e duty it was to rule.
With no longer the fear of "Negro Domination" before their eyes, the
white man's second excuse became valueless. With the Southern governments
all subverted and the Negro actually eliminated from all participation in
state and national elections, there could be no longer an excuse for
killing Negroes to prevent "Negro Domination."

Brutality still continued; Negroes were whipped, scourged, exiled, shot
and hung whenever and wherever it pleased the white man so to treat them,
and as the civilized world with increasing persistency held the white
people of the South to account for its outlawry, the murderers invented
the third excuse--that Negroes had to be killed to avenge their assaults
upon women. There could be framed no possible excuse more harmful to the
Negro and more unanswerable if true in its sufficiency for the white man.

Humanity abhors the assailant of womanhood, and this charge upon the Negro
at once placed him beyond the pale of human sympathy. With such unanimity,
earnestness and apparent candor was this charge made and reiterated that
the world has accepted the story that the Negro is a monster which the
Southern white man has painted him. And today, the Christian world feels,
that while lynching is a crime, and lawlessness and anarchy the certain
precursors of a nation's fall, it can not by word or deed, extend sympathy
or help to a race of outlaws, who might mistake their plea for justice and
deem it an excuse for their continued wrongs.

The Negro has suffered much and is willing to suffer more. He recognizes
that the wrongs of two centuries can not be righted in a day, and he tries
to bear his burden with patience for today and be hopeful for tomorrow.
But there comes a time when the veriest worm will turn, and the Negro
feels today that after all the work he has done, all the sacrifices he has
made, and all the suffering he has endured, if he did not, now, defend his
name and manhood from this vile accusation, he would be unworthy even of
the contempt of mankind. It is to this charge he now feels he must make
answer.

If the Southern people in defense of their lawlessness, would tell the
truth and admit that colored men and women are lynched for almost any
offense, from murder to a misdemeanor, there would not now be the
necessity for this defense. But when they intentionally, maliciously and
constantly belie the record and bolster up these falsehoods by the words
of legisla