For around the first year of its publication, the Southern Worker had a near-weekly column, ‘Lynch Law at Work,’ of paragraph-length reports of legal and extra-legal violence directed mainly, though not exclusively, at Black labor. In reproducing nearly two hundred such reports below, no sensationalism is intended. An important historical record of U.S. reality, the items below were collected with that intention; they give time, place, circumstance, and most importantly they gives the names, both of victims and of perpetrators. These news briefs are just a sample of what was regularly reported in the Southern Worker, with many of the stories receiving article length treatment elsewhere. Some weeks the column was not included, and in others it was unreadable in the original.

‘Lynch Law At Work’ from Southern Worker. August, 1930-September, 1931.

August 16, 1930.

MARION, Ind. Thomas Shipp, 18, and Abe Smith, 19, Negroes, were taken from the county on the jail night of Aug. 6 and hung on courthouse square.

MOUNT VERNON, Ga. S.S. Mincey, Negro, 70 years old, active in Republican politics, was beaten to death by a mob after being abducted to another county on July 30.

RAYMOND, Miss. George Robinson, 28, Negro bell hop, was killed in the county jail, by Deputy Sheriff W.L. Ford. He was being kept there for “safe-keeping.”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. Lee Townsend, 40, Negro taxicab driver, was mysteriously killed near Clarkesville, N.C. His body was found in a well last week.

TEXARKANA, Tex. Herbert Richardson, Negro, was killed by a federal prohibition agent here on Aug. 7. The stock fake excuse of “self-defense” which is usually accompanied by planting a gun on the dead body of the victim, was the officer’s story.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. Milton Dorch, 37, Negro, was killed here on Aug. 5 by a policeman who fired three shots into him. The charge was the usual fake excuse, “resisting arrest.”

WEST POINT, N.Y. The third Negro, Benton J. Brooks, nominated by Oscar De Priest, was rejected by the military academy on Aug. 6. While DePriest is anxious to help the white bosses fight the next war, the U.S. Army wants Negroes only as soldiers in the jim-crow regiments, under white officers to do the dirty work and stand the brunt of the attack. Negroes to serve as cannon-fodder only, they say.

CLARENDON, Ark. To escape from a mob of white hoodlums bent upon lynching him, Boots Wright, a Negro worker, was forced to swim across Old River near here. The planters organized the mob after Wright had beaten up a white foreman, Tom Winfree.

August 30, 1930.

TARBORO, N.C. Oliver Moor Negro tenant farmer, was dragged from jail here August 19, hung and shot by a mob organized by his landlord.

LIVINGSTON, Ala. The grand jury supposed to be investigating the Emelle “race riot” of July 4 returned indictments for murder against surviving members of the Roberts family, four of which had already been slain and two others are in ja The jury failed to “discover” the leaders of the white lynch mob.

BRENHAM, Tex. Cevalus Ben, Negro farm laborer, was shot and killed by his white landlord here on August 18, on the excuse that he had attack ed the landlord’s wife.

ATLANTA, Ga. The American Fascisti and Order of Blackshirt was organized here with the avow purpose of upholding white supremacy and firing Negro workers.

RAMER, Ala. Authorities here arrested four Negroes, who they found sitting near the machine in which the body of a slain salesman was found, and are trying to fasten the murder upon them.

GOLDSBORO, N.C. Jim Wooten Negro worker, had his collar bene and foot broken when a white man in a car ran into him on the highway The driver stopped at a filling station and shouted, “There’s a dead n***r down the road.” He then drove away Pete Coley, Negro tenant farmer, was killed and his son injured when a white auto driver rammed into the back of his wagon and then sped on.

RALEIGH, N.C. The wild kidnapping story of a young white man who picked up a Negro girl in his auto and was forced to give her up by three Negro workers led to a wild posse hunt here last week.

LOUISVILLE, Ga. The body of Wilson Morgan, Negro farmer, weighted with irons, was found in the Ogeechee river here on Aug. 20.

CLINTON, N.C. A court here found Ernest Herring and his brother, Chevis, Negroes, equally guilty of the murder of a white postmaster on very flimsy and unreliable evidence. The only evidence produced was that the tracks near the scene of the murder could have been produced by Ernest’s shoes. They are sentenced to death.

ATLANTA, Ga. Two Negroes, Eugene Mack and Hilliard Smith, after being wounded by policeman are being held at the police station “under suspicion.”

September 13, 1930.

DARIEN, Ga. John Tandell, Negro, was lynched in the McIntosh county jail on the morning of Sept. 8. A lynch party is now searching for another Negro, also accused of having shot the chief of police.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. A Negro worker was shot and killed by police in North Birmingham last Saturday night, when a group of Negroes refused to move from an alley when commanded. Police refuse to give the name of the Negro murdered.

MACON, Ga. Wild posse ‘hunts are in progress here for two Negroes one accused of “attacking a white woman,” the other of fighting back when a white man tried to brush him off a sidewalk. Several Negroes have already been rounded up and held under “suspicion.” If the white man, who was stabbed during the street fight dies, there is a danger of two lynchings.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. Walter Johnson and Bernard Roberson, Negroes, were shot and instantly killed by policemen here. The police story was that the Negroes were seen breaking into a grocery store.

DALTON, Ga. Jack Clark, Negro, was arrested and brought to the Cartersville jail to pay the penalty for the murder of the Cartersville chief of police. Altho the posse was hunting for Clark’s brother, they evidently thought that any one of the Clark family would do.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. Shots were fired into a house where about 15 Negro workers slept by whites, to force them out of the county and take their jobs. About 200 white workers, incited by the boss prejudice, applied for the 15 jobs.

RALEIGH, N.C. Four Negroes, convicted of the murder of a white man–which means certain death for a Negro, although white men murdering Negroes, even is arrested and tried, are either let free or given two or three months in jail–are being kept in the death row in the state prison, awaiting execution.

RALEIGH, N.C. Reymond Ledlin, Negro, was arrested and bound over for the next term of superior court under $50 bond, for being seen in the rear of some white farmer’s barn. He is charged with stealing 3 eggs.

GRETNA, N.C. A search is on here for two Negroes who stabbed a white man when he accosted a Negro woman in their company and started a fight with the colored men when they defended the woman. The white hoodlum died from the wound.

January 3, 1931.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Timothy Rouse, 24-year-old Negro orderly at the Municipal Hospital, was arrested for “flirting with a white nurse” then released by the jailers to a mob of white fiends who took him to the outskirts of the city and castrated him. Not even the usual fake investigation is being carried on.

NEW ORLEANS, La. Patrolman Joseph Cronin, drunk from whiskey and the “white supremacy” of lynch law, entered a place where a Negro funeral was being held, knocked down Louis Simmons, Negro, and then shot him in cold blood.

CHICKASHA, Okla. After about 300 Negro families in this vicinity were forced to leave their homes and crops to the landlords to escape from lynch mobs set on foot by the discovery of the body of a white woman murdered near here, it finally came out that the husband of this woman committed the murder. In the meantime, the Negro families are penniless and homeless, and the landlords have taken their crop without compensation.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Clifton Payne, Negro watchman of the Greenberg Auto Parts Corporation, was attacked by two white men, and thrown into a shed and burned to death when the men set fire to the shack.

WASHINGTON, D.C. District of Columbia police attacked 8 dance given by the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, at which both white and Negro workers were present. The police brutally attacked and then arrested Leonard Patterson, young Negro food worker, when he denounce the police attack.

September 27, 1930.

WARRENTON, N.C. Will Hasting, Negro, died as a result of shots received when a posse pursued here. He was suspected of having broken into a store. He was shot when discovered at a farm close by. The coroner’s jury whitewashed concerned by returning a verdict that he had been shot in self-defense.

DARIEN, Ga. Another Negro, Dave Chapman, has been arrested a suspect in the killing of the chief of police here a few weeks ago. Lynch law, which has already murdered two Negroes here, may claim another victim.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. Altho white man had been sought in connection with the slaying of a 17-year-old girl here last week, the police have netted Edward Smith, a Negro, who does not stand much chance the white boss court.

RALEIGH, N.C. The death cells in the North Carolina State Prison are full. Fifteen Negroes and AGITATORS white are to be executed within the week. The North Carolina bosses see it more convenient to lynch Negroes legally.

October 4, 1930.

Tennessee Mob crossing border to Huntsville, Tenn., to lynch Rufus McCoy and H. Henderson in jail, as we go to press.

THOMASVILLE, Ga. Willie Kirkland, 20 years old, Negro trusty on a county gang, was taken from the stockage by a mob and lynched on the vague testimony of a 9-year-old girl that he had attempted to assault on her.

CHICAGO, Ill. Mitchell Gray, unemployed Negro worker, was mortally wounded by a policeman here, when found trying to sleep in a vacant house. This makes the third police killing of militant workers within the last few months by the Chicago police.

MIAMI, Fla. David Weinberg, radical tailor, was forcefully taken from his home by three men, beaten, tarred and feathered and then arrested by city detectives.

FOREMAN, Ark. A Negro man and woman were wounded when a white landowner, Ellis Craig, fired into a group of Negroes, whom, he said, were “degrading white folks.” A mob is now searching for one of the Negroes who fired at Craig in return, but missed.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. A mob broke thru the gate of the jail yard here in an attempt to reach and lynch G.H. Henderson, Negro, whom they suspected of killing a white man during a robbery. Henderson says he can prove his innocence. Despite the presence of troops the prisoner may be lynched at any moment as we go to press.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. Tom Robertson, of the family of Negro share-croppers, four of whose members have been lynched and killed at Emelle, was brought before the Circuit Court in Livingston to be arraigned for murder.

COLUMBUS, La. Dock Murray, Negro tenant farmer, was shot in the stomach and thigh by the sheriff and plantation bosses, in a scrap over the crops.

THOMASVILLE, Ga. Lacy Mitchell, Negro witness against four white men who are charged with assaulting a Negro woman, was fatally shot in the stomach by the whites on Sept. 27, to keep him from appearing on the witness stand.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. Five Negro bell boys were forced into cars and flogged by a mob of unmasked white men here on September 25. The mobbists are supposed to be members of the Blackshirt organization.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. Floyd Edmondson and Albert Smith were sentenced to 10 years for “attempting assault on a white woman.” More than a dozen witnesses testified that the men were elsewhere at the time of the reported assault.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. W T. Clark, Negro, was fined $5 for talking back to an officer when the latter an off stopped him in the street and tried to arrest him for carrying liquor in a pail. The pail contained buttermilk.

NEW YORK, N.Y. An unemployed Negro worker was severely beaten by company guards on the subway here when he fell asleep and missed his station and insisted on remaining on the train until returning to his station. He was tumbled onto the platform in a wrecked condition by the guards and is now in serious condition.

November 1, 1930.

WELDON, N.C. Buddy Jackson was shot and killed by a mob of 200 white hoodlums, led by town and county officers, on Oct. 19. Police claim that Jackson shot the chief of police.

COLUMBIA, S.C. Joseph Singleton, 30, who is held as a material witness in the assassination of Senator E.J. Dennis, slashed his throat with a razor, rather than testify against white killers. He knew it would be lynch law for him if he testified.

OXFORD, N.C. Jeff Morrow, 35-year-old Negro barely escaped lynching when taken from Salem township to Raleigh, as a mob formed. Police charged that he attacked the “most esteemed lady in the county.”

KANSAS CITY. Three Negroes were removed from the Henry county jail while a mob formed last night at Clinton, Mo.

FLORENCE, Ala. Three young white women have been arrested in connection with the slaying of A. Reynolds, who was supposed to have been fatally stabbed by a Negro. Again the cry that a “Negro did it” seems not to be working so well.

ELIZABETHTON, N.C. L.D. Edenfield, white farmer, and Tom Fleming, a Negro, were convicted last night of second degree murder growing out of the death of the death of the day-old child of Edenfield’s 16-year-old unmarried daughter. The Negro was given ten years, but the sentence of Edenfield, who was the real instigator of the crime, was postponed until next year.

CIRCLEVILLE, Ohio. Thomas William, Negro, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on charges of burglary. He was arrested in the Norfolk and Western freight office last August while looking for something to eat.

CHICAGO, Ill. Willie Smith, Negro, was unemployed and his children were starving, so he robbed Julia Bruzina of 82c cash to feed his hungry family. The judge felt very “kind,” so he gave Willie one year in the pen instead of 10 to 20 years as the law said.

NEW YORK. Senator Overman, of N.C. voices vigorous protest against placing Negroes in charge of Pullman cars. The Honorable Senator says “It is an outrage for white women to be forced to ask advice of a Negro, or pass tickets to Negro porters. 2000 Pullman porters will be laid off this month, another regiment to join the great army of unemployed.

November 8, 1930.

ATLANTA, Ga., Because a Negro, said to have been drunk, said “damn” in front of his wife, N.A. Thacker, brave exponent of white supremacy, shot and killed the man.

PERRY, Ga. Bloodhounds and their masters are scouring the country for J. Yankround, Negro, who is said to have killed W.V. Guntner, cattle farm superintendent in a quarrel. $250.00 reward is offered for the Negro, dead or alive.

BRISTOL, Tenn. After slashing herself with a razor, Mrs. Mam Hagy, white woman claimed that a Negro had attacked her. A mob began to form. Under questioning she confessed that it was a put up story to get her husband’s sympathy.

LAUREL, Miss. After stumbling into the hospital with a severed jugular vein, G.M. Welch claimed that Negroes, who attempted to rob him, did the damage. Later, his friends innocently stated that Welch got the worst of it in a card game argument.

THOMASVILLE, Ga. Enlightening details of how a crowd of white men painted their faces and sallied forth on a “flogging party” which resulted in the killing of Lacy Mitchell, Negro, was told to a jury by Jack Bradley. Bradley stated that Allen, another lyncher, had whispered to him. If you won’t tell on me, I won’t tell on you.”

OXFORD, N.C. After a mob formed ready to lynch Jeff Morrow, Negro, on a rape charge, Mrs. Daniels, the accuser, had J.C. Brooks a white man, arrested as being one of the attackers. No attempt was made to lynch the white man.

LUMBERTON, N.C. The body of J.E. Thompson, Negro tobacco worker, was found in a woods two miles from Fairmount, where he worked. His skull was fractured.

RALEIGH, N.C. Altho found guilty of assault upon Willie Bellamy, Negro chain gang prisoner, of confining him to a sweat-box and causing his death, and cruelty while drunk to other prisoners, Gordon Watkins, supervisor of Wake county convict camp, was sentenced to only six months in jail and a fine of $300, by the boss court.

LAFAYETTET, La. Peter Crouchet, Negro, was given life imprisonment on a charge of entering a white home.

WALHALLA, S.C. In order to avoid embarrassment to the mayor of this town, who led the lynch mob which lynched Allen Green, a few months ago, the court awarded $2000 to Green’s widow, after it was proven that Green was innocent of having attacked a white woman. The investigation of the lynching has again been postponed.

November 15, 1930.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. Police claim that while passing the house of Will Evans, a Negro worker, and seeing him sharpening a razor, they thought him insane, and shot him. Chased out of a sick bed by the shot, Evans ran out into the street where police shot several more slugs into his prostrate body.

DANVILLE, Ky. A Negro workers, Ed Honeghy, was shot to death while attempting to cast his vote at Turkey Pen precinct, by Joe Hayden, white democratic election challenger. Negroes can’t vote at Turkey Pen.

TOOMSUBA, Miss. C. Nelson was arrested charged with killing his employer, A. Price, a rich white farmer. Living in virtual serfdom, Price’s workers dared to claim that they were being overcharged. Altho, no one knows who killed Price the authorities are determined that some Negro will be lynched or electrocuted for the killing.

MT. VERNON, Ga. Altho several mass meetings have been called protesting the lynching of S.S. Mincey, last July, and the lynchers are known, the grand jury reports its “inability to find definite clues to the identity of the mobsmen.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. C. Sapp, and five others, have been appointed by democratic officials for the purpose of proposing a change in the primary law to the legislature which will definitely bar Negroes from the polls.

WALHALLA, S.C. Altho witnesses identified the mayor and a policeman of the town as being among a mob of lynchers of Allen Green last spring, neither they nor seventeen other white men indicted with them were held. All 17 were acquitted.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. After being attacked by a lynch mob sentenced to the electric chair, arousing the Negroes of Asheville to fever pitch, having 4,000 people sign a petition that he be not electrocuted, after suffering five years in jail, A. Mansel Negro, is at last free to join the ranks of the unemployed.

HIGH POINT N.C. Stating that he had been robbed and his wife murdered by a “Negro highwaymen.” Thomas Marion prepared the ground for another lynching. It has since been shown that Marion was lying and he is now being held in jail on a charge of murdering his own wife.

November 22, 1930.

AUGUSTA, Ga. B.H. Baker, wealthy 81-year-old plantation owner was acquitted of the murder of a 19-year-old colored girl, Jessie Lee, after pleading self-defense. This vicious exploiter murdered the girl in her tenant hut when there was some argument over the condition of the place.

DECATUR, Ala. Three white men rode by the taxi stand of Isage Love, a Negro cab driver and fired at him, killing him instantly. O.D. Logan, another Negro who was in the stand, was shot in the shoulder.

GULFPORT, Miss. Willie Brown, Negro, was shot to death by E. Ladimer, rich white man on very phony testimony from his wife that Brown had tried to hold her up.

BATON ROUGE, Ala. When C. Blackwell, Negro convict was killed while working on a private rice farm, his wife brought suit against the governor for $25,000 and also endeavored to test the legality of renting out convicts to private enterprises. Naturally the case was thrown out of court and the judge wedged his way out of acting upon the legality of convict contracts.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. The ruling class, in is endeavor to segregate Negro and white workers, goes even to the extent of separating them in the prisons and on the chain gang. Mecklenburg county officials announced a policy of “segregating prisoners on the chain gang according to races.”

December 13, 1930.

WINSTON-SALEM N.C. Sam Epps, a Negro, was shot and killed by a detective, J.R. Crutchfield, on a phony story that Epps resisted arrest. This is a favorite excuse for the police when they shoot workers down in cold blood.

UNION, S.C. The body of Rutledge Brown, Negro, who had evidently been lynched, was found clad only in underclothes about ten miles from Union. Police say that he might have been one of the chicken thieves that killed deputy sheriff Ralph Kitchens at Spartanburg, but there is absolutely no evidence to support this This rumor is spread to prevent an investigation of the lynching.

SPARTANBURG, S.C. A 62-year-old Negro is being held here on an obviously trumped-up charge of having attacked a white woman, when he came to fix the fireplace. She probably did not want to pay the bill.

MERIDIAN, Miss. In an atmosphere of hatred and lynch lust the trial of 19-year-old Cleveland Nelson, a Negro boy, is being conducted. He is charged with killing the white boss of the farm, and altho there is no conclusive evidence against him, it is certain that he will be lynched whether legally or “illegally.”

DARIEN, Ga. The sheriff and other lynchers who lynched Willie Bryan in the woods, and George Grant right inside the prison walls, were completely exonerated of the killings and praised for their “work.”

December 27, 1930.

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. A lynch mob from Maryville, Mo., attempted to drag Raymond Gunn from prison here and lynch him, but were unsuccessful due to presence of troops. Gunn is charged with killing a white school teacher.

BLANCHARD, Okla. Following the discovery of the body of a white woman near a cave here, from 200 to 300 Negro families were forced to leave this region by the lynch terror, leaving all their property and crops, which were taken over by the white landlords without any compensation.

ROCHESTER, Minn. The boss class is attempting to bar Negro, Indian, Mongolian, Chinese, and Japanese workers from resident in certain parts of the city and enforce strict segregation.

ALBANY, Ga. Eddie Marsh, 18-year-old Negro farm worker, was sentenced to death for killing his landlord, a pecan grower, in a quarrel.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. Three Negro boys, aged 15, 16, and 17, were sentenced to serve 15 years in the penitentiary for wounding a 15-year-old white boy scout in a scuffle. The white boy scout had a rifle and one of the Negro boys a revolver. Solicitor Carpenter, of Gastonia fame, used all his arguments of “white superiority” and “patriotism.”

January 10, 1931.

SHEFFIELD, Ala. A lynch mob with bloodhounds and led by the sheriff are on the hunt for a Negro who is said to have attempted to attack three white girls. All the colored people in the vicinity are terrorized for any one of them may be chosen as the lynch victim.

FT. WORTH, Texas. John Aslup, policeman, who placed George Terrell, colored in front of a bank and then shot him down in order to collect the $5,000 reward offered for bank robbers, dead or alive, was acquitted by a businessmen’s jury.

MARION, Ind. Robert Belshire, one of a mob of white fiends which lynched two young Negroes on the Court House lawn here last August, was acquitted by a circuit court jury. The leaders of the lynch mob are well known and their names have been published by the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, but boss justice will take no action against them.

KINGSTON, N.C. William Harris, Negro bricklayer, has been threatened again and again, that his house will be burned down and he will be run out of the city, but he is prepared to protect himself. His house has already been set on fire twice.

MERIDIAN, Miss. George McInnes, Negro, was brought here from Quitman for “safekeeping” after a white man with whom he is said to have had a fight died from the injuries.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. The Governor of Arkansas granted extradition papers for Eddie Pride, Negro, who has been taken back to Colbert county Alabama, where he is said to have killed a white man last summer. The danger of lynching is great.

January 24, 1931.

LAUREL, Miss. The two year old baby of Jasper King, Negro tenant farmer, was killed in an attack by white farmers on the King shack. Fifty revolver shots were fired into the cabin. Altho two white men were arrested, they will not be punished.

MARYVILLE, Mo. Paul Smith, young Negro worker, is also in danger of being brutally roasted death, as was Raymond Gunn last week. Smith was arrested at the height of the lynch fever, but finally released when he proved that he could not possibly have committed the crime. The sheriff has called on the militia again, and this time he will not forget to call them and have them shoot if necessary, for fear of mass retaliation from the Negro workers for the lynching of Gunn.

MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. Georgia state lynch law had Edgar Jenkins, 22-year-old Negro, electrocuted for an alleged attack on two white girls, 9 and 14 years old. He was convicted on the sole testimony of the children if the mob fails to get its victim, the state gets him legally.

CLEVELAND, Miss. Phillip Hays, 25-year-old Negro was hanged by the state for an alleged assault on a white girl. He met his death bravely protesting his innocence. This is lynch law working in a legal way.

DETROIT, Mich. For daring to stand on their rights of being served in a public restaurant two Negro workers were ejected and brutally beaten. The League of Struggle for Negro Rights branch in that section of the city promptly arranged a march on the restaurant and had a large mass meeting in front of it, with both colored and white workers speaking. In the middle of the demonstration police thugs appeared in a riot car and with drawn guns broke up the meeting and arrested two white workers and one colored worker.

CHICAGO, Ill. Police are holding F.E. Phillips, Negro Pullman porter, for the murder of N. Malknbri, white railroad detective. Thru third degree methods, the police forced Phillips to make a confession, which he repudiated as soon as he got out of their clutches.

January 31, 1931.

BUCYRUS, Ohio. Elijah Ralls. one of three Negroes who are being held in the shooting of Sheriff Davenport, was shot to death by his captors under the ever-ready excuse that he was trying to escape. Having lynched E. Ralls, a fiendish mob of lynchers are milling around the court house waiting for the opportune moment to kill Walter and Blanton Ralls, the other workers who are being held as suspects.

LEXINGTON, S.C. Six Negro workers are to face the electric chair by order of three minute jury deliberations for the alleged murder of two white men, a night watchman and a business man. They are being “guarded” by 60 National Guardsmen.

NEW ORLEANS, La. Chief of police Bazer sent two policemen whom he ordered to blacken their faces, to raid a Negro gambling hall. The police and a Negro was killed. This is not the first time that the “law” has masked itself in this way, with the result that innocent Negro workers get shot down and lynched.

NEW ORLEANS, La. Being “only a Negro seaman,” no fuss was raised when the wrong anesthetic was applied during a minor operation killing a sick colored seaman in the Marine Hospital here which is notorious among seamen for its butchering qualities.

MAYFIELD, Ky. A brutal mob of over 100 armed with guns, searched the jail and city hall in a vain effort to lynch two Negroes who are suspected of having held up and robbed a white man. Luckily, the Negroes had been shipped to another county.

BROWNSVILLE, Tex. Possees of white men, full of lynch lust, are roaming the lower Rio Grande Valley in search of a mysterious Negro, on the sole word of a hysterical girl who went to visit the cemetery alone at twilight. She says a Negro frightened her.

February 7, 1931.

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. After raiding two jails, white fiends traveling in automobiles are enroute here to lynch Sam MCGee, charged with killing a white boy. McGee has proven that he is innocent of the killing. The sheriff has mounted machine guns and claims that he will protect him That is what the sheriff said at Maryville, Mo.

COVINGTON, Ky. Following the shooting of a white clerk in a robbery here, police raided the Negro section, arresting 32 Negro workers. Any one of these are in danger of being lynched.

MARYVILLE, Mo. It has been established that a white pupil is the murderer of the school teacher for whose death Raymond Gunn was burned alive on the roof of the schoolhouse.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. White plantation owners are attempting to intimidate Negro farm workers in the section to force them to leave and give their jobs to whites.

NEW ORLEANS, La. Trapped aboard a ferry boat by a hostile mob of white men, Alfred Richard, Negro, leaped into the Mississippi River and was drowned rather than suffer the tortures of a lynching. He was charged with a robbery.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. Gus Starnes, a Negro worker from Norton, Va., was killed by Hugh Jenks, engineer at the University of Tennessee power plant. The reason given by Jenks was that Starnes tried to hold him up. Starnes was unarmed.

ANNONDALE, N.J. The boss press report that the fight between the boys at the Annondale reformatory was a race riot, was shown up as a lie when the State Commissioner announced after his investigation that it was not so. It was called a “race riot” to excuse the Jim Crow policies now being instituted in the Reformatory.

February 14, 1931.

RICHMOND, Va. Under suspicion of having killed L.B. Clements, a railroad detective, Oscar Breadenbaugh a Negro was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Wm. Foyle, a Negro child of 13 years, was given 20 years in jail. There is no age limit for capitalistic justice, when it concerns the lives of workers.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. After the slaying of a Commissary clerk, at the Acmar mines, in St. Clair county, on Jan. 26, William Stokes, a Negro worker, was arrested on suspicion. Workers look with dread and hatred upon the company commissary, as it is used as another means of cutting wages, by charging higher prices for food and forcing the workers to buy there.

SAVANNAH, Ga. Actual military repression of the Negro workers here has become the rule. The city has now announced a 1 a.m. curfew for Negroes. Any Negro found on the streets after that time will be questioned by patrolmen and any “unsatisfactory” answers will be investigated by the detective department.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. In line with the general policy of shooting down helpless Negro workers, two “brave” officers, entered the home of Ben Lesly, shot and broke his leg, under the fake alibi that he was reaching for a gun. They found in Lesly’s pockets a half pint of whiskey, according to police reports. Police officers, determined to make a record for themselves at any cost, shoot down innocent workers on any fake excuse they can think of.

February 21, 1931.

HOPE, Ark. Five fiends broke a window in the house of Walter Easter, a 28-year-old Negro and at the point of a gun ordered him to go to the door. Then they fired two shots into his body. His wife and two children were too terrified to leave the house and call for a doctor, and Easter died the next morning.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. After investigating the case of Rudolph Gibson, a Negro worker, the International Labor Defense has announced that the whole thing was a frame-up case. Gibson was first jailed on a murder charge and is now being held on a charge of rape. Attempts were made to stop the I.L.D. from holding mass protest meetings on the grounds that the Negroes were too much agitated over the Gunn lynching.

OAKLAND, Cal. Bath white and colored workers organizations are vigorously protesting against the proposed bill sponsored by the “League of California Municipalities” which would restrict the use of parks, play- grounds and swimming pools by colored children to certain hours on certain days.

IDLEWILD, Mich. Serving the bosses well in their attempt to completely subordinate the workers, especially the Negro workers, a Michigan white school teacher brutally beat up two colored children, a crippled boy and a 14-year-old girl. Workers in the vicinity are greatly aroused.

February 28, 1931.

CLARKSDALE, Miss. George Spann, Negro tenant farmer, who shot and seriously wounded his landlord Charles O’Neal in a quarrel over proceeds of crop and arrangements for the next crop, was killed by a mob led by the sheriff of the county. Spann was hunted down by bloodhounds.

PERTH AMBOY, N.J. Ignatius DuBusson, Negro worker, who had just obtained a job working on the street after being unemployed for months was stoned and beaten and almost lynched by a mob of white hoodlums, who said that he attacked a white servant girl at a house nearby. DuBusson had simply asked the girl for a drink, which she brought him. The arrival of a motorcycle police unit scattered the crowd before they could go thru with their dastardly deed and Du Busson was arrested on a charge of “disorderly conduct.”

ATLANTA, Ga. William White, Negro, who was found guilty of killing a white man by a boss jury in Rome, barely escaped lynching when he was taken to the Atlanta jail after the trial. White denies any connection with the murder and has an alibi. Right after the trial more than 300 white fiends rushed from the courtroom to the jail on its lynching mission.

PORT ARTHUR, Texas. With drawn revolvers in their hands a mob of 100 whites attempted to storm the jail here at one o’clock in the morning, to seize and lynch a Negro musician who they said had insulted a white girl at a dance. Several white rowdies attacked him while he was playing in the orchestra and stripped all his clothes from him, beating him severely.

March 14, 1931.

ATLANTA, Ga. John Cooper, Negro, of 183 Valentine Street, was called from his house and then shot by four white men who made their getaway in a machine. Altho the police have the license number of the car, they are making no arrests.

GREENVILLE, Ala. George Payne, Negro, was found dead in an auto a few miles from here. Another Negro who was with him told how Payne was run over while fixing his car by white men, who picked up his body and placed it in the car, told the companion to beat it, and made off.

NORFOLK, Va. William Harper. 22-year-old Negro, who was almost lynched and at a previous trial had been sentenced to die on the electric chair for “attacking a white woman” was acquitted on a re-trial when witnesses testified that the woman supposed to have been attacked was in a roadhouse at Elizabeth City, N.C., at that time. Harper is fortunate in escaping with his life, but other Negroes have been lynched and murdered by the state on similar ungrounded charges.

April 4, 1931.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. Porter Bailey, 19-year-old Negro, was shot down and killed by a night watchman at the J.R. Barnes Coal Co. Bailey was trying to get some coal for his family. The watchman says he fired in self-defense, altho there was no gun found on Bailey. This was the third killing of this kind in the last five days.

GASTONIA, N.C. County officers entered a Negro church here, where the Friendly Aid Society of North and South Carolina was holding its convention and shot into the crowd of 1,000 Negroes in session, killing one and wounding several others. The Negroes defended themselves with knives, wounding four deputy sheriffs. The officers claim they were summoned by the convention officials to put down a disturbance. Three Negroes were arrested while no charges are being brought against the county officers.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. Alabama State lynch law justice took the life of another Negro, when Mose Daniel was electrocuted at Kilby prison last week. The old lynch law excuse of “attacking a white woman” was used in this case to railroad him to death.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. Albert Cohen policeman, widely hated for his brutal attacks on Negro workers, was only dismissed from the police force with no charges against him. Last month he clubbed and beat a Negro into unconsciousness while he was lying helplessly on the ground. A few months ago he shot another colored man to death

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Not only will Negro patients have the worst accommodations at the Hillman hospital here, but the will also be admitted thru a separate entrance when the old building is remodeled. Every effort is made by the bosses to divide the Negro and white workers as sharply as possible.

April 18, 1931.

PASCAGOULA Miss. After deliberating only 8 minutes a jury brought in a verdict of guilty against Tom Carraway, 20-year-old Negro, charged with “attacking a white woman” here on Feb. 25th, 1931. This verdict automatically means death by electrocution, the legal lynch method of bosses’ justice.

DAYTON, Tenn. A posse of 200 men, a motorcycle patrol, Hamilton county officers and bloodhounds, are searching the country round for a Negro who hid in the shed of Mrs. M. Green of Dayton, and asked her not to notify police. Six Negroes have been pulled off a freight train and are being held for questioning, and Negroes throughout the county are being terrorized. Mrs. Green admits that no one attacked her and the Negro ran when she began her wild screaming.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Eight hundred dollars reward is being offered for the capture of the Negro that was supposed to have attacked Mrs. C.A. Allen and her daughter.

SOUTHPORT, N.C. Talmer Brown, 23-year-old Negro, was indicted by the Brunswick county grand jury for an alleged attack on a white girl. Lynch fever is so high that Brown is being held in an undisclosed jail.

May 9, 1931.

MOBILE, Ala. Charles P. Williams, Negro is in danger of being lynched by a mob here, as he is being held in jail awaiting trial on the usual lynch law excuse of attacking a white woman. The militia was called out to “protect” him.

TUCKER, Ga. Henry Peters, Negro, was shot in the stomach by two policemen on a road near here, who gave the excuse that he drew a gun on them. It is not reported that a gun was found on Peters. The driver of a stalled car tells the fishy story that Peters approached them and told them to put the bright headlights or he would shoot them out. Police were called and they shot the first Negro they saw coming toward them.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. Still another Negro, James Jordan, has been arrested and is being held for investigation in connection with a supposed attack on Mrs. Allen and her daughter here a few weeks ago. Jordan was taken to jail while serving on the city chain gang. Another Negro, Council Dixon, arrested in Chattanooga, is still being held on the same charge without bond. Numerous other Negroes have been arrested.

COLQUITT, Ga. Guy Long, white man, was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a defenseless old Negro woman. If a Negro had killed a white, he would be either immediately lynched or sent to the electric chair. Long and 3 other white men tried to break into the home of John Scott, a Negro man, and lynch him for fighting Long a few days before. Scott defended himself and the white men opened fire, killing his mother.

May 16, 1931.

HAVANA, Cuba. Langston Hughes, well-known Negro poet, was arrested here when he strenuously objected to being excluded from a bathing beach here because he is a Negro. The American bosses, who control Cuba, are instilling the poison of race hatred in that country in order to divide the masses in their revolt against imperialist oppression.

MERIDIAN, Miss. Cleveland Nelson, 18-year-old Negro farm laborer was hanged here by the state for killing a white farmer in a fight over the proceeds of the crop. The trial was a legal lynching.

NEW ORLEANS, La. Herman Frazier, 34-year-old Negro, was charged with assault and battery on a white woman here and is now awaiting trial. Twenty Negroes were arrested on the hysterical testimony of the woman. This charge may serve as an excuse for another legal lynching.

JACKSON, Miss. A man hunt by a posse of county and city officers with bloodhounds is attempting to corner a Negro farm laborer who cut a white planter in a fight. The planter fired at the Negro worker. Knowing that a lynching would be his lot, the Negro made his getaway.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. W.E. Hendricks, Negro, was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct because he was “sassy” to a policeman. Hendricks simply approached him to tell him that an auto had just run over his bicycle and smashed it, and asked that the driver be stopped. That was “sassy” so he was taken to jail.

EUFAULA, Ala. Lynch mobs formed here after three Negro boys all below 16 years of age, were arrested and charged with a reported attempt of assault on an 11-year-old white girl. It is said that the boys have been taken to another “secret jail,” and their lives are in constant danger. If not lynched by a mob a courthouse lynching is being prepared for them.

May 23, 1931.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. Wilson Autry, captured after a three-day hunt and charged with “attacking a white woman,” has been lodged in Mecklenburg County jail. A reward of $100 was offered for his capture. He denies any connection with the alleged attack. He is to be taken to Monroe N.C., for a hearing, where the danger of being lynched is great. He stand no chance for a fair trial.

ELIZABETHTON, N.C. Samuel Davis, richest planter of Bladen county, shot in the back and killed John Fischer, a Negro, on his plantation Fischer and his brother were passing thru and when the planter saw them he ordered them to move on. They both left at once. As they were leaving Davis shot at them, “intending to shoot above their heads and so frighten them that they will not return.” Fischer was wounded in the hip and the planter threw him on a truck in order to ship him across the county line. Fisher died on the way. Davis was placed under $2,000 bond to await trial, and it is certain that he will go scott free.

LOS ANGELES, Cal. As a last act before leaving his judgeship, Judge Carlos S. Hardy released 16 white men convicted of criminal assault on young girls and women. It is not necessary even to prove such a charge against a Negro, who is either strung up or electrocuted. Protecting white womanhood?

BEAUMONT, Tex. A fine of $19 against Sadie Petillo for occupying, a seat in a white section of a city bus was upheld in a county court here.

NEW ORLEANS, La. Police, called out to stop burglars, wounded Giles Sheegog, Negro, who happened to be walking down the street the burglary was supposed to have taken place on. The officers shot at the first Negro they saw. The part boss newspapers play in inciting and leading lynch mobs is shown in the following editorial from the Huntington, Tenn., Republican: “Some of the highbrow journals are. decrying the lynching of the Negro at Union City last week. The red-blooded men who have no qualms of killing a mad dog or a rattlesnake are not going to lose any sleep over the deed of the ‘mob.’ It is generally death for a brute to attempt rape and should be. ‘It is death to touch’ should be forcibly impressed on these lecherous animals.”

BOLIVAR, Tenn. A mob gathered to lynch a young Negro farm tenant who is reported to have shot his white landlord in a quarrel over the crops. Officers arrested the wrong man, who would have been lynched anyhow, had he not been taken to Memphis and released.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. A man hunt is on the way here in search of a Negro–or any Negro–who can be charged with the reported attack on a white woman, Altho the white woman is very vague in her charges, a Negro may yet pay with his life.

July 11, 1931.

SAN ANTONIO, Tex. Deputy Sheriff George Mangold, notorious for his numerous murders of Negro workers, shot and fatally wounded Edward B. Summers, Negro, after entering his home where a double wedding ceremony was taking place. Summers and his sister were being married when the deputy forced his way in and grabbed hold of Summers, pointing his gun at him. When asked what he wanted, the deputy shot Summers point-blank in the chest and dragged him out to his car. No action has been taken against the deputy.

COLUMBUS, Miss. George McLain, 50 year old Negro, was beaten to death near here by a posse of white men in search for a supposed attacker of a white woman. McLain was the first Negro they came upon. The posse, consisting of 100, is terrifying the whole section. A later report said that the one who was being searched was a Negro farm worker who had burned a barn. In either case McLain’s innocence was established.

GREENVILLE, S.C. On the instigation of the white landlord the 17-year-old son of a Negro tenant farmer was arrested on the Augusta Road and charged with attacking a 5-year-old child.

GREENVILLE, S.C. One young Negro worker has been arrested here and charged with criminal assault upon a white woman and a number of others have been arrested and held for investigation. The white woman who claims to have been attacked cannot identify any of them, nevertheless they are being held and the terror continues.

August 15, 1931

HAYNEVILLE, Ala. A 16-year-old Negro boy was lynched by a mob, while the sheriff remained at a convenient distance. The lynching took place at Sandy Ridge, near here, and the excuse was the usual lynch law lie of attacking a white woman. The Negro boy’s body was found riddled, with bullets, having been shot 32 times. Sheriff Meadows said that the boy had tried to attack an 11-year-old white girl who was on her way home from the grocery store, but that the girl had run away. According to his story while he was waiting for bloodhounds to pursue the boy the young Negro worker was lynched. No investigation has been held and no one will be punished.

CONWAY, Ark. One Negro worker was killed, two Negroes were wounded and two deputy sheriffs were slightly wounded when a posse opened fire on a group of Negroes taking peaches from an orchard. Peaches are being permitted to rot on the ground because of their low price but when starving unemployed workers try to take some they are shot down. The two wounded Negroes are in jail in danger of being lynched for daring to defend themselves against the murderous attack of the deputies

DE WITT, Ark. John Parker, Negro worker, in jail charged with murder, was taken from jail by a white Iman, stood up on the side of the road and shot in cold blood by a Negro who was forced to do so by O.C. Lumsden, the white man. The Negro, Brooks, was arrested and charged with murder, while the white man who directed the murder, was charged with being an accessory to murder. The white man will probably be released and the Negro made to pay the penalty.

NEW ORLEANS, La. Further information on the lynching of Oscar Livingston near here last week, shows that he had been turned over to the unmasked mob by the jailer, L.T. Fontenelle of the Ponte-a-la-Hache jail. When the mob arrived, the jailer went with them to the jail and opened the jail door and pointed out the prisoner’s cell on the second floor The mob leaders thanked the jailer took the Negro worker in a car to within 15 miles of New Orleans and left his riddled body on the road. Livingston had been arrested July 25, after the father of a white girl had accused him of attacking his daughter. Livingston had denied the charge and said he could prove his innocence easily. The jailer refused to identify any of the lynch mob and the parish authorities said that it was useless to carry on an investigation, since the chief witness, Livingston, was dead.

MAGNOLIA, Tex. A lynch posse of 200 are on the man hunt near here for two chained Negro prisoners who are said to have wounded two officers when brought to camp.

SCOOBA, Miss. A posse of mill bosses are on the hunt for a Negro worker here, who defended himself with a wrench against a foreman of the Electric Mills, when his wages were refused him. Bloodhounds are being used to track down the Negro worker. Scooba is the scene of a double lynching last year.

PINE BLUFF, Ark One Negro worker has already been arrested and sent to the penitentiary at Little Rock as the result of fighting near here in which a former mayor, his wife and two others of the family were fired on, but not wounded. A lynch spirit prevails here. No details are available.

August 29, 1931.

GREENVILLE, Ala. Many posses of would-be lynchers are scouring the country around here in search of a Negro, Dove Ballard, who is alleged to have shot a Deputy Sheriff who had attempted to arrest him.

OPELIKA, Ala. Ten Negroes, who had probably demanded food from their landlords, were held in jail here on charges of “abusing a white planter and his family,” and a trumped-up charge of “shooting at a traveling salesman” whom nobody seems to be able to find. Opelika is a few miles from Camp Hill, recent scene of lynch terror against the Share Croppers Union.

FLORENCE, Ala. Two Special Deputies shot on sight and killed Tom Smith, a Negro worker, who is charged with killing Constable Barr. The deputies opened fire on Smith when they met him on the public highway.

CLEVELAND, Miss. A Bolivar county posse captured Jake Washington, Negro cropper and another is reported to have hunted down Ed Wisex, also a cropper. Both, if not lynched in the meantime will be held for the shooting of B.T. Fulcher, plantation manager. Fulcher drove many Negroes from his plantation after taking their crop and refusing them settlement.

September 5, 1931.

LIBERTY, Miss. Armed with a gun S. Bramlett Bates, white landowner, went to the cabin of a Negro farm boy in order to “chastise” him. Defending himself with a knife and stick the boy got the best of the argument. Bloodhounds and a searching party are combing the woods for the young Negro.

MERIDIAN, Miss. Mrs. Luelia Williamson who sent a Negro boy to the drug store to buy poison so she could murder her infant was given a life sentence, and the boy was sentenced to be hung within a few days. The boy thought he was only going on an errand for a white woman, at thing he dared not refuse.

ANNISTON, Ala. A mob of 300 milled about the Calhoun county jail following the arrest of three Negroes who were supposed to have insulted a white woman. The woman claims she outstripped the Negroes by running faster than their car could, after they had threatened to get her. The state which has a Scottsboro and a Camp Hill holds on to its reputation.

GREENVILLE, S.C. Julius Finlay, Negro, was killed when Magistrate C.O. Baker shot at him five times. The Negro defended himself and the Squire was slightly wounded in the leg. When other Negroes attempted to carry Finlay’s body home they were severely beaten by a mob and almost lynched.

Begun in August, 1930, Southern Worker was a semi-legal regional newspaper of the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA) primarily aimed at building the Party in the South among Black workers and farmers. Pseudonyms of editors and writers, false publication places, illegal paper drops, and clandestine meetings were a necessary hallmark of the Southern Worker’s life. The paper extensively covered the campaign against lynching and southern unionization efforts. Originally a weekly, it went to a monthly in 1934 and ceased publishing in 1937. Editors included Solomon Auerbach (under the name “Jim Allen”), Harry Wicks, and Elizabeth Lawson.