ss demand even more consideration than the crime
which lacks that excuse.

But more than that, we must be fair to the negro. There is no
use in beating about the bush; we have not shown that fairness
in the past, nor are we showing it today, either in justice
before the law, in facilities accorded for education or in
other directions. Argue it as you will, these things which we
have not done are the things which we must do, or Georgia will
suffer for it in proportion as she fails.[177]

In connection with lynchings there was the general fear of mob
violence. This fear was taken advantage of by labor agents, as the
following indicates:

We are astonished, too, to learn that one of the reasons for
this unrest among the negroes who were born and reared here is
fear that all negroes are to be run out of Georgia. This idea,
of course, has been planted in the minds of the simple minded
of the race by the crafty and unscrupulous labor agents who
have operated in almost every section of the State.

The negroes have this idea from the fact that there are
localities in the State right now where a negro can not live.
And we do not know of anybody that is doing anything to change
this condition.

Labor agents are doing their best to put the fear into the
hearts of the negroes in this State that they are going to be
run out by the white people, some of them even fixing the time
as next June; but this work began long before the negro exodus
north was thought of. The example of one county in north
Georgia, which ran every negro out, was followed by other
counties adjoining, and the general public has little idea
how widespread the contagion became--for lawlessness is nearly
always contagious.

If Georgia is injured, agriculturally and industrially, by the
negro exodus, the white people here have no one to blame but
themselves. They have allowed negroes to be lynched, five at
a time, on nothing stronger than suspicion; they have allowed
whole sections to be depopulated of them; they have allowed
them to be whitecapped and whipped, and their homes burned,
with only the weakest and most spasmodic efforts to apprehend
or punish those guilty--when any efforts were made at all.

Has not the negro been given the strongest proof that he
has no assured right to live, to own property nor t