CRIME: Lynch Week

Under the M. & O. railway bridge near little Shubuta, Miss. (pop. 756), the lazy Chickasawhay River dawdles its muddy, placid way to the Gulf. But around that trestle has swirled many an ugly and turbulent human emotion. In the last 20 years, three Negroes have been lynched there.

Last week again there were dark passions at the bridge. Two 14-year-old Negro boys stopped a 13-year-old white girl who was crossing the trestle on her way home from school. The boys took her to the riverbank underneath, attempted to rape her. Deputies arrested the boys, took them to the county jail at Quitman.

In the dead of night, Jailer G. F. Dabbs answered a knock at his door. A mob of men threw a blanket over his head, took away his keys, locked him in a cell. In a caravan of automobiles, the men carried the Negro boys away into the night. When the sun came up, deputies found their bodies hanging from the trestle.

Five days later, in nearby Laurel, Negro Farmhand Howard Wash was found guilty of murdering his white employer. But the jury failed to agree on the punishment. Under Mississippi law, his sentence became life imprisonment.

At 1 o’clock that night, 100 men with rifles and shotguns swarmed outside the Laurel jail. Town authorities telephoned Governor Paul B. Johnson, outspoken opponent of mob violence. The Governor dispatched State police, two companies of State guards. He also called two Laurel ministers, asked them to try to stop the mob. But by the time ministers and militia arrived, it was too late. Next morning’s sun showed the body of Howard Wash hanging from a bridge over Tallahoma Creek.

In one week Mississippi had given the U.S. three lynchings—only one less than occurred in the entire nation last year.