like the following, for instance: “A special dispatch from Charleston, S. C., to the Atlanta Journal, reads: ‘While dying in Colleton county, former Section Foreman Jones, of the Atlantic Coast Line Road, has confessed being the murderer of his wife at Ravenel, S. C., fourteen miles from Charleston, in May, 1902, for which crime three Negroes were lynched. The crime which was charged to the Negroes was one of the most brutal ever committed in this State, and after the capture of the Negroes quick work was made of them by the mob.’

“Comment is certainly superfluous. What must be the feelings of those who participated in the lynching.” (Raleigh, N. C., Morning Post.)

3 The following were the views of Mr. Noah W. Cooper, a Nashville lawyer, on one of Mr. Graves’ addresses:

“John Temple Graves’ address in Chicago contains more errors and inconsistencies about the so-called Negro problem than any recent utterance on the subject.

“He says that God has established the ‘metes and bounds’ of the Negro’s habitation, but he never pointed out a single mete nor a single bound. He says, ‘Let us put the Negro kindly and humanely out of the way;’ but his vision again faded and he never told us where to put the darkey.

“If Mr. Graves’ inspiration had not been as short as a clam’s ear and he had gone on and given us the particular spot on the globe to which we should ‘kindly and humanely’ kick the darkey ‘out of the way,’ then we might have asked, who will take the darkey’s place in the South? Who will plow and hoe and pick out 12,000,000 bales of cotton? Who will sing in the rice fields? Who will raise the sugar cane? Who will make our ’lasses and syrup? Who will box and dip our turpentine? Who will cut and saw the logs, and on his body bear away the planks from our thousands of sawmills? Who will get down into the mud and swamps and build railroads for rich contractors? Who will work out their lives in our phosphate mines and factories, and in iron and coal mines? Who will be roustabouts on our rivers and on our wharves to be conscripted when too hot for whites to work? Who will fill the darkey’s place in the Southern home?

“Oh, I suppose Mr. Graves would say, we will get Dutch and Poles, and Hungarians, Swedes or other foreigners; or we will ourselves do all the work of the Negro. To me this is neither possible nor desirable.

“The South don’t want to kick the Negro out, as I understand it. The separation of the Negro from us 

 Prev. P 59/68 next