[Submitted by the National Association for the Advancement Colored People. Headquarters: 70 Fifth Avenue, New York, January, 1920.]

Supplementary to data previously submitted as to why Congress should investigate race riots and lynchings the following is submitted:

1. Increase in cruelty and ferocity of lynchings. Number of Negroes burned at the stake: 1918, before death, 2; after death, 4; 1919, before death, 11; after death, 3. 2. Local sheriffs and peace officers have allowed prisoners to be taken from them without bona fide efforts being made to protect prisoners and to hold them for legal trial: 1918, 13; 1919, 34.

In the year 1918:

Alabama, 2. November 10, William Bird, taken from jail at Sheffield; November 12. George Whiteside, taken from Colbert County jail at Tuscumbia. Arkansas, 1. December 17, Willie Jones, taken from jail at Newport. Georgia, 4. March 26, Spencer Evans, taken from Taliaferro County jail, Crawfordsville, Ga.; May 23, James Cobb, taken from jail at Cordele: August 11, Ike Radney, taken from sheriff and two deputies at Colquitt; September 3, John Gilham, taken from sheriff and deputy near Gray, Jones County.

Illinois, 1. April 5, Robert F. Praeger, taken from four policemen at Collinsville. Louisiana, 2. April 22, Clyde Williams, taken from deputy sheriff near Monroe; August 8, Bubber Hall, taken from sheriff at Bastrop.

Mississippi, 1. April 18. Claud Singleton, taken from county jail at Poplarville. North Carolina, 1. November 5. George Taylor, taken from "deputized citizen" at Rolesville.

111 before death; 3 after.

South Carolina, 1. February 23, Walter Best, taken from sheriff and two deputies at Fairfax, Barnwell County.

In the year 1919:

Alabama, 3. June 22, Frank Foukal, taken from sheriff in county jail at Bay Minette; September 29, Robert Croskey, taken from county officials near Montgomery; September 29. Miles Phifer, taken from county officials near Montgomery. Arkansas. 2. April 23, Sam McIntyre, taken from county jail at Forest City; November 11, Jordan Jameson, taken from officials at Magnolia.

Colorado, 2. September 13. Salvador Ortez, taken from jail at Pueblo; September 13, Jose Gonzales, taken from jail at Pueblo.

Florida, 4. March 13, Joe Walker, taken from officers at Greenville: March 14, Bud Johnson, taken from officers near Castlebury; September 8, Bowman Cook, taken from jail at Jacksonville; September 8, John Morine, taken from jail at Jacksonville. Georgia, 5. April 14, unknown Negro taken from jail at Millen; May 24, Berry Washington, taken from jail at Millen; August 5, unidentified Negro taken from city barracks at Cochran; November 3, Paul Jones, taken from 2 deputy sheriffs at Macon; December 21, Charles West, taken from officers on train going from Jacksonville, Fla., to Americus, Ga.

Louisiana, 3. January 30, Sampson Smith, taken from sheriff near Monroe; Sep tember 6, unidentified Negro, taken from sheriff at Morehouse Parish; October 29, Gus Jackson, taken from police or sheriff at Shreveport.

Mississippi, 3. June 28, unidentified Negro, taken from marshal near Richton; November 8, Robert Motley, taken from jail at Lambert; November 28, Neville Foxworth, taken from officers at Foxworth.

Missouri, 2. May 28, Jay Lynch, taken from officers in court at Lamar; November 16, Halley Richardson, taken from Macon County jail.

Nebraska, 1. September 28, Will Brown, taken from jail at Omaha.

North Carolina, 2. February 6, John Daniels, taken from jail of Onslow County; August 20, Walter Elliott, taken from sheriff at Louisberg.

Tennessee, 1. October 26, Henry Booth, taken from jail at Humboldt.

Texas, 3. January 20, Bragg Williams, taken from jail at Hillsboro; June 17, Lemuel Walters, taken from jail at Longview: July 24, Chilton Jennings, taken from jail at Gilmer.

Washington, 1. November 11, Britt Smith, taken from jail at Centralia.

West Virginia, 2. December 15, E. D. Whitfield, taken from sheriff and deputies while being taken from Chapmanville to Huntington: December 15, Earl Whitney, taken from sheriff and deputies while being taken from Chapmanville to Huntington.

3. Convictions noted in only two cases in 1918 and 1919:

The only convictions noted were those of 15 men sentenced to from 14 months to 6 years for attempting to break into the jail at Winston-Salem, N. C., for the purpose of lynching Russell High, a Negro; and the fining of 12 men who pleaded guilty in court to the lynching of Frank Foukal, a white man, at Bay Minette, Ala. The men pleaded guilty by agreement and the fines ranged from $100 to $300.

REWARDS OFFERED FAIL TO PRODUCE RESULTS.

The publishers of the San Antonio (Tex.) Express, who established a fund of $100,000 to be used as rewards for bringing about conviction of lynchers, telegraphed on January 10, 1920, that since the establishment of the fund, on August 4, 1918, No claims for reward have neen presented."

In addition to the San Antonio Express reward fund, liberal rewards have been offered in three instances for the apprehension of participants in lynching mobs. In the case of the lynching of Berry Washington, at Milan, Ga., $1,500 reward was offered, $1,000 of which was offered by Gov. Dorsey; $750 of a $1,300 reward was offered by Gov. Dorsey for the apprehension of the lynchers of Eli Cooper at Ocmulgee, Ga.; and Gov. Bickett, of North Carolina, has offered rewards of $400 each for the arrest and conviction of members of the mob which lynched a negro at Franklinton, N. C., on December 27.

In many instances special grand juries were called, but their reports have generally been that they were "unable to find information as to the identity of any of the lynchers."

These convictions were in 1919.

4. Governors confess themselves powerless:

In addition to the fact that convictions are rare and that local authorities do not protect prisoners from lynching mobs, governors have confessed themselves powerless

to prevent lynchings or to act unless requested to by local authorities who fear to offend mobs and who are at times participants in lynchings.

Gov. Bilbo's declaration that "I am utterly powerless," etc., has already been alluded to in our printed brief of September, 1919.

In a letter addressed to the secretary of the association February 21, 1918, Gov. Tom C. Rye, of Tennessee, said:

"I deplore this murder (that of Jim McIlheron at Estill Springs) as much as your association or any other citizen of our common country, but I could not anticipate that local officers, whose duty it is to take custody of prisoners, would fail to accord protection, nor could any action upon my part be taken without being requested so to do by the local police authorities or court officers."

In his annual report submitted to the legislature July 3, 1918, Gov. Hugh M. Dorsey of Georgia said:

"When information of impending mob violence is brought to the attention of the executive he should not be handicapped by having to await a call for military assistance from local authorities."

STATEMENT OF MR. ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKÉ.

Mr. GRIMKÉ. I am head of the local branch of the national association here, and my legal residence is in Boston.

Mr. Chairman, I have been tremendously interested in this hearing, and I think you ought to know how it has reacted on me, a colored man, 70 years of age. A most appalling situation has been described here, wrongs which are almost incredible, and the effect that has been produced on me when these 12,000,000 of people have come up here to speak to the lawmakers, the great Judiciary Committee of the House (all of you, I suppose, are authorities on constitutional law), the reaction on me is a certain apathy on the part of the committee in the presence of these wrongs. "What can we do about them? We know they exist; they are terrible, and you have our sympathy." But do you know that lynchings are going on of these 12,000,000 of people and that this thing is burning into them. What is it? Criminal anarchy in the United States, which the Attorney General is pursuing night and day when the colored people are not involved in it. Now, what we want, we want you to look at our case, just to look at our case as we would look at it as American citizens. Here we are,

a part of the United States; we have been here 250 or 300 years, with our never having done anything to it but on the good side amd never having gotten anything out of it but on the bad side. And from a few millions of people we have grown to twelve millions and this terrible wrong is eating into the souls of these twelve million people in your own midst.

(Thereupon, at 12.15 o'clock p. m., the committee took a recess to 2 o'clock p. m.)

AFTER RECESS.

The committee reconvened pursuant to recess at 2.15 o'clock p. m., Hon. Andrew J. Volstead (chairman) presiding.

The CHAIRMAN. I think we might as well proceed. It is very difficult to get a full attendance of members of the committee at this time. I assume you will want to have your views put in the record so they can be read as a part of the hearing.

STATEMENT OF MR. ARCHIBALD H. GRIMKÉ-Resumed.

Mr. GRIMKÉ. Mr. Chairman, I was wondering just as this committee adjourned at noon how long it would take the Committee on

the Judiciary to find the way to reach a situation in the South in which the whole thing was reversed, where the colored people not only were in a large majority but actually had the money rower and the physical power and were lynching at will and burning white men who committed what they call rare upon colored women.

It seems to me, Mr. Chairman, to inquire what would be done under such circumstances? Would not this committee find a way to put an end to that situation in which members of the white race, men, women, and children, were being outraged in that way. Such a situation would not exist. It would not exist more than two or three weeks once it got up here. Of course, what we are up against is southern proraganda in which the colored reorle are put down as brutes, and that the main thing for which colored men are lynched is this usual crime. That is distributed all over the country by newspapers and word of mouth, and the southerners are here in the North and everywhere talking the thing up and have infected everybody with it so that if you are a white person you are not free from the infection.

That is what we are up against. think that we have shown in this case what underlies the whole thing is that there is this propaganda based on inferiority of a certain class of people in the country, and the thing is reached night and day subconsciously and consciously to the white men and white women and taught to the white child. All these colored people whom you see are so utterly inferior to you that there is no rossible way for them to ever get un to your level. Now, you see what the effect of that sort of teaching is going to be on reorle, unless there is anything introduced to change the r sychology of the Nation because that is the only way you can abolish lynching.

That sort of thing affects the self-respect of the colored people; it affects the sense of justice and the conscience of white people, and would make a white man believe that this person is not a human being, but he is a human being, with rights and wrongs just like white people.

Nobody seems to believe it, because you can listen apparently with utmost indifference to these terrible outrages, which burned themselves into us while the committee had not even heard of them; 82 persons lynched in one year in the United States, 78 of them colored people. Why? Because the papers keep all that out. There is no propaganda to spread and to develop public opinion against this lynching thing. Why? Because persons who are lynched are colored. In Mexico where there were only 29 lynched in a year in the whole of that country, the powers of the National Government are stirred to excite the indignation of this country and bring it to the boiling point of war. There is absolutely no comparison between the two.

The rights which we ask here are the simple rights of American citizens. Can not we live in this country at peace with ourselves and at peace with our neighbors? If we walk upon the street and happen to jostle a belligerent white man in the South, it is a signal for what? For a lynching bee. It is an impudent Negro. That is the cry If a man wants to look into a Bible in a white churchthis really happened-and took the Bible out of the church, he was lynched because he wanted to read the Scriptures belonging to the

white church. That seems incredible, but that actually took place. So we are up against it, Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen. If you could really put yourselves in our places and just reverse the whole thing, suppose that a lot of colored people were lynching white people, men and women, and sometimes children, as it has occurred, do you think that you would sit down quietly under it? Do you not think that you would find a way, a committee like this, Constitution or no Constitution, that you would find a way to reach those colored people who were doing it, and save the honor of the country and protect the white men and women and children in peace and in safety. Can not we get the same protection? Can not we get anything like that? Look at the Arkansas matter. There was simply an attempt on the part of some colored tenant farmers to get an accounting. There had been no accounting for years, and what was the trouble? Because they employed one of their Southern lawyers they made a case against them in order to keep them in this sort of slavery; tenantfarm slavery. Never mind how much you make in a year, $1,600 a a year, it is all eaten up at the end of the year, and there was the absolute refusal to give you any itemized account of what you had done, and you and your family living in penury, in the utmost poverty, and when at last you ask for it, what happens?

Mr. SUMNERS. Would it interrupt you to state the case you are speaking of?

Mr. GRIMKE. Elaine, Ark.

Mr. SUMNERS. What date?

Mr. GRIMKE. That happened just a few months ago, three or four months ago, and that whole thing was so successfully worked by the owners of the farms that they made not only the governor, but they made the attorney general believe that the negroes had conspired to massacre whites, and what was the result? They banded themselves together and when they thought they needed more help they called upon the United States to come to their assistance, and the United States very quickly, under this administration, sent troops there and disarmed all those colored people, going into their houses and taking their arms away, and the result was that they arrested and tried over a hundred of them, who had never done anything at all except rebel against the tenant-farm system and ask for an accounting. They condemned and sentenced to be electrocuted 12 of them, and 60 of them were ordered to long terms of imprisonment. Why? In order to continue to exploit them. The whole thing is done so skilfully. You know what the propaganda is. I can make you believe anything if I have the press and all the avenues of information to the intelligence of the peolpe, and they have it, and the result is that they have made the country believe that sort of thing and the Attorney General has been in it, too, the Department of Justice. They are all in it. The War Department is in it. The whole thing is done so that these Southern farmers who do not care for the people who work for them any more than they do for cattle, not as much as the old slave masters cared for them, because if a slave died, the master lost so much, but to-day if a tenant farmer were to die before an accounting, why, the owner reaps the benefit, there is no occasion for an accounting. It is a terrible condition and situation. It leads to lynch law. There were four brothers who had gone to Elaine on a visit only, educated men, men of means,