for which they were hanged. It
tells the world, with perhaps greater emphasis than any other feature of
the record, that Lynch Law has become so common in the United States that
the finding of the dead body of a Negro, suspended between heaven and
earth to the limb of a tree, is of so slight importance that neither the
civil authorities nor press agencies consider the matter worth
investigating. July 21, in Shelby County, Tenn., a colored man by the name
of Charles Martin was lynched. July 30, at Paris, Mo., a colored man named
William Steen shared the same fate. December 28, Mack Segars was announced
to have been lynched at Brantley, Alabama. August 31, at Yarborough,
Texas, and on September 19, at Houston, a colored man was found lynched,
but so little attention was paid to the matter that not only was no record
made as to why these last two men were lynched, but even their names were
not given. The dispatches simply stated that an unknown Negro was found
lynched in each case.

There are friends of humanity who feel their souls shrink from any
compromise with murder, but whose deep and abiding reverence for womanhood
causes them to hesitate in giving their support to this crusade against
Lynch Law, out of fear that they may encourage the miscreants whose deeds
are worse than murder. But to these friends it must appear certain that
these five men could not have been guilty of any terrible crime. They were
simply lynched by parties of men who had it in their power to kill them,
and who chose to avenge some fancied wrong by murder, rather than submit
their grievances to court.

LYNCHED BECAUSE THEY WERE SAUCY

At Moberly, Mo., February 18 and at Fort Madison, S.C., June 2, both in
1892, a record was made in the line of lynching which should certainly
appeal to every humanitarian who has any regard for the sacredness of
human life. John Hughes, of Moberly, and Isaac Lincoln, of Fort Madison,
and Will Lewis in Tullahoma, Tenn., suffered death for no more serious
charge than that they "were saucy to white people." In the days of slavery
it was held to be a very serious matter for a colored person to fail to
yield the sidewalk at the demand of a white person, and it will not be
surprising to find some evidence of this intolerance existing in the days
of freedom. But the most that could be expected as a penalty for acting or
speaking saucily to a white person would be a slight physical chastisement
to make the Negro "know