t
prompted by motives of robbery. The suggestion of the whites was that
"brutal lust was the incentive, and as there are nearly 200 Negroes living
within a radius of five miles of the place the conclusion was inevitable
that some of them were the perpetrators."

Upon this "suggestion" probably made by the real criminal, the mob acted
upon the "conclusion" and arrested ten Afro-Americans, four of whom, they
tell the world, confessed to the deed of murdering Richard L. Johnson and
outraging his daughter, Jeanette. These four men, Berrell Jones, Moses
Johnson, Jim and John Packer, none of them twenty-five years of age, upon
this conclusion, were taken from jail, hanged, shot, and burned while yet
alive the night of Oct. 12. The same report says Mr. Johnson was on the
best of terms with his Negro tenants.

The race thus outraged must find out the facts of this awful hurling of
men into eternity on supposition, and give them to the indifferent and
apathetic country. We feel this to be a garbled report, but how can we
prove it?

Near Vicksburg, Miss., a murder was committed by a gang of burglars. Of
course it must have been done by Negroes, and Negroes were arrested for
it. It is believed that two men, Smith Tooley and John Adams belonged to a
gang controlled by white men and, fearing exposure, on the night of July
4, they were hanged in the Court House yard by those interested in
silencing them. Robberies since committed in the same vicinity have been
known to be by white men who had their faces blackened. We strongly
believe in the innocence of these murdered men, but we have no proof. No
other news goes out to the world save that which stamps us as a race of
cutthroats, robbers and lustful wild beasts. So great is Southern hate and
prejudice, they legally(?) hung poor little thirteen-year-old Mildrey
Brown at Columbia, S.C., Oct. 7, on the circumstantial evidence that she
poisoned a white infant. If her guilt had been proven unmistakably, had
she been white, Mildrey Brown would never have been hung.

The country would have been aroused and South Carolina disgraced forever
for such a crime. The Afro-American himself did not know as he should have
known as his journals should be in a position to have him know and act.

Nothing is more definitely settled than he must act for himself. I have
shown how he may employ the boycott, emigration and the press, and I feel
that by a combination of all these agencies can be effectua