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178

The Crisis

money and the islanders to vote for annexation. That they are anxious for it can not be doubted, for they have expressed the desire to come under the American flag, both formally through the local councils and informally in mass meetings. The school children are already singing an annexation song.

But it should be remembered that there are powerful interests in the islands which are doing everything in their power to prejudice the people against the United States. The Hamburg-American Line hoped to make St. Thomas a German commercial port. There are many Danish officials and plantation owners and holders of government monopolies who will be disadvantaged. All of the islanders are naturally anxious to know what are the intentions of the United States and what will be done to relieve the distress into which they have been plunged by the war. 

But there is no one speak for the United States. Only her enemies are heard. Stories of southern lynchings and of northern race prejudice are assiduously circulated. The newspapers publish wild fabrications of "American atrocities" in Santo Domingo. It is asserted that the three Danish islands are to be made a mere appendage of Porto Rico, with which they have nothing in common, not even language. It is feared that they will be put under carpet-bag government and made the victim of a spoils system with "deserving Democrats" as rulers. It is rumored that the free port privileges which they have enjoyed since 1764 are to be taken away.

We know how much this misrepresents the intentions of the United States, but how is an ignorant and untraveled Negro to know it? However absurd and malicious the rumor, there is no one on the spot to deny it in the name of the United States. Fifty years ago when islanders voted on annexation, the American government sent a commission, composed of an admiral and a clergyman to talk to them, explain to them the policy of the United States and answer their questions. As a result the people voted by 1044 to 22 in favor of annexation. They doubtless will vote for it now in spite of the agitation against it, but if we want them to come into the Union with enthusiasm and confidence we should do something now to show them that they are welcome and will be well treated.

The CRISIS would suggest that the new committee be headed by Senator Vardaman, of Mississippi. The vote for annexation might not be as large as formerly but it would be more intelligent.

THE LYNCHING INDUSTRY

THE New York Evening Globe says:

During the past twelvemonth fifty-four persons were made victims of lynch law. Of this number fifty were Negroes, three of them women. In 1915 sixty-seven persons were lynched, of whom thirteen were white men. Of those put to death last year forty-two, or 78 per cent of the total, were charged with offenses other than assault. Georgia again holds the unenviable distinction of recording the greatest number of lynchings within its borders--fourteen, or more than a quarter of the total.

The lynching record for 1916 is encouraging in that it is not as black as that of the previous year. But it is a crying disgrace to a country that pretends to such a high civilization as does the United States. Lynching will never be stamped out until those inclined to resort to it are convinced that for their crime they will be punished. No one was punished for the fifty-four victims done to death last year, if memory serves us right. It was the same in 1915. Every lynching is followed by promises to bring the perpetrators to justice, but the promises are never made good. Until such a time comes when our so-called substantial citizens, who now show a readiness to join in mob violence, are made to have a more wholesome respect for the law we must expect these outrages against civilization.

The Burlington, Vermont, Free Press lays great stress on the influence of the southern press:

A former Turkish ambassador was not wholly without ground for his comparison between the burning of colored men and women at the stake in the South and the Armenian massacres that have so stirred this whole nation as well as the rest of the civilized world. It is not necessary for us to go abroad to find blots upon our modern civilization. The lynching of Negroes and others in different parts of the country is a disgrace to the nation as a whole. Whenever people of the old world raise this question, we must perforce hang our heads in shame....

It is the present generation of men and women in the South who are responsible for lynchings. In order to effect a cure of this evil the manhood and the womanhood of the South must be reached.

Under these circumstances, it is reassuring to note the efforts of some of the great newspapers of the South like the Atlanta Constitution taking a bold stand against lynch law, even though the party of the second part be a colored person. The press is the only agency of education for the great mass of the people, outside of the fractional part who come under the influence of the pulpit. The newspapers of the South have a tremendous work to do in this direction not only for their own section but also in behalf of the whole nation.

There is still much comment on the lynching of Anthony Crawford at Abbeville, S. C. From the Abbeville Press and Banner

THE LOOKING GLASS

179

we have the following account of our investigation:

Some excitement was caused about town Monday when a number of marked copies of the Independent were received in which was a write-up of the recent lynching in Abbeville. The article was by Roy Nash, who came here from Broadway as a land-buyer just after the occurrence.

The article is readable, if not entirely accurate as to facts. As is said in the editorials reproduced from the State in this issue, Mr. Nash makes the mistake of assuming that there are two classes of people in this section. There is only one class, though some are richer than others, some have had more advantages than others, and some look at things from a different angle than do others. The people of this section are all one people. He makes the further mistake in assuming that it is always the poorer classes, as he calls them, that take part in lynchings. Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. Generally speaking, lynching parties are composed of men from both the rich and the poor.

The fatal error into which Mr. Nash falls and the reason his article and others like it written about these occurrences will do no good, is that he undertakes to make the lynching of Crawford wrong, because as he alleges Crawford was a self-respecting and wealthy Negro, and guilty of no wrong.

He thereby raises an issue which should not enter into the discussion of the case. By asserting that Crawford was a hero as he sees him, he allows the other party to justify lynching when he proves that Crawford was not a hero. As a matter of fact lynching never occurs either against Negroes or whites unless they are guilty of some crime or in serious disorder. And this was true in Crawford's case. He was a vicious Negro. He was a tyrant among his own people and he went out of the way to be offensive to those people who were not so wealthy as he was. Of course, there was prejudice, we will not deny that; but Crawford had not been lynched before. And the would not have been lynched when he was if he had not been too eager to curse and abuse a white man and "assert his manhood." No man who treats his neighbors right and keeps the peace is ever lynched.

But this no more excuses lynching than does the fact that a man lynched was a good citizen make it wrong. Lynching is wrong because it is contrary to law. When we get away from the individual lynched and get down to the gist of the offense, we will learn that we can neither justify nor condemn lynching on the standing of the particular victim. And we will make progress when we get away from the by-paths and get in the middle of the road. We must consider the broken law and not the individual involved in an alleged crime, or we had as well quit.

The Charleston News and Courier speaks of the surprise caused by the arrest of nine men charged with the lynching of Anthony Crawford:

The question of the guilt or innocence of the men who are now under charges at Abbeville is not, of course, a subject which can properly be discussed while these charges are pending; but the vigorous promptness with which this case has been handled by the governor, the solicitor and other officers of the law cannot fail to have a salutary effect. The main thing needed to put a stop to lynching is for everybody to know that whenever there is one, effort is going to be made to bring those responsible for it to justice.

The News, Greenville, S. C., complacently tells us:

The probability is that no one will ever be convicted of that lynching. But the governor is discharging his duty; the solicitor is discharging his; the county officials are discharging theirs in making an effort to find out the men who killed the Negro. The law will have been absolved from the charge of apathy when the court machinery is set to work in an effort to convict those who took the law into their own hands.

A word to New Yorkers from the Holyoke, Mass., Telegram:

A crazed man ran amuck in the streets of New York and before a mob got hold of him he had seriously wounded a pedestrian. When the mob got through with him the man was a fit subject for the dangerous ward of a nearby hospital with a broken skull and a body actually covered with bloody bruises. He died in a little while.

It is not long ago we were denouncing Georgia, and have been denouncing other communities because of the conduct of mobs. New York is not in the South nor West. How about the lynchers of this week?

THE HEGIRA

THE southern papers are still full of comment regarding the exodus of Negroes from the South. The following reason is given by the Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser:

The Negro from middle Alabama is going North because of economic conditions which he cannot help and which he cannot overcome. He is not being forced out by pressure from the white race. The relations between the two races in this section were never better; the Negro here is not subjected to oppression or to any outbreaks of violence which have induced the Negro to leave certain other sections of the South.

The Negro is going because he is the most unfortunate of the victims of the combined disaster this year, of the flood and the boll weevil. There has been actual want and