or torture that more and more is actuating the American people. When in
1835 McIntosh was burned in St. Louis for the murder of an officer, the
American people stood aghast, and Abraham Lincoln, just coming into
local prominence, spoke as if the very foundations of the young republic
had been shaken. After the Civil War, however, horrible lynchings became
frequent; and within the last decade we have seen a Negro boy stabbed in
numberless places while on his way to the stake, we have seen the eyes
of a Negro man burned out with hot irons and pieces of his flesh cut
off, and a Negro woman--whose only offense was a word of protest against
the lynching of her husband--while in the state of advanced pregnancy
hanged head downwards, her clothing burned from her body, and herself so
disemboweled that her unborn babe fell to the ground. We submit that
any citizens who commit such deeds as these are deserving of the most
serious concern of their country; and when they bring their little
children to behold their acts--when baby fingers handle mutilated flesh
and baby eyes behold such pictures as we have suggested--a crime has
been committed against the very name of childhood. Most frequently it
will be found that the men who do these things have had only the most
meager educational advantages, and that generally--but not always--they
live in remote communities, away from centers of enlightenment, so that
their whole course of life is such as to cultivate provincialism. With
not the slightest touch of irony whatever we suggest that these men need
a crusade of education in books and in the fundamental obligations of
citizenship. At present their ignorance, their prejudice, and their lack
of moral sense constitute a national menace.

It is full time to pause. We have already gone too far. The Negro
problem is only an index to the ills of society in America. In our haste
to get rich or to meet new conditions we are in danger of losing all of
our old standards of conduct, of training, and of morality. Our courts
need to summon a new respect for themselves. The average citizen knows
only this about them, that he wants to keep away from them. So far we
have not been assured of justice. The poor man has not stood an equal
chance with the rich, nor the black with the white. Money has been
freely used, even for the changing of laws if need be; and the
sentencing of a man of means generally means only that he will have a
new trial. The murde