Mr. JOHNSON. There is a tendency in some quarters to feel that the lynching menace is over. I think that thought to some extent is prevalent in the public mind. It is true that there has been a marked decline in lynchings in the past seven years. The book, Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918, will give you the figures for 30 years, and the supplementary figures are as follows: For the year 1919, 83 persons were lynched; 1920, 65; 1921, 64; 1922, 61; 1923, 28; 1924, 16; 1925, 18. These figures do show a very sharp decline in the last seven years, but I feel, all of us feel, that 18 lynchings in a country such as the United States are just 18 too many.

Senator KING. Are there included in those lynchings the killing of the miners in Herrin, Ill.?

Mr. JOHNSON. No, sir.

Senator KING. You do not call those lynchings?

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, we have not included in these figures such things as riots. We have more or less defined lynching to be where

a mob apprehends, tries according to mob procedure, condemns, and then executes a man-that is, where a mob acts in place of the courts by taking the law into their own hands.

Senator KING. Do you call lynching where a person-and I will not give his name is taken from the penitentiary, as was done in one of the Southern States a few years ago, after he had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment-where such a man was taken from the penitentiary authorities and lynched?

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, sir; we have his case. That was Lindsay Coleman

Senator KING. Oh, no; that is not the case. I will not mention his name except off the record-did you include that case? Mr. JOHNSON. I am pretty sure that case was included.

Senator KING. The only point I am trying to get at is this, what you have included in your figures as lynchings. I want to know what you mean by lynching in view of your statement that you did not include the Herrin massacre.

Mr. SELIGMAN. The case of the man taken from the penitentiary in Georgia is included in our figures of lynchings.

Mr. JOHNSON. Perhaps the line is a very hard one to draw. We have not considered riots as lynchings. If they were included I might suggest that they would swell our figures considerably.

Senator KING. Has there been any disposition to emphasize unlawful killings in the South as lynchings while not taking into account similar cases in the North?

Mr. JOHNSON. Not at all. We have taken the records countrywide. wherever we have been able to find a record of a lynching we have used it.

Senator KING. I am a little curious just to understand the basis of your differentiation between the various classes of deaths which have occurred through violence. I mean, what you call mob violence and define it as lynching, and do not cover some other cases.

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, as I have said, I do not believe we could give a very good definition of what lynching is, but in more general terms it is where a mob takes justice into its own hands instead of leaving such matters to the courts.

Senator KING. How would you term these earlier killings or lynchings that took place in the Western States in the early days, in the mining days particularly?

Mr. JOHNSON. I think they would fall under the definition of lynching.

Senator KING. Where, for instance, a man would be accused of having stolen a horse, or the gold of his associates, and the citizens of the community would meet and try him, give him full opportunity to be heard, and then would order his death; would you call that lynching?

Mr. JOHNSON, Yes, sir.

Senator KING. You may continue your statement.

Mr. JOHNSON. Offsetting the decrease in lynchings within the last year or two is the brutality and atrocity of some of the lynchings that have occurred, even within the past year 1925. Among these 18 lynching, recorded for 1925—and I might throw in parenthetically that there may have been more lynchings than 18, but we have

only taken those which we are sure of-there were 2 negroes burned alive at the stake. There was one man, an inmate of the State Insane Asylum at Milledgeville, Ga., who was charged with having killed a nurse, who was taken out by a mob and beaten to death. That, to my mind, is as atrocious as burning alive at the stake, because treatment of the insane has always been a test of true civilization.

Then we have another case which is illustrative of the extent to which lynching has undermined our institutions. At Clarksdale, Miss., Lindsay Coleman, a negro, a few minutes after he had been acquitted by a jury of a charge of murder, was dragged from the courthouse and lynched by a mob. Now, mind you, gentlemen, this man was dragged from the very courthouse in which, just a few minutes before, he had been acquitted of the charge.

Now, gentlemen of the committee, I have here the supplement of figures on lynchings following the booklet Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918. These have not yet been printed in book form, and for the information of the committee I should like to present these.

Senator KING. They will be received.

(The statement referred to is here made a part of the record, as follows :)

Bragg Williams, murder of woman and child. Sentenced to be hanged; appeal pending.

Bud Johnson, attack on white woman.

Benny Richards, killed divorced wife; wounded sister and four white men.

Lloyd Clay, assault on white woman.

Frank Livingston, killing employer and latter's wife.

John Hartfield, assault on white woman.

Eli Cooper, burned church; leader among people who were planning to rise against white people.

Lucius McCarty, attack on white woman.

Obe Cox, murdered white woman.

Will Brown, attack on white woman.

Jack Gordon, Will Brown, shot two deputies. (1 died.)
Paul Jones, attacking white woman.
Jordan Jameson, murder of sheriff.

TAKEN FROM PEACE OFFICERS AND JAILS

Our records show that in 34 instances mob victims were taken from officers and jails as follows:

The number of lynchings of which the association has record during the year 1920 is 65. However, this figure does not include the victims of the election-day trouble at Ocoee, Fla. Though the press reported only six negroes killed, the assistant secretary in his investigation of the affair heard white residents of the vicinity say that from 30 to 50 were killed.

Of the 65 victims mentioned above, 8 were white men and one was a woman, In 1919 there were 83 lynchings. Were it not for the Ocoee, Fla., incident on election day, it could be said, according to our records, that lynchings had decreased in number. But not only have they not decreased in number, but the brutality of the lynchings is still marked. Eight of the victims, besides those burned at Ocoee, Fla., met death by burning. One of these was a white man, at Billings, Mont., who resisted arrest. Another, because he threatened to kill a white man, was flogged to death by a mob of 40 men.

1 Supplement to Thirty Years of Lynching.