Mr. SUMNERS. What is his name? Mr. THOMAS. I will get the editorial. OF STATEMENT OF MISS ESTHER M. SMITH, OF PHILADELPHIA, Miss SMITH. I want to say but a very few words, but I want to say with great vehemence that my society is deeply interested in the welfare of our whole beloved country, black and white, and in her good name, and that we stand for and encourage any wise legislation which is preventive of mob violence and which is for the upholding of law and order the country over. I thank you. STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM TROTTER, BOSTON, MASS., SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL EQUAL RIGHTS LEAGUE. Mr. TROTTER. Mr. Chairman, I am glad I am here to-day. Mr. Spingarn said he did not speak as a friend of the colored American, and of course he could not speak as a colored American. I came all the way here that you might hear on this question from the colored people themselves. I am the executive secretary of the National Equal Rights League, which is an organization of the colored people and for the colored people and led by the colored people. We colored people too, like Mr. Spingarn, who are second to no one in our loyalty and patriotism, are opposed to lynching, because it is a discredit to our country. But we are the victims, and I came here to tell you the colored people feel their National Government owes it to them to protect them after all these years of mob murder from a continuance of this evil and intolerable outrage, especially at the close of a world war for world democracy, where everybody was promised humanity and protection of their lives if the victory was won over the German forces of autocracy. The colored American people claim that they have done enough ever since they have been in this country-and they have been in it from the very beginning --that they have shown themselves willing to sacrifice enough, shown themselves loyal enough and peaceable enough to have this mob murdering of their race, done to them simply because of their race, stopped by the Federal Government-because no one else has been able or seems able to stop it. All we know is that we are the victims of mob murdering, mob murdering to a terrible extent, and mob murdering carried to such an extent that truly it is a disgrace to our country before the civilized world. Now, gentlemen of the committee, whenever the outraging of citizens is carried on to such an extent that it becomes a disgrace even to the citizens of the race who are guilty of the outrage, you can realize how intolerable the condition must be for those people who are the victims of the outrage. And that is our position. I came here to reiterate the position taken on this matter by the Rev. J. G. Robinson, organizer of the National Equal Rights League, before the subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary of which Senator Dillingham was chairman, when he said --and our white friend has said the same thing-since there are some competent And authorities who believe that a law for this purpose is constitutional, can be framed so that it is constitutional, we object to our Government and our Congress refusing to make any effort to have this thing cured by Federal action because of a difference of opinion among lawyers as to the constitutionality of a law for this purpose. our plea and our demand is that our Congress shall frame a bill for this purpose, a bill framed as well as possible for the purpose of overcoming the objections of those who say such a bill is unconstitutional, and that it be enacted and that it be put into operation-a bill that is going to be effective to stop the outrage. And then, when you have that kind of a bill, let it be up to those who want this country to be disgraced by lynchings and who want the colored people to be the victims of lynchings, to raise the question as to the constitutionality of such a law, and then let it be fought out. And we colored people take the position, that Mr. Robinson took, that then is the time when the whole question will come to a head. And, gentlemen of the committee, it must come to a head. Our country can not exist among the civilized nations of the world if, as time goes on and progress and civilization and christianity goes on, this lynching of citizens, because of their race, is to be carried on from everlasting to everlasting. And there is no better time for it to come to a head than when the Congress of the United States says this thing shall stop and the Federal Government by law shall stop it, and then arises the question as to whether this Congress has the power to stop it and it is carried before the Supreme Court, and it is found that there is no constitutional way to stop the mob murdering of loyal citizens, numbering into the millions merely because of the race and color that God gave them. And if that time comes, then we are in favor of an amendment to the Constitution, because our Constitution is based upon the theory and the principle of equal protection of the-law and protection of life, anyway. If you can not have protection at least of life we colored people are thrown back. We are not satisfied simply to have our lives safe; we want our equal rights safe. But we have a big battle; we have a battle even here in the Capitol of the Nation and the battle has begun for the equality of the civil rights according to the civil rights bill of Charles Sumner. We are stopped in the fight we more reasonably could be engaged about, to secure equality of rights, by having to fight for the basic right of life itself. And that very fact is something intolerable, something that is a disgrace to our country. As my time is limited, I want to say that it is the order of the day for nations or a group of nations to take up these matters of gross inhumanity. That has been proved by the world democracy war, and by the peace treaties made by the world peace conference. Our friends of the Jewish American race went to Europe and they were allowed to go, they were given passports to go, and when they got over there they got at the business of stopping the European pogrom, not only by national but by international action and decree. Naturally, we feel we can come back home, since they did not put into any of the peace documents the stopping of American pogroms, and ask our own country, our own national Government, to stop the American pogrom because of race or color. This is the way they did it when they came to the insecure nations in the peace treaty, or the weaker nations being formed. They put them on the basis which they thought was proper for every nation to be and they said "Austria, you must agree to this, that all Austrian nationals, without distinction of race, shall be equal before the law and Austria must assure complete protection of the life and liberties of all its inhabitants, without distinction of birth or race." They said to Poland: "Poland, you must undertake to assure a complete protection of life and liberty to all the inhabitants of Poland without distinction of birth nationality, race, or religion." Now, we are simply asking that this country get upon the basis that an international tribunal and conference decreed and required of Austria and Poland, Roumania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and other nations that they should get upon and that was to be carried out by the agreement of all the nations that were fighting Germany under what they call the covenant of the league of nations. Now, really, since this world peace treaty did not provide any measures or did not even require the enunciation or have the enunciation of the principle that is in conformity with the policies of democracy for the world, certainly it is in order for our country that saved the world for democracy, as our leaders said, to put itself in line with the idealistic pronouncements and with the noble promises made by all the responsible leaders of our country, at a time when they were calling upon all the citizens, regardless of race or color, to make their sacrifice, and even to offer their lives upon the altar of this great purpose. And what was one of the purposes then announced by our leader, and we must respect him as our leader regardless of politics, was "America, in coming into this war thought that all the world would now become conscious that there was a single cause of justice and liberty for men of every kind and of every place." We are simply asking that that practice, that notorious practice, that almost characteristic practice of our country, which is entirely in violation and entirely out of accord with all those promises and all those purposes enunciated for this terrible world conflict, shall be opposed by the Federal Government. The State governments do not even arrest or indict the offenders. We do not need to quibble over it; we know it. We colored people, even whose women in a pregnant state, as in the case of Mary Turner-and you ought to know the facts-this woman, advanced in pregnancy, who simply said in regard to a lynching of five colored men on one limb that day, one of them her husband, that if she knew who did it, she would have them arrested, was taken by that mob, taken down the street, and she was hung to that limb by her heels; kerosene was thrown over her clothing and fire set to it and was burned off to her body, and then her body was opened by a great knife and when the infant fell to the ground, crying, it was crushed under the heels of the lynchers. That was done to Mary Turner, of Georgia, Mary Turner of noble memory, in the last year of the World War by the United States of America. Gentlemen of the committee, as a protest against that treatment of my race, as a protest by you against the continuation of that practice in your country, I appeal to you to make from these bills here a law. I have not had a chance to examine them, but I want this law like Mr. Moores says. Mr. YATES. Can you give the date and place of that outrage? Mr. TROTTER. Yes, sir. Mr. DYER. I think Mr. Johnson has the data on this. Mr. TROTTER. I will leave the data to be furnished by the other gentlemen. Mr. SPINGARN. It was May 17, 1919, in Banks County, Ga Mr. TROTTER. I like this bill. It says because of race, nationality, or religion. That is the new order of the day, that is the world order, that is the European order. Why should we be behind Europe? That is what they required. They did not require it of themselves, their allies, but they required it of all those whom they could force and, what is more, in saying so, they said that was the only proper practice and that all constituted subjects of government must have it because of race, nationality, or religion. I want to thank you gentlemen for this opportunity to be heard and to say that this is our position which is in a petition to the new league of nations in these words: The peace of the world has not been made secure unless and until the union of civilized governments declares for identity of public rights and protection of life without distinction of race and color. Mr. Chairman, I ask that I be permitted to enter into the record the anti-lynching petition which was presented to President Wilson in Paris while he was over there exercising the powers of "the President from the other side. The CHAIRMAN. That may be inserted. (The petition referred to is as follows:) Hon. WOODROW WILSON, HEADQUARTERS OF DELEGATE TO PARIS President of the United States of America, Maison Blanche, 11, Place des Etats Unis, Paris. SIR: Lawlessness and mob murder against citizens of color continue to take place in our common country, the United States of America. This was so while the world peace agreement was being written. Day before yesterday, while the entente allies are waiting for the peace treaty to be signed by Germany, a man of color was taken by the mob from the courthouse itself, in the State of Missouri, and lynched in the courthouse yard, after the court had decided that life imprisonment was the punishment due the victim for killing officers when arrested. Yesterday here in France in your Memorial Day address at the graves of American soldiers you declared: "I stand consecrated to the lads sent here to die." Many of them were lads of color, gallant and loyal, fighting for France, for civilization, and for world democracy. Will you therefore for their sakes and that they shall not have died in vain, grant to their kin and race at home protection of rights and of life in the world peace agreement. And will you not at once send a special message to Congress recommending that lynching be made a crime against the Federal Government? This request is made in the name of the National Equal Rights League, whose elected delegate to Paris I am. Yours for world democracy, WILLIAM TROTTER, Mr. TROTTER. I would also like to ask the privilege of inserting the petition that was presented for an amendment to the league of nations in behalf of democracy for the colored Americans, and as it refers to this country, I would feel it was the fair thing for me to to have this in this record that the Congress of the United States might know what the National Equal Rights League was saying to the league of nations about the treatment in this country of the negro, if we want to be above board about it. I would like to have it entered in the record for that reason. The CHAIRMAN. It may be inserted. PETITION FOR AN AMENDMENT TO THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS. [By the delegation of race petitioners of the National Colored World Democracy Congress conducted by the National Equal Rights League of the United States of America, in behalf of 14,000,000 colored Americans of African extraction, 10, Place de la Bourse, Paris, July 3, 1919.] TO THE COUNCIL OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND TO THE PREAMBLE. Whereas during the world war against the Teutonic Allies, incarnating the spirit of autocracy, a war of terrible blood and devastation, the most sanguinary and destructive in history, and after the surrender of said forces, the avowed and heralded object of fighting was, on the part of the Entente Allies and associated nations, that of establishing liberty, humanity, and democracy for the world and for all persons therein; (see Annex A,) and Whereas incidentally colored Americans participated (as did the colored nationals of all the Entente Allies and associated nations) in the fighting and in all the various modes of combatting by work and sacrifice the said armies of autocracy, in full proportion to their numbers (see Annex B); and Whereas notoriously and indisputably colored Americans are deprived of and denied, either in law or in fact, or in both, full liberty, democracy and humanity in much of the domain of the United States of America and by such influence to some extent in fact in Canada and Cuba (see Annex C); and Whereas neither in the covenant of the League of Nations, nor in the treaty of peace itself, that with Germany, nor in the treaty with Austria, nor in any of the conventions of the conference of world peace is there any word or clause giving or designed to give full liberty, democracy, or humanity to the colored citizens of the allied or associated nations, or which operates to abolish any of the abridgements or deprivations of liberty, democracy, and humanity notoriously suffered by colored Americans, or to change in any of these respects their pre-World-War condition; and Whereas there has been no action of the conference of world peace to the end of protecting these millions of colored Americans in the assurance in fact of the full privileges of citizenship and against any discrimination against them because of race, of assuring thein full protection of life and liberty without distinction of race or the enjoyment by all citizens of the associated American powers of same civil and political rights without distinction as to race or religion; and such absence of action constitutes a failure by default to execute and fulfill the proclaimed purpose of the World War and the solemn promises of the accredited spokesmen of the Entente Allies; and Whereas said above-mentioned nonaction leaves unabated the dissatisfaction and unrest of said colored Americans, in fact, increases their resentment, and by shutting forever the door of hope for the attainment of respect and equality of treatment, turning despair into desperation, creates a condition calculated to disturb the peace of nations, which peace is the chief object of the peace conference; the National Equal Rights League and the National Colored World Democracy Congress, assembled by said league, representing the 14,000,000 colored Americans, more or less, who furnished nearly half a million brave soldiers for the Allies and associated nations, soldiers who never faltered or flinched, who freely offered their lives for democracy for all, herewith petitions the League of Nations to insert in its covenant a clause designed to vouchsafe to this and other like racial minorities among the citizens of the allied and associated nations full democracy. To this end we submit for consideration and adoption either (a) the clause sent by cable to the League of Nations commission in March, 1919, and on record with the secretary of that commission in the following form: "Real democracy for world being avowed aim of nations establishing League of Nations, the high contracting parties agree to grant their citizens, respectively, full liberty, rights of democracy, and protection of life without distinction based on race, color, or previous condition"; or (b), add the following words to section B of article 23 of the covenant of the League of |