of Montgomery, Ala., knew J.C. Duke sounded the keynote of the
situation--which they would gladly hide from the world, when he said in
his paper, the _Herald_, five years ago: "Why is it that white women
attract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when such
a thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this thing, and we greatly
suspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for colored
Romeos." Mr. Duke, like the _Free Speech_ proprietors, was forced to leave
the city for reflecting on the "honah" of white women and his paper
suppressed; but the truth remains that Afro-American men do not always
rape(?) white women without their consent.
Mr. Duke, before leaving Montgomery, signed a card disclaiming any
intention of slandering Southern white women. The editor of the _Free
Speech_ has no disclaimer to enter, but asserts instead that there are
many white women in the South who would marry colored men if such an act
would not place them at once beyond the pale of society and within the
clutches of the law. The miscegnation laws of the South only operate
against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free
to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colored man
who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white
women. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a
despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women.
2
_The_ BLACK _and_ WHITE _of_ IT
The _Cleveland Gazette_ of January 16, 1892, publishes a case in point.
Mrs. J.S. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an
Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in
1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the
kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She tried to
drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her,
and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible
condition. She did not know the man but could identify him. She pointed
out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested and, being in Ohio,
was granted a trial.
The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went
to Mrs. Underwood's residence at her invitation and was criminally
intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against the
sworn testimony of a ministers wife, a lady of the highest respectability.
He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, for
fifteen years. Some time afterwards the woman's remorse led her to confess
to her husband that the man was innocent.
These are her words:
I met Offett at the Post Office. It was raining. He was polite to me,
and as I had several bundles in my arms he offered to carry them home
for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I invited
him to call on me. He called, bringing chestnuts and candy for the
children. By this means we got them to leave us alone in the room. Then
I sat on his lap. He made a proposal to me and I readily consented. Why
I did so, I do not know, but that I did is true. He visited me several
times after that and each time I was indiscreet. I did not care after
the first time. In fact I could not have resisted, and had no desire to
resist.
When asked by her husband why she told him she had been outraged, she
said: "I had several reasons for telling you. One was the neighbors saw
the fellows here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a loathsome
disease, and still another was that I feared I might give birth to a Negro
baby. I hoped to save my reputation by telling you a deliberate lie." Her
husband horrified by the confession had Offett, who had already served
four years, released and secured a divorce.
There are thousands of such cases throughout the South, with the
difference that the Southern white men in insatiate fury wreak their
vengeance without intervention of law upon the Afro-Americans who consort
with their women. A few instances to substantiate the assertion that some
white women love the company of the Afro-American will not be out of
place. Most of these cases were reported by the daily papers of the South.
In the winter of 1885-86 the wife of a practicing physician in Memphis, in
good social standing whose name has escaped me, left home, husband and
children, and ran away with her black coachman. She was with him a month
before her husband found and brought her home. The coachman could not be
found. The doctor moved his family away from Memphis, and is living in
another city under an assumed name.
In the same city last year a white girl in the dusk of evening screamed at
the approach of some parties that a Negro had assaulted her on the street.
He was captured, tried by a white judge and jury, that acquitted him of
the charge. It is needless to add if there had been a scrap of evidence on
which to convict him of so grave a charge he would have been convicted.
Sarah Clark of Memphis loved a black man and lived openly with him. When
she was indicted last spring for miscegenation, she swore in court that
she was _not_ a white woman. This she did to escape the penitentiary and
continued her illicit relation undisturbed. That she is of the lower class
of whites, does not disturb the fact that she is a white woman. "The
leading citizens" of Memphis are defending the "honor" of _all_ white
women, _demi-monde_ included.
Since the manager of the _Free Speech_ has been run away from Memphis by
the guardians of the honor of Southern white women, a young girl living on
Poplar St., who was discovered in intimate relations with a handsome
mulatto young colored man, Will Morgan by name, stole her father's money
to send the young fellow away from that father's wrath. She has since
joined him in Chicago.
The _Memphis Ledger_ for June 8 has the following:
If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl seventeen years of age, who
is now at the City Hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about her
disgrace there would be some very nauseating details in the story of her
life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal fearful
depravity or it might reveal the evidence of a rank outrage. She will
not divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her
disgrace, and, in fact, says it is a matter in which there can be no
interest to the outside world. She came to Memphis nearly three months
ago and was taken in at the Woman's Refuge in the southern part of the
city. She remained there until a few weeks ago, when the child was born.
The ladies in charge of the Refuge were horified. The girl was at once
sent to the City Hospital, where she has been since May 30. She is a
country girl. She came to Memphis from her fathers farm, a short
distance from Hernando, Miss. Just when she left there she would not
say. In fact she says she came to Memphis from Arkansas, and says her
home is in that State. She is rather good looking, has blue eyes, a low
forehead and dark red hair. The ladies at the Woman's Refuge do not know
anything about the girl further than what they learned when she was an
inmate of the institution; and she would not tell much. When the child
was born an attempt was made to get the girl to reveal the name of the
Negro who had disgraced her, she obstinately refused and it was
impossible to elicit any information from her on the subject.
Note the wording. "The truth might reveal fearful depravity or rank
outrage." If it had been a white child or Lillie Bailey had told a pitiful
story of Negro outrage, it would have been a case of woman's weakness or
assault and she could have remained at the Woman's Refuge. But a Negro
child and to withhold its father's name and thus prevent the killing of
another Negro "rapist." A case of "fearful depravity."
The very week the "leading citizens" of Memphis were making a spectacle of
themselves in defense of all white women of every kind, an Afro-American,
M. Stricklin, was found in a white woman's room in that city. Although
she made no outcry of rape, he was jailed and would have been lynched, but
the woman stated she bought curtains of him (he was a furniture dealer)
and his business in her room that night was to put them up. A white
woman's word was taken as absolutely in this case as when the cry of rape
is made, and he was freed.
What is true of Memphis is true of the entire South. The daily papers last
year reported a farmer's wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child.
When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took the
mule from the plow and fled. The dispatches also told of a woman in South
Carolina who gave birth to a Negro child and charged three men with being
its father, _every one of whom has since disappeared_. In Tuscumbia, Ala.,
the colored boy who was lynched there last year for assaulting a white
girl told her before his accusers that he had met her there in the woods
often before.
Frank Weems of Chattanooga who was not lynched in May only because the
prominent citizens became his body guard until the doors of the
penitentiary closed on him, had letters in his pocket from the white woman
in the case, making the appointment with him. Edward Coy who was burned
alive in Texarkana, January 1, 1892, died protesting his innocence.
Investigation since as given by the Bystander in the _Chicago Inter
Ocean_, October 1, proves:
1. The woman who was paraded as a victim of violence was of bad
character; her husband was a drunkard and a gambler.
2. She was publicly reported and generally known to have been criminally
intimate with Coy for more than a year previous.
3. She was compelled by threats, if not by violence, to make the charge
against the victim.
4. When she came to apply the match Coy asked her if she would burn him
after they had "been sweethearting" so long.
5. A large majority of the "superior" white men prominent in the affair
are the reputed fathers of mulatto children.
These are not pleasant facts, but they are illustrative of the vital
phase of the so-called race question, which should properly be
designated an earnest inquiry as to the best methods by which religion,
science, law and political power may be employed to excuse injustice,
barbarity and crime done to a people because of race and color. There
can be no possible belief that these people were inspired by any
consuming zeal to vindicate God's law against miscegnationists of the
most practical sort. The woman was a willing partner in the victim's
guilt, and being of the "superior" race must naturally have been more
guilty.
In Natchez, Miss., Mrs. Marshall, one of the _creme de la creme_ of the
city, created a tremendous sensation several years ago. She has a black
coachman who was married, and had been in her employ several years. During
this time she gave birth to a child whose color was remarked, but traced
to some brunette ancestor, and one of the fashionable dames of the city
was its godmother. Mrs. Marshall's social position was unquestioned, and
wealth showered every dainty on this child which was idolized with its
brothers and sisters by its white papa. In course of time another child
appeared on the scene, but it was unmistakably dark. All were alarmed, and
"rush of blood, strangulation" were the conjectures, but the doctor, when
asked the cause, grimly told them it was a Negro child. There was a family
conclave, the coachman heard of it and leaving his own family went West,
and has never returned. As soon as Mrs. Marshall was able to travel she
was sent away in deep disgrace. Her husband died within the year of a
broken heart.
Ebenzer Fowler, the wealthiest colored man in Issaquena County, Miss., was
shot down on the street in Mayersville, January 30, 1885, just before dark
by an armed body of white men who filled his body with bullets. They
charged him with writing a note to a white woman of the place, which they
intercepted and which proved there was an intimacy existing between them.
Hundreds of such cases might be cited, but enough have been given to prove
the assertion that there are white women in the South who love the
Afro-American's company even as there are white men notorious for their
preference for Afro-American women.
There is hardly a town in the South which has not an instance of the kind
which is well known, and hence the assertion is reiterated that "nobody in
the South believes the old thread bare lie that negro men rape white
women." Hence there is a growing demand among Afro-Americans that the
guilt or innocence of parties accused of rape be fully established. They
know the men of the section of the country who refuse this are not so
desirous of punishing rapists as they pretend. The utterances of the
leading white men show that with them it is not the crime but the _class_.
Bishop Fitzgerald has become apologist for lynchers of the rapists of
_white_ women only. Governor Tillman, of South Carolina, in the month of
June, standing under the tree in Barnwell, S.C., on which eight
Afro-Americans were hung last year, declared that he would lead a mob to
lynch a _negro_ who raped a _white_ woman. So say the pulpits, officials
and newspapers of the South. But when the victim is a colored woman it is
different.
Last winter in Baltimore, Md., three white ruffians assaulted a Miss
Camphor, a young Afro-American girl, while out walking with a young man of
her own race. They held her escort and outraged the girl. It was a deed
dastardly enough to arouse Southern blood, which gives its horror of rape
as excuse for lawlessness, but she was an Afro-American. The case went to
the courts, an Afro-American lawyer defended the men and they were
acquitted.
In Nashville, Tenn., there is a white man, Pat Hanifan, who outraged a
little Afro-American girl, and, from the physical injuries received, she
has been ruined for life. He was jailed for six months, discharged, and is
now a detective in that city. In the same city, last May, a white man
outraged an Afro-American girl in a drug store. He was arrested, and
released on bail at the trial. It was rumored that five hundred
Afro-Americans had organized to lynch him. Two hundred and fifty white
citizens armed themselves with Winchesters and guarded him. A cannon was
placed in front of his home, and the Buchanan Rifles (State Militia)
ordered to the scene for his protection. The Afro-American mob did not
materialize. Only two weeks before Eph. Grizzard, who had only been
_charged_ with rape upon a white woman, had been taken from the jail, with
Governor Buchanan and the police and militia standing by, dragged through
the streets in broad daylight, knives plunged into him at every step, and
with every fiendish cruelty a frenzied mob could devise, he was at last
swung out on the bridge with hands cut to pieces as he tried to climb up
the stanchions. A naked, bloody example of the blood-thirstiness of the
nineteenth-century civilization of the Athens of the South! No cannon or
military was called out in his defense. He dared to visit a white woman.
At the very moment these civilized whites were announcing their
determination "to protect their wives and daughters," by murdering
Grizzard, a white man was in the same jail for raping eight-year-old
Maggie Reese, an Afro-American girl. He was not harmed. The "honor" of
grown women who were glad enough to be supported by the Grizzard boys and
Ed Coy, as long as the liaison was not known, needed protection; they were
white. The outrage upon helpless childhood needed no avenging in this
case; she was black.
A white man in Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory, two months ago inflicted such
injuries upon another Afro-American child that she died. He was not
punished, but an attempt was made in the same town in the month of June to
lynch an Afro-American who visited a white woman.
In Memphis, Tenn., in the month of June, Ellerton L. Dorr, who is the
husband of Russell Hancock's widow, was arrested for attempted rape on
Mattie Cole, a neighbors cook; he was only prevented from accomplishing
his purpose, by the appearance of Mattie's employer. Dorr's friends say he
was drunk and not responsible for his actions. The grand jury refused to
indict him and he was discharged.