tree and his
body riddled with bullets. A dispatch which describes the lynching, ends
as follows. "Upon his back was found pinned this morning the following:
'Warning to all Negroes that are too intimate with white girls. This the
work of one hundred best citizens of the South Side.'"

There can be no doubt from the announcement made by this "one hundred best
citizens" that they understood full well the character of the relationship
which existed between Edwards and the girl, but when the dispatches were
sent out, describing the affair, it was claimed that Edwards was lynched
for rape.

SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH

In a county in Mississippi during the month of July the Associated Press
dispatches sent out a report that the sheriff's eight-year-old daughter
had been assaulted by a big, black, burly brute who had been promptly
lynched. The facts which have since been investigated show that the girl
was more than eighteen years old and that she was discovered by her father
in this young man's room who was a servant on the place. But these facts
the Associated Press has not given to the world, nor did the same agency
acquaint the world with the fact that a Negro youth who was lynched in
Tuscumbia, Ala., the same year on the same charge told the white girl who
accused him before the mob, that he had met her in the woods often by
appointment. There is a young mulatto in one of the State prisons of the
South today who is there by charge of a young white woman to screen
herself. He is a college graduate and had been corresponding with, and
clandestinely visiting her until he was surprised and run out of her room
en deshabille by her father. He was put in prison in another town to save
his life from the mob and his lawyer advised that it were better to save
his life by pleading guilty to charges made and being sentenced for years,
than to attempt a defense by exhibiting the letters written him by this
girl. In the latter event, the mob would surely murder him, while there
was a chance for his life by adopting the former course. Names, places and
dates are not given for the same reason.

The excuse has come to be so safe, it is not surprising that a
Philadelphia girl, beautiful and well educated, and of good family, should
make a confession published in all the daily papers of that city October,
1894, that she had been stealing for some time, and that to cover one of
her thefts, she had said she had been bound and gagged in her