taken them completely by surprise, or that, though aware of the impending danger, they were unwilling to shoot into the crowd lest they kill innocent men, women, and children. At Marion, Cartersville, Scooba, Union, and Plant City the sheriffs or other peace officers were either in connivance with the mob or else extremely stupid. In each case the mob took possession of the accused in the presence of the officer who did not fire a shot or make any other real effort to protect the accused.

In Boliver County, Miss., the local deputy sheriffs rode out to the place where the man hunt was under way. When he found that the accused Negro was certain of being caught, he returned to his courthouse office, quite content with the way the thing was being handled. In two other plantation counties-Brazos, Tex., and Sumter, Ala.-the officers deliberately left matters in the hande of the local people.

A tradition in these counties, respected by sheriff and peace officers as well as by the public, leaves to the planter and his overseer the settlement of any trouble which arises on the plantation among the Negroes themselves or between him and the overseer or planter. Most crimes in these counties are looked upon as labor troubles, to be settled by those who own and control the plantations. As a corollary, to all practical purposes, the sheriff and other peace officers are the planters' agents.

On the direct point of collusion between law-enforcement officers and mobs, for a typical case I refer you to the Tuscaloosa lynchings in 1933, where the southern commission made an express finding

that

Unquestionably the officers of Tuscaloosa County have not performed their duty in safeguarding these prisoners or protecting them from violence. We are convinced that some of the county officers connived in the taking of the three Negroes seized.

This illustration could be multiplied many times over by even a casual examination of Chadbourn Raper's The Tragedy of Lynching or White's Rope and Faggot. All the authorities point out that the local judiciary and local peace officers are afraid to antagonize their local electorate, and, as the travesty on the Eastern Shore in December showed, the Negro is put to death and the lynchers go free, with official sanction. Venality is made the price of political success.

Another point which the Congress cannot afford to overlook is the effect of lynching in brutalizing the white population. In the 1933 lynchings the most striking feature of nearly every press photograph is the number of women and little children present at the festivities. And the more open and notorious the lynching is the greater the sadistic atrocities the mob leaders indulge in for the benefit of the spectators. Henry Lowry, Mississippi, 1920, burned by inches after the afternoon papers had been advised to issue "extras" as to time, place, and other arrangements. Mary Turner, in Georgia, strung up by the ankles and her unborn child ripped from her belly. George Armwood strung up and roasted in Maryland and his body left in the Negro section. Victims dragged face downward through the Negro section at the end of a rope attached to an automobile. Yet people say it is not time for the Congress of the United States to step in.

I should like to say a few words on what the Negro knows about the causes of lynchings. Lynching apologists have passed through certain definite patterns. First, it was the gag that lynchings were resorted to only in sex crimes; but even Southern white authorities admit that less than one sixth of the Negroes lynched have been accused of sex crimes. Then with that apology exploded, the next defense was the breakdown and delay in the courts. But again

Southern authorities themselves point out that there has been no breakdown in the courts so far as Negroes are concerned. Chadbourn says (p. 10) that the evidence is convincing that Negroes who are tried for serious crimes in lynching communities are more drastically punished than are white similarly circumstanced.

A Negro was lynched in Waco, Tex., in 1916, after he had been convicted and sentenced to death, having first waived his right to a change of venue and to an appeal. The three Lowmans were lynched on the outskirts of Aiken, S.C., in 1925, after being acquitted. So that it cannot be ascribed to a breakdown in the courts. Now the current excuse is communism.

Communism is blamed for the recent outbreaks on the Eastern Shore. The community is supposed to resent communistic interference in the Euel Lee case. But the community does not state that repeated attempts were made to lynch Lee before communists ever contacted him, and that they did not contact him until after he had been brought to Baltimore for safe-keeping. In Tuscaloosa, communism is blamed for the lynchings of Pippen, Harden, and Clark last August. But the first attempt to lynch the three boys was made June 21, almost a month before the communists entered the case. And they were actually lynched on the night of August 12-13, 2 days after the communist lawyers had been put entirely out of the case by the court and the defense of the boys turned over completely to members of the local bar appointed by the court. The southern commission finds that

Communism is Tuscaloosa's scapegoat. If the community were really afraid of communism, its best defense would lie in extending to Negroes full protection under the law. Certainly the Tuscaloosa community could hardly have placed itself in a worse light than it did by insisting that the Negroes' defense be left in local hands, and then permitting them to be lynched, and the lynchers to go unpunished.

The truth of the matter is that lynching is not to protect southern women but southern profits, to continue the exploitation of the Negro, and to terrorize him to the point that he dare not make any resistance or protest. The southern commission itself finds that "at the bottom of much of this so-called “defense of lynching" lies the determination of many white people to continue the economic exploitation of the Negro. May I illustrate by the cotton-crop situation in Tuscaloosa County? There pursuant to recent Government policy certain cotton acreage was plowed under. Six thousand cotton checkwere sent into the county as compensation for the plowed under cot

In spite of the fact that Negro farmers represent over 80 percent of the farm occupiers, and in spite of the notorious fact how they are cheated in their accounts by their white landlords, only 115 of the 6,000 checks were made out to Negroes, and even as to these 115 checks the southern commission could not find a single instance where a Negro farmer got the actual procvels of the check. There is the secret for lynching, both in Alabama and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

The Negro also knows that the lynchers go free. So far as I know, there is not a single case pending where any fair chance of convicting a 1933 lyncher exists. In the Washington Herald, February 7, 1934, Dr. Will W. Alexander, of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation, urging a Federal law, stated that in the 18so recorded lynch

ings from 1900 to 1930, convictions were obtained in only 12 cases, less than 1 percent of the total.

Further, the Negro knows that even the local judges cannot be depended upon; that they will change their stories under pressure. Judge Duer changed his story on the Salisbury lynching; Judge Foster changed his story in the Tuscaloosa lynching. The day after the lynching the press quoted him as saying that nobody had gotten his consent to move the boys from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham as required under Alabama law. But when the southern commission made its report 3 months later he is quoted as saying that he had consented for the boys to be moved. Either the commission, the press, or Judge Foster is wrong.

The Negro knows that the liberal southern press, the liberal organizations in the South, and the southern liberals themselves are powerless. There never has been a lynching which has aroused stronger protest in the. South than the Tuscaloosa lynchings. The Governor of Alabama offered rewards; the liberals of Alabama issued signed statements urging support of law and punishment of the lynchers; the press clamored for convictions, but nothing happened. If nobody else in this country knows it, the Negro knows that the States have failed.

May I also call your attention to a quotation from the brief with the Attorney General, taken from the Montgomery Assizer of August 17, 1933:

A state that does not offer protection to the most loyal of its residents does not deserve the right to call itself a sovereign State.

Finally, may I say that the Negro not only expects legislation from Congress to curb and wipe out the lynching evil but he also expects that this legislation will not be a mere gesture. He expects it to be enforced. If the Department of Justice does not do any more with the new legislation than it has done with the legislation already on the books covering State action in depriving Negro citizens of their civil rights, the law will be a dead letter before it is enacted. I say to you in all sincerity, as one sworn to uphold the law, that if the Negro is to remain loyal, if he is to keep faith in time of national need, he demands protection not as a beggar or ward of the Government but as a citizen of the State where he resides. Senator VAN NUYS. Are there any questions?

Senator DIETERICH. Have you studied this proposed legislation? Mr. HOUSTON. To some extent, sir. I have not studied it critically. Senator DIETERICH. Your recitation of conditions down there is very interesting. I assume that you are generally familiar with this bill.

Mr. HOUSTON. Yes.

Senator DIETERICH. You understand there is no provision in this bill by which the Federal Government may undertake to prosecute the mob that commits the crime, do you not?

Mr. HOUSTON. I appreciate that.

Senator DIETERICH. But it does undertake to prosecute those officers who, by reason of their negligence, have made possible the commission of that crime?

Mr. HOUSTON. If the people of the State do not prosecute.

Mr. HOUSTON. Yes.

Senator DIETERICH. I am wondering if there could not be some provision in this bill that would protect those communities that have not been in the habit of practicing lynching. There are many communities in the United States that have not been in that habit, and it seems to me very unjust to penalize a community when the officers have tried to do what they could do to protect the victim of a mob. I am not talking about the colored race, but I have in mind more particularly three or four people taking a man out and killing him. Mr. HOUSTON. May I say that I do not think the Negro wants to penalize anybody. The only thing he wants is protection. Senator DIETERICH. I understand that.

Mr. HOUSTON. As to the second point, as to those counties where you do not have this same situation, the kind of places you have been talking about, it may very well be that in the examination of the bill the committee may be able to make improvements. I have not studied the bill sufficiently to go into that, but I might call attention to one point, that we must recognize that whatever is the minimum penalty or damages established in the bill, that is going to be the amount that will ordinarily be recovered.

Senator DIETERICH. If we act upon that assumption, do you think we will be justified in disregarding the broad principle of justice that only those who are guilty shall be punished?"

Mr. HOUSTON. Is it not true that this bill also provides a liability of the officers?

Senator DIETERICH. Yes; but I am talking particularly about the matter of the State or county.

Mr. HOUSTON. This much seems to me to be true in that regard: Again we get back to the proposition of the selection of officers who will discharge their duties properly. If the county chooses to elect irresponsible officers, it seems to me that is a problem of the county. It seems to me the county has possibilities of protecting itself with these officers. It has the possibility of requiring sufficient bond. It has many possibilities. I do not want to see any county unjustly penalized. It seems to me the question of the penalty is one of the most vital points.

Senator DIETERICH. I am in sympathy with the principle of the bill and to that section as applied to those who are negligent in protecting human life.

Mr. HOUSTON. May I call attention to a statement by Mr. Chadbourn? I think it might be interesting, Senator, on this particular point:

1894. R. C. O. Benjamin. “Let it be intelligently understood in the beginning that there are good people in the South as well as there are bad people in the South, and that we do not hold the former responsible for the inhuman brutalities of the latter, only so far as lies in their power to prevent them. A failure on the part of the good people of the South, through carelessness, in difference, or wilful neglect, to enforce the law of the land against those who commit crimes, makes them morally responsible for the crimes committed. The smoking ruins of devastated homes and the unsightly aspect of the unburied bodies of murdered Negroes ・ ・ ・ is to less blameable upon the good people of the South who look on with utter in diferer e than it is upon the bad people of the South who actua”y committed the wron,28,”

Translating that to this sitration, I can say that as a prophylactic measure I think it is nece suy to make it so much the business of

every taxpayer that he will be a committee of one, whenever any condition arises which is likely to result in a lynching, to do his best to stop it, because he would be pecuniarily liable for it.

Does that answer your question?

Senator DIETERICH. It answers my question; but I think that there is a vast difference between the two situations to which I have referred, and a vast difference between different sections of the country. I realize that what you say has very great application to conditions that you have described in your testimony.

Mr. HOUSTON. May I make a further answer by saying that, as to the other sections of the country, the chances are the law will never have to be called into effect?

Senator DIETERICH. I understand it would never have to be called into effect for the purpose you are talking about, but it would be called into effect every time three people got together and killed somebody.

Mr. HOUSTON. I have not quite made up my mind as to that, but I think the committee in going over the bill might find it advisable to revamp it in some respects.

STATEMENT OF HERBERT K. STOCKTON, REPRESENTING THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

Senator VAN NUYS. May I next call upon Mr. Herbert K. Stockton, representing the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as a member of its national legal committee.

I understand that he wants to discuss the constitutionality of the bill.

Mr. STOCKTON. I thought if I might add a few words on that subject, it might be helpful to the committee. I worked on the brief on the Dyer bill for Senator Shortridge.

Senator VAN NUYS. State your connection and your experience and your address.

Mr. STOCKTON. My name is Herbert K. Stockton, an attorney of 27 Williams Street, New York City. I am a member of the legal committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I am an active practicing lawyer at that address and have been for 30 years. In 1922 I got into the briefing of the Dyer antilynching bill, at the suggestion of Senator Borah. Following that I joined the legal committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and was for a time on the board of directors. I had to leave that because of the pressure of other work. I am now on the legal committee, and appear here in that capacity. I have done some work in the revising of the draft of this bill and in looking into its constitutionality as compared with the Dyer bill.

Senator VAN NUYS. You may proceed.

Mr. STOCKTON. I wish to make the point that we do not need to fear the bugaboo of unconstitutionality. This bill is an improvement over the Dyer bill. I believe the bill is constitutional, and a little later I will state very briefly why.

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