【英文读物】Southern Horrors.docx

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1、【英文读物】Southern HorrorsPREFACE The greater part of what is contained in these pages was published in the New York Age June 25, 1892, in explanation of the editorial which the Memphis whites considered sufficiently infamous to justify the destruction of my paper, the Free Speech. Since the appearance

2、of that statement, requests have come from all parts of the country that Exiled (the name under which it then appeared) be issued in pamphlet form. Some donations were made, but not enough for that purpose. The noble effort of the ladies of New York and Brooklyn Oct. 5 have enabled me to comply with

3、 this request and give the world a true, unvarnished account of the causes of lynch law in the South. This statement is not a shield for the despoiler of virtue, nor altogether a defense for the poor blind Afro-American Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilahs. It is a contrib

4、ution to truth, an array of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great American Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall. It is with no pleasure I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more

5、 sinned against than sinning, and it seems to have fallen upon me to do so. The awful death-roll that Judge Lynch is calling every week is appalling, not only because of the lives it takes, the rank cruelty and outrage to the victims, but because of the prejudice it fosters and the stain it places a

6、gainst the good name of a weak race. The Afro-American is not a bestial race. If this work can contribute in any way toward proving this, and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to a demand for justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I

7、have done my race a service. Other considerations are of minor importance. IDA B. WELLSNew York City, Oct. 26, 1892 To the Afro-American women of New York and Brooklyn, whose race love, earnest zeal and unselfish effort at Lyric Hall, in the City of New York, on the night of October 5, 1892made poss

8、ible its publication, this pamphlet is gratefully dedicated by the author.HON. FRED. DOUGLASSS LETTER Dear Miss Wells: Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing

9、 power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. Brave woman! you have done your people and min

10、e a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror

11、, shame and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. But alas! even crime has power to reproduce itself and create conditions favorable to its own existence. It sometimes seems we are deserted by earth and Heaven yet we must still think, speak and work, and trust in the

12、 power of a merciful God for final deliverance. Very truly and gratefully yours,FREDERICK DOUGLASSCedar Hill, Anacostia, D.C., Oct. 25, 1892 THE OFFENSE Wednesday evening May 24, 1892, the city of Memphis was filled with excitement. Editorials in the daily papers of that date caused a meeting to be

13、held in the Cotton Exchange Building; a committee was sent for the editors of the Free Speech an Afro-American journal published in that city, and the only reason the open threats of lynching that were made were not carried out was because they could not be found. The cause of all this commotion was

14、 the following editorial published in the Free Speech May 21, 1892, the Saturday previous. Eight negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech one at Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke(?) into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one nea

15、r New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racketthe new alarm about raping white women. The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter. Nobody in this section of the coun

16、try believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. The Daily Comme

17、rcial of Wednesday following, May 25, contained the following leader: Those negroes who are attempting to make the lynching of individuals of their race a means for arousing the worst passions of their kind are playing with a dangerous sentiment. The negroes may as well understand that there is no m

18、ercy for the negro rapist and little patience with his defenders. A negro organ printed in this city, in a recent issue publishes the following atrocious paragraph: Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not c

19、areful they will overreach themselves, and public sentiment will have a reaction; and a conclusion will be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women. The fact that a black scoundrel is allowed to live and utter such loathsome and repulsive calumnies is a volume of ev

20、idence as to the wonderful patience of Southern whites. But we have had enough of it. There are some things that the Southern white man will not tolerate, and the obscene intimations of the foregoing have brought the writer to the very outermost limit of public patience. We hope we have said enough.

21、 The Evening Scimitar of same date, copied the Commercials editorial with these words of comment: Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these ca

22、lumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailors shears. Acting upon this advice, the leading citizens met in the Cotton Exchange Building the same evening, and threats of lynch

23、ing were freely indulged, not by the lawless element upon which the deviltry of the South is usually saddledbut by the leading business men, in their leading business centre. Mr. Fleming, the business manager and owning a half interest the Free Speech, had to leave town to escape the mob, and was af

24、terwards ordered not to return; letters and telegrams sent me in New York where I was spending my vacation advised me that bodily harm awaited my return. Creditors took possession of the office and sold the outfit, and the Free Speech was as if it had never been. The editorial in question was prompt

25、ed by the many inhuman and fiendish lynchings of Afro-Americans which have recently taken place and was meant as a warning. Eight lynched in one week and five of them charged with rape! The thinking public will not easily believe freedom and education more brutalizing than slavery, and the world kno

26、ws that the crime of rape was unknown during four years of civil war, when the white women of the South were at the mercy of the race which is all at once charged with being a bestial one. Since my business has been destroyed and I am an exile from home because of that editorial, the issue has been

27、forced, and as the writer of it I feel that the race and the public generally should have a statement of the facts as they exist. They will serve at the same time as a defense for the Afro-Americans Sampsons who suffer themselves to be betrayed by white Delilahs. The whites of Montgomery, Ala., knew

28、 J.C. Duke sounded the keynote of the situationwhich they would gladly hide from the world, when he said in his paper, the Herald, five years ago: Why is it that white women attract negro men now more than in former days? There was a time when such a thing was unheard of. There is a secret to this t

29、hing, and we greatly suspect it is the growing appreciation of white Juliets for colored Romeos. Mr. Duke, like the Free Speech proprietors, was forced to leave the city for reflecting on the honah of white women and his paper suppressed; but the truth remains that Afro-American men do not always ra

30、pe(?) white women without their consent. Mr. Duke, before leaving Montgomery, signed a card disclaiming any intention of slandering Southern white women. The editor of the Free Speech has no disclaimer to enter, but asserts instead that there are many white women in the South who would marry colored

31、 men if such an act would not place them at once beyond the pale of society and within the clutches of the law. The miscegnation laws of the South only operate against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free to seduce all the colored girls he can, but it is death to the colo

32、red man who yields to the force and advances of a similar attraction in white women. White men lynch the offending Afro-American, not because he is a despoiler of virtue, but because he succumbs to the smiles of white women.THE BLACK AND WHITE OF IT The Cleveland Gazette of January 16, 1892, publish

33、es a case in point. Mrs. J.S. Underwood, the wife of a minister of Elyria, Ohio, accused an Afro-American of rape. She told her husband that during his absence in 1888, stumping the State for the Prohibition Party, the man came to the kitchen door, forced his way in the house and insulted her. She t

34、ried to drive him out with a heavy poker, but he overpowered and chloroformed her, and when she revived her clothing was torn and she was in a horrible condition. She did not know the man but could identify him. She pointed out William Offett, a married man, who was arrested and, being in Ohio, was

35、granted a trial. The prisoner vehemently denied the charge of rape, but confessed he went to Mrs. Underwoods residence at her invitation and was criminally intimate with her at her request. This availed him nothing against the sworn testimony of a ministers wife, a lady of the highest respectability

36、. He was found guilty, and entered the penitentiary, December 14, 1888, for fifteen years. Some time afterwards the womans remorse led her to confess to her husband that the man was innocent. These are her words: I met Offett at the Post Office. It was raining. He was polite to me, and as I had seve

37、ral bundles in my arms he offered to carry them home for me, which he did. He had a strange fascination for me, and I invited him to call on me. He called, bringing chestnuts and candy for the children. By this means we got them to leave us alone in the room. Then I sat on his lap. He made a proposa

38、l to me and I readily consented. Why I did so, I do not know, but that I did is true. He visited me several times after that and each time I was indiscreet. I did not care after the first time. In fact I could not have resisted, and had no desire to resist. When asked by her husband why she told him

39、 she had been outraged, she said: I had several reasons for telling you. One was the neighbors saw the fellows here, another was, I was afraid I had contracted a loathsome disease, and still another was that I feared I might give birth to a Negro baby. I hoped to save my reputation by telling you a

40、deliberate lie. Her husband horrified by the confession had Offett, who had already served four years, released and secured a divorce. There are thousands of such cases throughout the South, with the difference that the Southern white men in insatiate fury wreak their vengeance without intervention

41、of law upon the Afro-Americans who consort with their women. A few instances to substantiate the assertion that some white women love the company of the Afro-American will not be out of place. Most of these cases were reported by the daily papers of the South. In the winter of 1885-86 the wife of a

42、practicing physician in Memphis, in good social standing whose name has escaped me, left home, husband and children, and ran away with her black coachman. She was with him a month before her husband found and brought her home. The coachman could not be found. The doctor moved his family away from Me

43、mphis, and is living in another city under an assumed name. In the same city last year a white girl in the dusk of evening screamed at the approach of some parties that a Negro had assaulted her on the street. He was captured, tried by a white judge and jury, that acquitted him of the charge. It is

44、needless to add if there had been a scrap of evidence on which to convict him of so grave a charge he would have been convicted. Sarah Clark of Memphis loved a black man and lived openly with him. When she was indicted last spring for miscegenation, she swore in court that she was not a white woman.

45、 This she did to escape the penitentiary and continued her illicit relation undisturbed. That she is of the lower class of whites, does not disturb the fact that she is a white woman. The leading citizens of Memphis are defending the honor of all white women, demi-monde included. Since the manager o

46、f the Free Speech has been run away from Memphis by the guardians of the honor of Southern white women, a young girl living on Poplar St., who was discovered in intimate relations with a handsome mulatto young colored man, Will Morgan by name, stole her fathers money to send the young fellow away fr

47、om that fathers wrath. She has since joined him in Chicago. The Memphis Ledger for June 8 has the following: If Lillie Bailey, a rather pretty white girl seventeen years of age, who is now at the City Hospital, would be somewhat less reserved about her disgrace there would be some very nauseating de

48、tails in the story of her life. She is the mother of a little coon. The truth might reveal fearful depravity or it might reveal the evidence of a rank outrage. She will not divulge the name of the man who has left such black evidence of her disgrace, and, in fact, says it is a matter in which there

49、can be no interest to the outside world. She came to Memphis nearly three months ago and was taken in at the Womans Refuge in the southern part of the city. She remained there until a few weeks ago, when the child was born. The ladies in charge of the Refuge were horified. The girl was at once sent to the City Hospital, where she has been since May 30. She is a country gi