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222 THE CRISIS He goes on with another horrible account of which he was also an eye-witness: A Negro, his head laid open by a great stone-cut, had been dragged to the mouth of the alley on Fourth Street and a small rope was being put about his neck. There was joking comment on the weakness of the rope, and everyone was prepared for what happened when it was pulled over a projecting cable box, a short distance up the pole. It broke, letting the Negro tumble back to his knees, and causing one of them men who was pulling on it to sprawl on the pavement. An old man, with a cap like those worn by street car conductors, but showing no badge of car service, came out of his house to protest. "Don't you hang that man on this street," he shouted. "I dare you to." He was pushed angrily away, and a rope, obviously strong enough for its purpose, was brought. Right here I saw the most sickening incident of the evening. To put the rope around the Negro's neck, one of the lynchers stuck his fingers inside the gaping scalp and lifted the Negro's head by it, literally bathing his hand in the man's blood. "Get hold, and pull for East St. Louis!" called a man with a black coat and a new straw hat, as he seized the other end of the rope. The rope was long, but not too long for the number of hands that grasped it, and this time the Negro was lifted to a height of about seven feet from the ground. The body was left hanging there. These accounts make gruesome reading, but they are all true. Hugh L. Wood paints in the St. Louis Republic another horrible picture. He says: A Negro weighing 300 pounds came out of the burning line of dwellings just north and east of the Southern freight house. His hands were elevated and his yellow face was speckled with the awful fear of death. "Get him!" they cried. Here was a chance to see suffering, something that bullets didn't always make. So a man in the crowd clubbed his revolver and struck the Negro in the face with it. Another dashed an iron bolt between the Negro's eyes. Still another stood near and battered him with a rock. Then the giant Negro toppled to the ground. "This is the way," cried one. He ran back a few paces, then ran at the prostrate black at full speed and made a flying leap. His heels struck right in the middle of the battered face. A girl stepped up and struck the bleeding man with her foot. The blood spurted onto her stockings and men laughed and grunted. No amount of suffering awakened pity in the hearts of the rioters. Mr. Wood tells us that: A few Negroes, caught on the street, were kicked and shot to death. As flies settled on their terrible wounds, the gaping-mouthed mobsmen forbade the dying blacks to brush them off. Girls with blood on their stockings helped to kick in what had been the black faces of the corpses in the street. The St. Louis Republic has still a further touch: A Negro lay a block east on Broadway, with his face beaten in. He was not dead. An ambulance, driven by white men, dashed up. "If you pick up that skunk we'll kill you, too," cried the crowd. "I've got a wife and four children at home," said the white-faced ambulance man as he climbed back on the wagon. When the fire had eaten its way that far the body was tossed into the flames. Two blocks further east lay a Negro who had been beaten until he was dying. "Let's string him up," shouted a man. A rope was brought and the dying black in a moment was dangling from a pole. Several "good measure" shots were fired into the body and the crowd went further on. Mr. Hurd who writes with much restraint tells how he saw a man covered with blood and half conscious, raise himself on his elbow and look feebly about, when a young man, standing directly behind him, lifted a flat stone in both hands and hurled it upon his neck. This young man was much better dressed than most of the others. He walked away unmolested. The violence was confined not only to men. Women were in many cases the aggressors and always ready to instigate and abet. One woman, according to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, wanted to "cut the heart out" of a Negro, a man already paralyzed from a bullet wound, who was being then maltreated at the hands of a mob. Mr. Hurd writes: I saw Negro women begging for mercy and pleading that they had harmed no one set upon by white women of the baser sort who laughed and answered the coarse sallies of men as they beat the Negresses' faces and breasts with fists, stones and sticks. I saw one of these furies fling herself at a militiaman who was trying to protect a Negress, and wrestle with him for his bayonetted gun, while other women attacked the refugee. "Let the girls have her," was the shout as the women attacked one young Negress. The victim's cry, "Please, please, I ain't done nothing," was stopped by a blow in the mouth with a broomstick, which one of the women swung like a baseball bat. An- THE MASSACRE OF EAST ST. LOUIS 223 [[image]] THE FIRE. St. Louis Star.
Transcription Notes:
Image: view of buildings across a river, smoke rising the background.
