People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 July 1893 — IN THE LATEST STYLE. [ARTICLE]

IN THE LATEST STYLE.

“ -- - Bering and Burning Seem* to Be tfca Popular Method with Southern Lyncher* for Disposing of Murderer* and Bavlehera—Such Wa* the Fate Meted Oat to Leo Walker by a Tenne**eo Mob. Memphis, Tenn., July 24. —Lee Walker, the negro who assaulted Miss Mollie McCadden and four colored girls last week, was lynched by a mob a few minutea after midnight Saturday night. The attack on the jail was begun at 10 o’clock and the mob hammered the great steel doors two hours before an entrance was effected. At x2:15 o’clock the door to Walker’s cell was smashed with a battering ram and, with a yell, the crowd seized the negro and dragged him to a telegraph pole 100 yards north of the jail, where he was strung up. Walker was more dead than alive when launched into space. The door of his cell had scarcely been forced open when the mob commenced hammering him with guns and clubs. His arms were broken, his jaw crushed and his body mutilated. When the telegraph pole was reached the rope was thrown over a cross-arm and the body jerked 10 feet ifi the air by willing hands Tbe mob was composed of several thousand men. Scores of negroes participated in the lynching, the blacks being more enraged than the whites because Walker had assaulted four negro girls. No masks were worn. The mob was not content with hanging and mutilating the body of the negro. Scarcely had the pulse ceased to beat when some one yelled: “Burn the wretch!” and instantly the cry was reechoed from a thousand throats. A huge bonfire was built in the street and the body cut down and dumped into the flames. The ghastly sight caused many to groan and protest, but the leaders of the mob were determined to cremate the body and could not be persuaded to desist. They seemed to have lost their reason and acted like madmen. Walker made a full confession and related his revolting story to the prosecuting attorney with the utmost coolness. H,e did not realize the enormity of his crime and when asked what he supposed his fate would be replied that he would probably be fined >4OO and sent to the penitentiary for four or five years.