the office; and when there was protest against
the appointment of Dr. William D. Crum as collector of the port of
Charleston, he said, "I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to
office. So far as I legitimately can, I shall always endeavor to pay
regard to the wishes and feelings of the people of each locality; but I
can not consent to take the position that the door of hope--the door of
opportunity--is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely
upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to
my convictions, be fundamentally wrong." These memorable words, coming
in a day of compromise and expediency in high places, greatly cheered
the heart of the race. Just the year before, the importance of the
incident of Booker T. Washington's taking lunch with President Roosevelt
was rather unnecessarily magnified by the South into all sorts of
discussion of social equality.

On Tuesday, January 24, 1899, a fire in the center of the town of
Palmetto, Ga., destroyed a hotel, two stores, and a storehouse, on which
property there was little insurance. The next Saturday there was another
fire and this destroyed a considerable part of the town. For some weeks
there was no clue as to the origin of these fires; but about the middle
of March something overheard by a white citizen led to the implicating
of nine Negroes. These men were arrested and confined for the night of
March 15 in a warehouse to await trial the next morning, a dummy guard
of six men being placed before the door. About midnight a mob came,
pushed open the door, and fired two volleys at the Negroes, killing four
immediately and fatally wounding four more. The circumstances of this
atrocious crime oppressed the Negro people of the state as few things
had done since the Civil War. That it did no good was evident, for in
its underlying psychology it was closely associated with a double crime
that was now to be committed. In April, Sam Hose, a Negro who had
brooded on the happenings at Palmetto, not many miles from the scene
killed a farmer, Alfred Cranford, who had been a leader of the mob, and
outraged his wife. For two weeks he was hunted like an animal, the white
people of the state meanwhile being almost unnerved and the Negroes
sickened by the pursuit. At last, however, he was found, and on Sunday,
April 23, at Newnan, Ga., he was burned, his execution being accompanied
by unspeakable mutilation; and on the same day Lige Strickland, a