constitutional, there is one proper way of finding it out by putting it up to the body whose business it is to find out whether it is constitutional.

One of the principal evils we have to-day is the feeling of unrest,the feeling among a great many people which has taken different forms but which many of us fear may possilby take the form of direct action. You gentlemen realize there is not one single thing in the United States that is so apt to breed discontent, to breed a belief that the present laws are incapable of taking care of the evils, as quibbling about such a proposition as this, as to whether a law, which is necessary, can be passed because it is constitutional or is not constitutional. If the law should be passed, let us pass one we think is the best law and, if it is not constitutional, then for Heaven's sake let us change the Constitution. The American people are not afraid to change the Constitution; we have changed the Constitution three times in the last few years and there is another change pending which will probably go through.

If the American people can stop long enough to change the Constitution to decide whether the American people shall drink, or not, or 6,000,000 people shall vote, they can at least stop long enough to change the Constitution to say whether 12,000,000 people can live in safety..

Further than that, how can you expect to breed an orderly, lawabiding citizenry when 12,000,000 of its people live continually in fear of bodily violence, when they see yearly from 75 to 100 of their own people burned and murdered by mobs-mobs often led by the whole community-and no organized effort on the part of the body politic to correct it. And the effect is not only on those 12,000,000people, but the effect is as bad and worse on the mobbists. You can not train people for 30 years, unrestrained, to take the law in their own hands and then expect them to wait the orderly processes of the law.

And I beg you, gentlemen, not as a friend of the Negro, but as a friend and lover of democracy in America, to prove to our people and the world that there is no wrong that we won't remedy and we are not going to quibble about little things in correcting one of the greatest evils of our times.

Mr. HUSTED. Do your statistics show that lynchings in the United States are on the decrease or increase, or practically stationary? Mr. SPINGARN. Mr. Johnson knows more about that than myself. I believe it was on the decrease for a certain period, but for the last five or six years it has been decidedly on the increase. We have had during the last year, as I have said, 82 lynchings, 14 where they were burned at the stake. And among those 82 lynchings there have been nine Negro soldiers who have been lynched, some of them for the crime of wearing the American uniform.

Mr. DYER. How many lynchings did you say there have been in the last few years?

Mr. SPINGARN. Since 1889 there have been 3,224 lynchings recorded and we have the name and address, so to speak, of the person lynched. We have a pamphlet giving their actual names and addresses and the crime or alleged crime or absence of crime for which they were lynched. In addition to that, there doubtless were probably a number of other persons lynched. In fact, one of the persons

who kept track of the lynchings says there were two or three hundred

more.

Mr. BOIES. Where were these negroes lynched for wearing the uniform?

Mr. SPINGARN. One in Georgia, I believe. It is in this pamphlet. Mr. TROTTER. I remember one in Missouri when I was over in Paris.

Mr. SPINGARN. There was one in Georgia and one in Mississippi. Mr. DYER. I think the gentleman is mistaken about any lynchings in Missouri for wearing the uniform. I think it was in some other State.

Mr. TROTTER. I do not say for wearing the uniform, but he had the uniform on.

Mr. SPINGARN. I have not the 1919 list. It is in the 1919 list. Mr. THOMAS. I might answer that question personally and say the first soldier was lynched just a few weeks after signing the armistice, and it was because he resisted the attack of some officer or deputy sheriff who was sent to arrest him.

Mr. BOIES. If this statement is going into the record that several negroes were lynched for wearing uniforms, we ought to know where it was done.

Mr. IGOE. Do I understand you to say that these men were lynched because they wore the uniform?

Mr. SPINGARN. Because they wore the uniform. It has been repeatedly said in editorials and by public officials that the great menace to the South to-day is the uniform-wearing colored soldier. And a great deal of embitterment and animosity has been directed to the Negro soldier. I speak of my own knowledge of that. In the A. E. F. I had charge of a large group of colored soldiers and of one of the problems connected with the colored troops, and I hate to say again and again, not once, but hundreds of thousands of times, it was said that the South was going to show the negro who had been in the Army a lesson.

Mr. SUMNERS. Let me ask you a question. Is the prejudice due to the fact that the soldier has the uniform on, or do they mean by that statement, if the statement is made, that the reason underlying is that the soldier who now wears the uniform has been in Europe, and, under the conditions that obtain in France, associated with white women there?

Mr. SPINGARN. No, sir; I think not. I think it simply means that they fear that the soldier, when he put on the uniform, put on the dignity of an American citizen and realized it when he put on that uniform, and he realized, when he served his country, the country owed something to him. And I think the South realized that must be the inevitable consequence and resented it for that reason.

Mr. NEVAL H. THOMAS. There was one camp devoted to the training of negro officers, the camp at Des Moines. One black soldier from Mississippi won his spurs, came home to Mississippi right after the camp as a first lieutenant, waiting to go overseas, and while he was waiting to go overseas, before he had ever had this contact with people who are above colored caste, he was ordered to leave his community immediately. The New York Herald had editorials upon it. The South simply hated him because at camp he won the dignity of an American citizen and had won honor of dying for all Americans.

Mr. SUMNERS. What is his name?

Mr. THOMAS. I will get the editorial.

STATEMENT OF MISS ESTHER M. SMITH, OF PHILADELPHIA, PA., REPRESENTING THE RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS.

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 Americanl and of course he could not speak as a colored American. I came al, 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

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. And 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.