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.
