“Many many years ago, in the South they use to lynch people. All of those people were innocent according to the television.”
Here is a newspaper account of an crime leading up to a lynching followed by another newspaper account of the lynching? Would you agree the punishment was appropriate for the crime, particularly since it occurred without due process of law?
From the Edgefield Advertiser (Edgefield, South Carolina) , June 27, 1872, page 2, column 1
SHOCKING RAPE —— A horrid crime was committed in Pulaski County, Georgia last Thursday morning, on the person of Mrs. Charlton Lovett by a negro man about twenty-one years old, formerly owned by Mr. Joe Philips, residing ten miles below Hawkinsville. On Thursday morning this villain went to the house of Mr. Lovett and finding Mrs. L. there alone, her husband being on a distant part of the plantation, produced a huge knife which he had just sharpened for the purpose, and seizing Mrs. L. with great violence, swore he would cut her throat if she made the least noise or resistance. Having accomplished his purpose, he fled but the alarm being given he was pursued by some thirty men during the day and captured and lodged in Pulaski County jail. There was great excitement over the affair throughout the County-—the victim being of a highly esteemed and influential family.
From the Georgia Weekly Telegraph and Journal & Messenger (Macon, GA), July 25, 1872, page 6, column 4.
The Hawkinsville Dispatch has a long account of the pursuit, capture, escape, recapture and final fate of the negro Joe Phillips who outraged Mrs. Charlton Lovett, of Pulaski county last Thursday week, a notice of which we published the next day, from which it appears the scoundrel was captured soon after committing the crime but escaped while being brought to Hawkinsville by jumping from a bridge into a creek, three shots being fired at him without effect. He was hotly pursued, however, and came directly towards Hawkinsville, where he swam the river just above the railroad bridge. From this point he was tracked by Messers. Wm. M Anderson and Henry Waterman, to a plantation managed by Mr. Baldwin Jones and soon discovered in a building with Mr. Jones’ hands, where the latter had sought shelter from a shower of rain. Mr. J. then attempted his arrest which was resisted and a struggle ensued, during which Mr. J. was bitten through the hand and the negro attempting to run was shot through the arm and finally captured and taken to Hawkinsville, reaching there Friday night. The Dispatch tells the rest of the story as follows:
On Saturday afternoon citizens of the district in which the crime was committed called for the prisoner and he was turned over to them by Sheriff Fulgham. He was to be taken before the magistrate of the district in which he lived, and there stand a commitment trial. The party having him in charge had proceeded as far as Big Creek bridge where a large number of citizens-—said to be from seventy-five to two hundred-—from various parts of the county had gathered. Next morning Joe Phillips was found hanging to an oak limb a few feet from the road. He had suffered the penalty of his crime. The punishment was summary, it is true, but none can say it was unmerited. He was more brute than human, for it be known that but a few years ago he was severely whipped in the same neighborhood for attempting a similar crime upon another person. His mother, too, on learning of his death the same day, rejoiced for she entered her evidence against him as a most unnatural being. Large numbers of negroes from the surrounding country visited the scene on Sunday and beheld him suspended as left the night previous. They murmured not a word, for they deemed the punishment just.
No. I pray we never go back to this.
So we adhere to the good teachings of MLK -—judging by content of character—the color of skin comes along for the ride. Too bad that so many good and excellent black folks get indirectly tainted by their lesser scumbuckets. We have an across-the-board moral crisis in this nation.
I’m finding it more and more difficult to say each and every day. As someone that wishes to live in a civilized world, I would vastly prefer due process of course. The thing is, was 1872 America a better place to raise a duaghter? Possibly so I’m starting to think.