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134       THE CRISIS

Tennessee Trust building, a number of fine hotels, three large hospitals, and two orphan asylums. Memphis has a number of educational institutions, good public and parish and many private schools, the Memphis Hospital Medical College, the Maddox's school for young women, the College of the Christian Brothers (R. C.), founded in 1871; Saint Agnes' Academy (R. C.), Sacred Heart Institute (R. C.), Saint Mary's School (P. E.), University School, and two public high schools. The Hannibal Medical College and the Le Moyne Normal Institute are for colored pupils.

[[image - picture of horrible death]]

The Harvard Crimson says:

Yesterday at ten of the morning, near Memphis, Tennessee, a mob of five thousand white men burned with fire a Negro to the death. The Negro had been accused of the commission of a capital crime. Under the law he deserved death according to the law.

But those five thousand white men did not administer death according to the law. They seized the Negro from a willing sheriff's posse, which was sworn by all honor to uphold the law. They held him awaiting for final torture, while excursion trains ran from the city, while business houses shut down as for a holiday, while pleasure-seekers cam by motor from the whole countryside to witness this festival. This festival of debauchery!

And then the throng having collected, representatives of the South's chivalry and the South's courage, the mob thrust their victim into a small steel cage from which there was no escape. They bound him by chains at the hands and feet. Lest he, no doubt, should, although a member of the despised race and one against thousands, put to rout these courageous Southern gentlemen. When they had bound him, the chains being hard and the steel bars strong, they tortured him; the mob, with the fiendish tortures which from time immemorial have been the pastime of savages. And when he was near to oblivion from pain, they applied the torch to the oil-soaked fagots and aroused his spirit to a terrible death in the fire. It is noted that a few urged that he be shot. They should be honored, for they were merciful.

The crowed clamored at his tortured shrieks, rejoicing around that prye till that which was once a man had become but bones and ashes. There were women in that mob in great numbers, singing at the gala day. Women! Those chivalry and holy women of the South to keep whom pure the last Southern gentleman who would shed his romantic blood. The flower of chivalry! Did womanly pity, did womanly sorrow, which is the greatest compassion our race may know, move their hearts then? Did they weep at this bestiality?

The victim was seen to pray as the fires rolled over his flesh. To what God did he pray? The South is reputed religious, far more so than this Unitarian and materialistic North. Did the white man's God hear those agonizing prayers? Or does the Negro worship an impotent Diety?

One Negro in the throng tore down the flag of his nation and raised a cry for Germany. HE was threatened with the death. There are millions of his race in the South who might well be moved with the same passion. Germany, in all her brutality, never did the like in Belgium.

It was not Memphis' sin alone. It was not Tennessee's sin alone. It was the sin of this nation, which allows such things to come to pass. It was the sin of our lawlessness, of our mad disregard of all that makes existence bearable to men.

Young men, you young men of the South, do not attempt from a barren sectional pride to defend a crime so horrible. For such lust of death in a whole city, a whole country-side, there is no shadow of defence, not now, or in eternity. It is for those men who in time hope to lead the South to arouse such horror in their hearts of this mob blindness that they will do away with it forever; that our whole people, without sectional exception, will honor that law and justice upon which our nation rests.

Vachel Lindsay writes in the Illinois Statue Register from Springfield, III.:

I do not believe that victim guilty of the crime of which he was accused. I take no stock in his alleged confession. In 1908, after our week of race riots, the alleged assaulter was vindicated. The citizens of Memphis have made it forever impossible to prove this man guilty of anything except the color of his skin. The world is not safe Democracy as long as there are Americans like these Memphis.

The San Francisco Bulletin says:

It is particularly unfortunate that the more civilized people in the South, who 


THE LOOKING GLASS   135

probably form a majority, do not put a stop to this degrading communal sport, at least during the period of a war which is being fought in the period of a war which is being fought in the interests of higher civilization. This Tennessee community should be exempted from conscription. Men who burn human beings alive cannot be trusted to go abroad as representatives of the American cause.

The New Republic says:

If there was any chartable doubt as to the atrocities connected with the Ell Person lynching at Memphis, they are negated by eye-witness reports in the Memphis Press. It is not only true that Person's ears were hacked off while he was being burned to death and that his severed head was thrown from a speeding automobile in the Memphis streets some hours later, and his severed foot similarly flung about as a trophy, but it is also true that the mob which collected to witness Person's lynching was estimated at 15,000. "They burned him too quick; they burned him too quick," was the complaint on all sides. The universal sentiment seemed to be that too much gasoline had been used" -this quotation from Mr. E. T. Leech's report gives the clue to the spirit of the debauch. to say that this lynching indicts Tennessee is gratuitous. Its filthy degeneracy would stain any community, but what it really exposes is not so much a barbarous cruelty in Tennessee as a barbarous communal failure to undertake the mere preliminaries of justice. There is no proof whatever that Ell Person was guilty. There is only the fact that 15,000 Americans have combined to annul their institutions and degrade their name.

The Independent says:

Last week a large and enthusiastic throng of the "best citizens" of Memphis, Tennessee, burned a Negro at the stake after soaking him in oil and cutting off his ears.

The world must be made safe for democracy.

A BLACK KING

THE recent death of King Lewanika recalls the prolonged alliance existing between himself and England. His kingdom was that of Barotseland (a vast area north of Rhodesia), and here he ruled for forty-five years. In the early days of his reign he was forced to the flee because of a revolution, but in time he overthrew the usurper, regained his throne and began to institute British reforms In 1890 through a treaty effected by Mr. Cecil Rhoades, Barotseland became an appanage of the British empire and from that time on Lewanika's loyalty to the British remained unshaken. He was a born progressive the Montreal Weekly Star assures us:

"The dangerous Ethiopian movement obtained some foothold some few years ago, but Lewanika himself removed the menace. The government is now establishing large technical schools at Lialui at the King's desire. He has rendered great assistance by compiling of a census as a basis for the collection of the hut tax in the Barotse Valley. He has recently, by  public proclamation, given the final death-blow to the ancient system of serfdom or domestic slavery. He has freed every slaVE in his dominion, between 25,000 and 30,000 natives being thus liberated.

"His very dusky majesty-he was one of the blackest of black men-has had a place in the affections of the British ever since he came to London in 1902 to attend the Coronation of King Edward. He was in fact the only other King at the ceremony and he was immensely proud of the distinction. Also the visit, sore trial as it was to his majesty, allowed him to achieve the ambition of his life.

"He had always wanted to meet the great white chief, and the day before he left England on his return home he was presented to King Edward. Speaking with considerable emotion after the ceremony, he said: 'I am now happy.'

"Incidentally, Lewanika had made the lowest obeisance ever made at the palace, and he also presented King Edward with an ivory tusk which required the full strength of two brawny Barotses to carry.

"His journey to England in the Dunottar Castle had given him his first glimpse of the sea. He was vastly impressed, but he was none the less glad to leave the ship a fine ship,' he said, but 'I don't like her when she moves,' and he added that he would rather walk back even if it took him twelve years. He hardly did that, but months after his departure-with liberty silk costumes for his twelve royal wives-he was heard of making a leisurely journey back to Barotseland.

"He was not a Christian himself, but he ruled his country on very Christian lines. He was a generous man, too. Sometimes, as when he presented Lord Selborne with a hippopotamus, his gifts were embarrassing. The last heard of Lewanika in this country was his offer, a month after the war broke out, of his services to England."