CONSIDER THE FACTS.
During six weeks of the months of March and April just past,
twelve colored men were lynched in Georgia, the reign of outlawry
culminating in the torture and hanging of the colored preacher,
Elijah Strickland, and the burning alive of Samuel Wilkes, alias
Hose, Sunday, April 23, 1899.
The real purpose of these savage demonstrations is to teach the
Negro that in the South he has no rights that the law will enforce.
Samuel Hose was burned to teach the Negroes that no matter what
a white man does to them, they must not resist. Hose, a servant,
had killed Cranford, his employer. An example must be made. Ordinary
punishment was deemed inadequate. This Negro must be burned alive.
To make the burning a certainty the charge of outrage was invented,
and added to the charge of murder. The daily press offered reward
for the capture of Hose and then openly incited the people to
burn him as soon as caught. The mob carried out the plan in every
savage detail.
Of the twelve men lynched during that reign of unspeakable barbarism,
only one was even charged with an assault upon a woman. Yet Southern
apologists justify their savagery on the ground that Negroes
are lynched only because of their crimes against women.
The Southern press champions burning men alive, and says, "Consider
the facts." The colored people join issue and also say,
"Consider the fact." The colored people of Chicago
employed a detective to go to Georgia, and his report in this
pamphlet gives the facts. We give here the details of the lynching
as they were reported in the Southern papers, then follows the
report of the true facts as to the cause of the lynchings, as
learned by the investigation. We submit all to the sober judgment
of the Nation, confident that, in this cause, as well as all
others, "truth is mighty and will prevail."
IDA B. WELLS-BARNETT.
2939 Princeton Avenue, Chicago, June 20, 1899.
Full
text (Library of Congress/Daniel A.P. Murray Pamphlet Collection)
