THE SOUTH: Two Governors

In North Carolina, the crimes of murder, arson, burglary and rape are punishable by death. Fourteen-year-old Negro Ernest Brooks committed two of them. One night a year ago he broke into a Wilmington home, raped a woman who was eight months pregnant. Caught the next day, Negro Brooks confessed, was sentenced to death.

Last week North Carolina’s Governor R. Gregg Cherry commuted the sentence to life imprisonment. Said he, in a statement rare for a Southern governor: “The crimes are revolting, but a part of the blame . . . arises from the neglect of the State and society to provide a better environment. . . . Our public schools, equipped with capable teachers . . . [and] an effective compulsory-attendance law, would do much to correct delinquency among all races.” Rarer still, in all North Carolina there was no outcry.

In Tallahassee, Florida’s Governor Millard Caldwell had his own say about a similar problem. Three months ago a Negro named Jesse James Payne, under indictment for attempted rape of a five-year-old girl, had been taken from an unguarded jail and shot to death by a mob. Asked whether he considered this a lynching, Governor Caldwell replied that he did not.

He then condoned the shooting by saying that it saved a lot of trouble. Said he: “The ordeal of bringing a young and innocent victim of rape into open court and subjecting her to detailed cross-examination could easily be as great an injury as the original crime. This fact probably accounts for a number of killings which might otherwise be avoided.”