Following the Color Line Part 30

A sort of dry rot, a moral paralysis, seems to strike the administrators of law in a town like Springfield. What can be expected of officers who are not accustomed to enforce the law, or of a people not accustomed to obey it--or who make reservations and exceptions when they do enforce it or obey it?

_Threats to Lynch the Judges_

When the sheriff made his speech to the mob, urging them to let the law take its course they jeered him. The law! When, in the past, had the law taken its proper course in Clark County? Some one shouted, referring to Dixon:

"He'll only get fined for shooting in the city limits."

"He'll get ten days in jail and suspended sentence."

Then there were voices:

"Let's go hang Mower and Miller"--the two judges.

This threat indeed, was frequently repeated both on the night of the lynching and on the day following.

So the mob came finally, and cracked the door of the jail with a railroad rail. This jail is said to be the strongest in Ohio, and having seen it, I can well believe that the report is true. But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob; it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.

They murdered the Negro in cold blood in the jail doorway; then they dragged him to the princ.i.p.al business street and hung him to a telegraph-pole, afterward riddling his lifeless body with revolver shots.

_Lesson of a Hanging Negro_

That was the end of that! Mob justice administered! And there the Negro hung until daylight the next morning--an unspeakably grizzly, dangling horror, advertising the shame of the town. His head was shockingly crooked to one side, his ragged clothing, cut for souvenirs, exposed in places his bare body: he dripped blood. And, with the crowds of men both here and at the morgue where the body was publicly exhibited, came young boys in knickerbockers, and little girls and women by scores, horrified but curious. They came even with baby carriages! Men made jokes: "A dead n.i.g.g.e.r is a good n.i.g.g.e.r." And the purblind, dollars-and-cents man, most despicable of all, was congratulating the public:

"It'll save the county a lot of money!"

Significant lessons, these, for the young!

But the mob wasn't through with its work. Easy people imagine that, having hanged a Negro, the mob goes quietly about its business; but that is never the way of the mob. Once released, the spirit of anarchy spreads and spreads, not subsiding until it has accomplished its full measure of evil.

_Mob Burning of Negro Saloons_

All the following day a rumbling, angry crowd filled the streets of Springfield, threatening to burn out the notorious Levee, threatening Judges Mower and Miller, threatening the "n.i.g.g.e.rs." The local troops--to say nothing of the police force--which might easily have broken up the mob, remained sedulously in their armouries, vacillating, doubtful of authority, knowing that there were threats to burn and destroy, and making not one move toward the protection of the public. One of the captains was even permitted to go to a neighbouring city to a dance! At the very same time the panic-stricken officials were summoning troops from other towns.

So night came on, the mob gathered around the notorious dives, some one touched a match, and the places of crime suddenly disgorged their foul inhabitants. Black and white, they came pouring out and vanished into the darkness where they belonged--from whence they did not return. Eight buildings went up in smoke, the fire department deliberating--intentionally, it is said--until the flames could not be controlled. The troops, almost driven out by the county prosecutor, McGrew, appeared after the mob had completed its work.

Good work, badly done, a living demonstration of the inevitability of law--if not orderly, decent law, then of mob-law.

For days following the troops filled Springfield, costing the state large sums of money, costing the county large sums of money. They chiefly guarded the public fountain; the mob had gone home--until next time.

_Efforts to Punish the Mob_

What happened after that? A perfunctory court-martial, that did absolutely nothing. A grand jury of really good citizens that sat for weeks, off and on; and like the mountain that was in travail and brought forth a mouse, they indicted two boys and two men out of all that mob, not for murder, but for "breaking into jail." And, curiously enough, it developed--how do such things develop?--that every man on the grand jury was a Republican, chosen by Republican county officers, and in their report they severely censured the police force (Democratic), and the mayor (Democratic), and had not one word of disapproval for the sheriff (Republican). Curiously enough, also, the public did not become enthusiastic over the report of that grand jury.

But the worst feature of all in this Springfield lynching was the apathy of the public. No one really seemed to care. A "n.i.g.g.e.r" had been hanged: what of it? But the law itself had been lynched. What of that? I had just come from the South, where I had found the people of several lynching towns in a state of deep excitement--moral excitement if you like, thinking about this problem, quarrelling about it, expelling men from the church, impeaching sheriffs, dishonourably discharging whole militia companies. Here in Springfield, I found cold apathy, except for a few fine citizens, one of whom, City Solicitor Stewart L. Tatum, promptly offered his services to the sheriff and a.s.sisted in a vain effort to remove the Negro in a closed carriage and afterward at the risk of personal a.s.sault earnestly attempted to defeat the purposes of the mob. Another of these citizens, the Rev. Father Cogan, pleaded with the mob on the second night of the rioting at risk to himself; another withdrew from the militia company because it had not done its duty. And afterward the city officials were stirred by the faintest of faint spasms of righteousness: some of the Negro saloons were closed up, but within a month, the most notorious of all the dive-keepers, Hurley, the Negro political boss, was permitted to open an establishment--through the medium of a brother-in-law!

If there ever was an example of good citizenship lying flat on its back with political corruption squatting on its neck, Springfield furnished an example of that condition. There was no reconstructive movement, no rising and organisation of the better sort of citizens. Negro dives gradually reopened, the same corrupt politics continued: and the result was logical and inevitable. About two years later, in February, 1906, another race riot broke out in Springfield--worse in some ways than the first. On February 26th, Martin M. Davis, a white brakeman, was shot in the railroad yards near a row of notorious Negro houses, by Edward Dean, a coloured man. The Negro was at once removed from the city and a mob which had gathered in antic.i.p.ation of another lynching, when it was cheated of its victim, set fire to a number of houses in the Negro settlement. The militia was at once called out, but the following night the mob gathered as before and visiting the Negro settlement, tried to set fire to other buildings.

It is significant that on the very night that this riot occurred the city council had under consideration an ordinance prohibiting the use of screens or other obstructions to the view of the interior of saloons after closing hours on week days or during Sundays. A committee of the council, favourable to the saloon interests, had recommended that the ordinance be not acted upon by council but referred to the people at a distant election, a proposition wholly illegal. While Stewart L. Tatum the city solicitor to whom I have already referred, argued to the council the illegality of the proposal made by the committee the noise of the mob reached the council chamber and the friends of the ordinance seized the opportunity to adjourn and delay action that would evidently result in the defeat of the ordinance.

Finally, as a result of both these riots, the city was mildly stirred; a Civic League was formed by prominent citizens and the _attack on property_ vigorously deprecated; the pa.s.sage of the screen ordinance was recommended and at the next meeting of the council this ordinance, which had been vetoed by the mayor of the previous administration and had excited considerable public interest during a period of two years, was pa.s.sed and has proved of great a.s.sistance to the police department in controlling the low saloons where the riot spirit is bred.

I turn with pleasure from the story of this lynching to another Northern town, where I found as satisfying an example of how to deal with a mob as this country has known.

In Springfield we had an exhibition of nearly complete supineness and apathy before the mob; in Statesboro, Ga., we discovered a decided law-and-order element, not strong enough, however, to do much; in Huntsville, Ala., we had a tremendous moral awakening. In Danville, Ill., we find an example of law vindicated, magnificently and completely, through the heroism of a single man, backed up later by wholesome public opinion.

_Character of Danville, Ill._

Danville presented many of the characteristics of Springfield, O. It had a growing Negro population and there had been an awakening race prejudice between the white workingmen and the Negroes, especially in the neighbouring coal mines.

As in other places where lynchings have occurred, I found that Vermilion County, of which Danville is the seat, had also a heavy record of homicide and other crime. They counted there on a homicide every sixty days; at the term of court preceding the lynching seven murder trials were on the docket; and in all its history the county never had had a legal hanging, though it had suffered two lynchings. The criminal record of Vermilion County was exceeded at that time only by Cook County (Chicago), and St.

Clair County (East St. Louis), where the horrible lynching of a Negro schoolmaster took place (at Belleville) in the preceding summer.

_Story of a Starved Negro_

The crime which caused the rioting was committed by the familiar vagrant Negro from the South--in this case a Kentucky Negro named Wilson--a miserable, illiterate, half-starved creature who had been following a circus. He had begged along the road in Indiana and no one would feed him.

He came across the line into Illinois, found a farmhouse door open, saw food on the table, and darted in to steal it. As he was leaving, the woman of the house appeared. In an animal-like panic, the Negro darted for the door, knocking the woman down as he escaped. Immediately the cry went up that there had been an attempted criminal a.s.sault, but the sheriff told me that the woman never made any such charge and the Negro bore all the evidence of the truthfulness of the a.s.sertion that he was starving; he was so emaciated with hunger that even after his arrest the sheriff dared not allow him a full meal.

_Hot Weather and Mobs_

But it was enough to stir up the mob spirit. It was Sat.u.r.day night, July 25th, and the usual crowd from all over the county had gathered in the town. Among the crowd were many coal miners, who had just been paid off and were drinking. As in Springfield, the town had a very large number of saloons, ninety-one within a radius of five miles, to a population of some 25,000. Most Northern towns are far worse in this respect than the average Southern town. It was a hot night; mobs work best in hot weather.

Statistics, indeed, show that the great majority of lynchings take place in the summer, particularly in July and August.

It was known that the sheriff had brought his Negro prisoner to the jail, and the crime was widely discussed. The whole city was a sort of human tinder-box, ready to flare up at a spark of violence.

Well, the spark came--in a saloon. Metcalf, a Negro, had words with a well-known white butcher named Henry Gatterman. Both had been drinking.

The Negro drew a revolver and shot Gatterman dead. Instantly the city was in a furor of excitement. The police appeared and arrested Metcalf, and got him finally with great difficulty to the police station, where he was locked up. A mob formed instantly. It was led, at first, by a crowd of lawless boys from sixteen to eighteen years old. Rapidly gathering strength, it rushed into the city hall, and although the mayor, the chief of police, and nearly the entire police force were present, they got the Negro out and hanged him to a telegraph-pole in the main street of the town, afterward shooting his body full of holes.

Intoxicated by their swift success and, mob-like, growing in recklessness and bloodthirstiness, they now turned upon the jail determined to lynch the Negro Wilson. It was a much uglier mob than any I have hitherto described; it was a drunken mob, and it had already tasted blood. It swarmed around the jail, yelling, shooting, and breaking the windows with stones.

_A "Strict" Sheriff_

Sheriff Hardy H. Whitlock of Vermilion County had never been looked upon as an especially remarkable man--except, as I was told everywhere, he had a record as _a strict sheriff_, as a man who did his best to enforce the law in times of peace. He and the state's attorney were so industrious that they caught and punished four times as many criminals in proportion to population as were convicted in Chicago. The sheriff was a big, solid, deliberate man with gray eyes. He was born in Tennessee. His father was an itinerant Presbyterian preacher, always poor, doing good for everybody but himself, and stern in his conceptions of right and wrong. His mother, as the sheriff related, made him obey the law with peach-tree switches.

His history was the commonest of the common; not much education, had to make his living, worked in a livery stable. He was faithful at that, temperate, friendly. They elected him constable, an office that he held for seven years. He was faithful at that. They elected him sheriff of the county. He went at the new task as he had at all his other work, with no especial brilliancy, but steadily doing his duty, catching criminals. He found a great deal to learn and he learned. The extradition laws of the states troubled him when he wanted to bring prisoners home. There was no compilation of the laws on the subject. Here was work to be done. Although no lawyer, he went at it laboriously and compiled a book of five hundred pages, containing all the extradition laws of the country, and had it published at his own expense.

_Defending a Jail With a Riot-gun_

And when the crisis came that night with the mob howling around his jail, Hardy Whitlock had become so accustomed to doing his duty that he didn't know how to do anything else. Here was the jail to be protected: he intended to protect it. He sent for no troops--there was no time anyhow--nor for the police. He had a couple of deputies and his wife.

Though the mob was breaking the windows of the house and the children were there, his wife said:

"Give me a gun, Hardy, and I'll stay by you."