tors, preachers, governors and bishops, then the Negro must give
to the world his side of the awful story.

A word as to the charge itself. In considering the third reason assigned
by the Southern white people for the butchery of blacks, the question must
be asked, what the white man means when he charges the black man with
rape. Does he mean the crime which the statutes of the civilized states
describe as such? Not by any means. With the Southern white man, any
mesalliance existing between a white woman and a colored man is a
sufficient foundation for the charge of rape. The Southern white man says
that it is impossible for a voluntary alliance to exist between a white
woman and a colored man, and therefore, the fact of an alliance is a proof
of force. In numerous instances where colored men have have been lynched
on the charge of rape, it was positively known at the time of lynching,
and indisputably proven after the victim's death, that the relationship
sustained between the man and woman was voluntary and clandestine, and
that in no court of law could even the charge of assault have been
successfully maintained.

It was for the assertion of this fact, in the defense of her own race,
that the writer hereof became an exile; her property destroyed and her
return to her home forbidden under penalty of death, for writing the
following editorial which was printed in her paper, the _Free Speech,_ in
Memphis, Tenn., May 21,1892:

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
near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for
killing a white man, and five on the same old racket--the 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 country believes the old threadbare 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.

But threats cannot suppress the truth, and while the Negro suffers the
soul deformity, resultant from two and a half centuries of slavery, he is
no more guilty of this vilest of all vile c