. Loving had a
revolver. He defended his life and his home. Mrs. Loving tried to
close her eyes. She could not. She saw all that happened in her
bedroom. Four of the masked assailants fell. "They did not move any
more ... after a little while." Then she saw her husband dragged out
of the room. Her older boy, George, tried to help his stepfather. He
was dragged out also. She went to the bedside of her two younger
children. They were asleep. Rachel was smiling. The mother knelt down
and covered her ears. When at last she let herself listen, she heard
only the tapping of the branch of a pine tree against the side of the
house. She did not know at first that it was _the tree_.

She fled with her two little children to the North. Those children had
never before this day of revelation known how their father had died.
The shadow of white cruelty to the body and souls of black folks had
darkened somewhat over their lives in the North, but still they had
been frolicsome and loving young creatures. Now they begin to realize
the full significance of "race prejudice."

Rachel speaks to her mother: "Then, everywhere, everywhere throughout
the South, there are hundreds of dark mothers who live in fear,
terrible, suffocating fear, ... whose joy in their babies ... is three
parts pain.... The South is full of ... thousands of little boys who
one day may be, and some of whom will be lynched." "And the babies,
the dear, little, helpless babies ... have _that_ sooner or later to
look to. They will laugh and play and sing and grow up, and perhaps be
ambitious,--just for that."

"Yes, Rachel," answers her mother. The girl is one of those rare,
feminine creatures whose soul and body are framed for maternity. In
one swift rush of realization and of premonition, she comprehends all
that the doom upon her race must eventually mean to her; she utters
the cry of Africa's heart in America. "It would be more merciful to
strangle the little things at birth.... This white Christian nation
has set its curse upon the most beautiful, ... the most holy thing on
earth ... motherhood."

Let us consider the historic background forth from which Miss Grimke
has drawn her story. How do its incidents compare with known facts? In
1844, Massachusetts sent Judge Hoar to South Carolina to look after
the interests of Massachusetts citizens of color there. The mob spirit
showed itself so violently that this father of the future Senator was
obliged to leave the S