Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1902 — TO STAMP OUT LYNCHING. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

TO STAMP OUT LYNCHING.

That Is the Aim of Gov. Joseph D. Sayers, of Texas. Law-abiding people will commend the course of Gov. Sayers of Texas, who proposes that lynch law shall come to

an end in his State. He will not strike at the lynchers, but at the officers within whose jurisdiction lynchings occur. The Legislature is to be urged to pass a law holding accountable any judge, or district attorney who, through neglect, incompetence or sympathy with the mob, allows a prisoner to be taken

from the officers of the law and lynched. Several such cases have occurred recently. There is no excuse for these lynchings on the ground that murderers or other criminals escape through the law. During the year twenty-three prisoners have been tried for capital offenses and condemned to death, and in only two cases have there been commutations. Within twenty months eighty-five men have been condemned to death or life imprisonment in Texas. Those who oppose lynchings call attention to the fact that it is progressive, going through an evolution of horrors. When the mob first began work in Mississippi lynching was done by a small body of men, well organized, masked and on horseback, who rode to the jail in the middle of the night and compelled the sheriff to surrender the prisoner. He was taken to the nearest tree and hanged. The next change, a needlessly brutal one, was after hanging the negro to have every member of the mob fire a rifle or pistol at the body. Later all masks and disguises were discarded and the mob performed its work in the open light of day in the very streets of the town and generally in front of the court house, with no attempt at concealment or secrecy. Finally has come the burning at the stake, when the lynching is made a spectacle in which a large part of the population joins. Invitations are sent out and even excursions are given for those who wish to witness these executions. Citizens of Oklahoma have contributed $2,038.35 to assist in the building of the McKinley monument.

[image] Gov. J. D. Sayers

GOV. J. D. SAYERS