Twentieth Century Negro Literature. Various
and Mrs. Smith are domiciled at No. 715 Second Street, Northwest, where they have resided for the past twenty years. Two children survive to them: Master Jerome Bonaparte, a student at Howard University and Miss Rosa Virginia, a pupil in the Washington High School.
At first glance the above question would seem to be fully answered with one word comprising but two letters, namely, N-o. And yet, upon second thought, it will be seen that that answer would not apply, for the reason that the alleged criminal Negro seldom reaches a court-house in the South before alleged summary justice is visited upon him by an unreasoning Judge Lynch.
The fact that the question is asked whether the criminal Negro is justly dealt with in the courts of the South, would imply that there is at least a doubt as to the genuineness of the justice meted out to him there. In legal phraseology, a criminal is one who has been duly convicted of crime. This being so, it would seem that my first inquiry should be, whether the Negro who has been legally ascertained to be a criminal is justly dealt with in the South, in the matter of his punishment therefor? This line of inquiry leads me into the investigation of the convict lease system which obtains in certain Southern states, and other unlawful abuses of colored criminals there.
It is not my purpose in the limited space allotted to consider this phase of the subject at great length, but rather to briefly point out its manifest injustice.
One of the greatest wrongs of the South is its convict lease system; and its lynch law, and its disfranchising statutes are like unto it. Although the emancipation proclamation, written and promulgated by the immortal Lincoln, has been operative for more than thirty-six years, yet a species of slavery still exists there, fostered and nurtured by the statutes authorizing the convict lease system. So vile became this evil in Anderson county, South Carolina, that the leading officials there denounced it as brutal and barbarous, a crime against nature and nature's God—a crime against civilization and humanity.
Some of the specific charges against the system were that these unfortunate beings, without regard to sex, were huddled together in prison quarters like so many cattle. It has been a foul blot upon the escutcheon of the South, second only to the murderous stains made thereon by the lynchers. It is a disgrace even to the civilization of medieval times. For cruelty and outrage it is unparalleled in the annals of civilized society. Siberia itself is preferable to the convict camp. Given the worst form of human slavery plus the barbarities of prison life; add to this the horrors of a Spanish prison, and you have somewhat of an idea of the iniquitous institution of the barbarous convict lease system.
But as if compounding crime, it is asserted with many of the appearances of truth, that Negro boys and girls, upon trivial charges, are convicted and sent to the convict camp for the express purpose of securing to the lessees of convicts the benefit of their unrequited toil until they reach their majority. Thus confined among confirmed criminals they naturally partake of the character of their environments, and conceive and multiply vice and criminology. This system punishes the real criminal unjustly. The ill-gotten gain it offers furnishes the incentive to thrust the innocent into prison pens.
Then, too, it is claimed with the appearance of truth that unscrupulous white men in certain Southern localities actually trump up charges against Negro men and procure their convictions and sentence to the convict camp for the double purpose of affording the lessees the comparatively free labor of the alleged criminals and to deprive them of the right to vote. While heartily approving of such reasonable punishment as shall deter crime, I can command no language strong and severe enough to condemn in fitting terms the cruelties and deviltries heaped upon the Negro in certain sections of the South in the name and for the sake of those who profit by the convict lease system.
It is undisputed that some of those sent to the convict camp have been properly found guilty; some have been illegally convicted; some deserve proper punishment, while some, by reason of their tender years, should have been put into reformatories, where they might have been rescued from a life of crime and brought up as law-abiding citizens. Such institutions may have been intended to protect society from the dishonest and vicious and to repress crime, but they are really made hotbeds of vice; and where sufficient vitality remains in the unfortunates, they actually propagate and multiply criminals.
But if the question should become so varied as to inquire whether the Negro in the South charged with crime is justly dealt with in the courts thereof; in other words, is he afforded a fair trial there?—it could not be fully answered without taking into consideration the heinous crime with which the Negro is generally charged. There is nothing more revolting than rape, unless it be mob-rule. There is no true man, white or black, who would not rejoice to see condign punishment visited upon the brute legally proven guilty of this most diabolical crime.
The South justifies lynching on the ground that it shields the victim of the crime from the publicity to which a trial of the perpetrator would expose her. That is to say, the lynchers prefer to violate the organic law, which provides that no one shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. They put the mob above the judicial system of the country, and arrogate to it greater power to protect the honor of the outraged female and uphold the majesty of the law than a court of justice. It is a sad reflection upon the administration of justice even to intimate that the mob which ruthlessly defies the law is better qualified to administer justice than the court established by law to try and determine the guilt or innocence of persons charged with the commission of crime.
In the dark ages of English history, it frequently happened that the person charged with the commission of crime was first executed and afterward his trial was had, and if a verdict of not guilty was found, his bones were disinterred and given a state funeral. But the Negro charged with the commission of crime in the South is frequently not granted a trial before or after execution; so that the Negro is not justly dealt with in the courts of the South, even after he has been hung, drawn and quartered, or burned.
In some instances where the Negro is fortunate enough to confront his accusers in a court in the South, the caste prejudice against him too often reduces his trial to a mere mockery of justice.
The cornerstone of the Republic is justice, to establish which, under liberty, its founders set foot upon these hostile shores in the early part of the seventeenth century. From that time to the present the slogan of every campaign, the rallying cry of every battle, has been justice in some form or other. And yet, in the alleged interest of innocence, justice, in certain localities, is often outraged, law dethroned, and mob rule exalted.
Whether or not the Negro charged with crime is justly dealt with in the courts of the South can only be answered relatively, for in some localities fair trials are granted even to Negroes charged with the commission of crime. But for the most part, it must be admitted that Negroes brought into the courts of the South accused of crime against white people are not accorded a fair trial.
The reason of this unjust dealing with the Negro in the courts of the South is not far to seek; he is looked upon as an alien; then, too, the doctrine that he has no rights which a white man is bound to respect is exploded in certain localities only in theory, for in practice it is still unmistakably prevalent.
The crying need of the times is a wholesome respect for law and order, and a righteous condemnation of mob rule everywhere. Every pulpit North and South should speak out against mob rule and lynch law. The eloquent divine in Greenville, Miss., who recently denounced with righteous indignation the damnable outrages of mob violence in that state, was as a voice crying in the wilderness. For some reason his brethren of the cloth have not seen fit to join him in a crusade against this abominable sin. If the Southern clergy could only be induced to preach against this evil occasionally, there would soon be created throughout the sin-ridden districts such a healthy public sentiment and respect for law and order that these crimes against the state would soon become things of the past; nor could there be found throughout our broad land a miscreant, who, under the influence of the spirit of lawlessness, would take the life of our Chief Magistrate; nor would there be anywhere such an illiberal public sentiment as would openly criticise our Chief Executive for dining a representative member of the race whose feasts even Jupiter did not disdain to grace.
But let us consider the alleged crime for which lynching is attempted to be