fficers. Excitement was at fever beat until the morning papers,
two days after, announced that the wounded deputy sheriffs were out of
danger. This hindered rather than helped the plans of the whites. There
was no law on the statute books which would execute an Afro-American for
wounding a white man, but the "unwritten law" did. Three of these men, the
president, the manager and clerk of the grocery--"the leaders of the
conspiracy"--were secretly taken from jail and lynched in a shockingly
brutal manner. "The Negroes are getting too independent," they say, "we
must teach them a lesson."

What lesson? The lesson of subordination. "Kill the leaders and it will
cow the Negro who dares to shoot a white man, even in self-defense."

Although the race was wild over the outrage, the mockery of law and
justice which disarmed men and locked them up in jails where they could be
easily and safely reached by the mob--- the Afro-American ministers,
newspapers and leaders counselled obedience to the law which did not
protect them.

Their counsel was heeded and not a hand was uplifted to resent the
outrage; following the advice of the _Free Speech_, people left the city
in great numbers.

The dailies and associated press reports heralded these men to the country
as "toughs," and "Negro desperadoes who kept a low dive." This same press
service printed that the Negro who was lynched at Indianola, Miss., in
May, had outraged the sheriff's eight-year-old daughter. The girl was more
than eighteen years old, and was found by her father in this man's room,
who was a servant on the place.

Not content with misrepresenting the race, the mob-spirit was not to be
satisfied until the paper which was doing all it could to counteract this
impression was silenced. The colored people were resenting their bad
treatment in a way to make itself felt, yet gave the mob no excuse for
further murder, until the appearance of the editorial which is construed
as a reflection on the "honor" of the Southern white women. It is not half
so libelous as that of the _Commercial_ which appeared four days before,
and which has been given in these pages. They would have lynched the
manager of the _Free Speech_ for exercising the right of free speech if
they had found him as quickly as they would have hung a rapist, and glad
of the excuse to do so. The owners were ordered not to return, the _Free
Speech_ was suspended with as little compunction as the business of the