e seen from the following report of the investigator:
"Three, charged to white men, attracted comparatively little attention
in the newspapers, although one, the offense of a man named Turnadge,
was shocking in its details. Of twelve such charges against Negroes in
the six months preceding the riot, two were cases of rape, horrible in
their details, three were aggravated attempts at rape, three may have
been attempts, three were pure cases of fright on the part of white
women, and in one the white woman, first asserting that a Negro had
assaulted her, finally confessed attempted suicide."[1] On Friday,
September 21, while a Negro was on trial, the father of the girl
concerned asked the recorder for permission to deal with the Negro with
his own hand, and an outbreak was barely averted in the open court.
On Saturday evening, however, some elements in the city and from
neighboring towns, heated by liquor and newspaper extras, became openly
riotous and until midnight defied all law and authority. Negroes
were assaulted wherever they appeared, for the most part being found
unsuspecting, as in the case of those who happened to be going home from
work and were on street cars passing through the heart of the city.
In one barber shop two workers were beaten to death and their bodies
mangled. A lame bootblack, innocent and industrious, was dragged from
his work and kicked and beaten to death. Another young Negro was stabbed
with jack-knives. Altogether very nearly a score of persons lost their
lives and two or three times as many were injured. After some time
Governor Terrell mobilized the militia, but the crowd did not take this
move seriously, and the real feeling of the Mayor, who turned on the
hose of the fire department, was shown by his statement that just so
long as the Negroes committed certain crimes just so long would they be
unceremoniously dealt with. Sunday dawned upon a city of astounded white
people and outraged and sullen Negroes. Throughout Monday and Tuesday
the tension continued, the Negroes endeavoring to defend themselves as
well as they could. On Monday night the union of some citizens with
policemen who were advancing in a suburb in which most of the homes were
those of Negroes, resulted in the death of James Heard, an officer, and
in the wounding of some of those who accompanied him. More Negroes were
also killed, and a white woman to whose front porch two men were chased
died of fright at seeing them shot