d its father's name and thus prevent the killing of
another Negro "rapist." A case of "fearful depravity."

The very week the "leading citizens" of Memphis were making a spectacle of
themselves in defense of all white women of every kind, an Afro-American,
M. Stricklin, was found in a white woman's room in that city. Although
she made no outcry of rape, he was jailed and would have been lynched, but
the woman stated she bought curtains of him (he was a furniture dealer)
and his business in her room that night was to put them up. A white
woman's word was taken as absolutely in this case as when the cry of rape
is made, and he was freed.

What is true of Memphis is true of the entire South. The daily papers last
year reported a farmer's wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child.
When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took the
mule from the plow and fled. The dispatches also told of a woman in South
Carolina who gave birth to a Negro child and charged three men with being
its father, _every one of whom has since disappeared_. In Tuscumbia, Ala.,
the colored boy who was lynched there last year for assaulting a white
girl told her before his accusers that he had met her there in the woods
often before.

Frank Weems of Chattanooga who was not lynched in May only because the
prominent citizens became his body guard until the doors of the
penitentiary closed on him, had letters in his pocket from the white woman
in the case, making the appointment with him. Edward Coy who was burned
alive in Texarkana, January 1, 1892, died protesting his innocence.
Investigation since as given by the Bystander in the _Chicago Inter
Ocean_, October 1, proves:

1. The woman who was paraded as a victim of violence was of bad
character; her husband was a drunkard and a gambler.

2. She was publicly reported and generally known to have been criminally
intimate with Coy for more than a year previous.

3. She was compelled by threats, if not by violence, to make the charge
against the victim.

4. When she came to apply the match Coy asked her if she would burn him
after they had "been sweethearting" so long.

5. A large majority of the "superior" white men prominent in the affair
are the reputed fathers of mulatto children.

These are not pleasant facts, but they are illustrative of the vital
phase of the so-called race question, which should properly be
designated an earnest inqui