Governor Ritchie's Clipping File on Lynching
msa_s1048_1_and_10-0360

   Enlarge and print image (168K)  Notes  Transcribe
           << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>
clear space clear space clear space white space


 

Governor Ritchie's Clipping File on Lynching
msa_s1048_1_and_10-0360

   Enlarge and print image (168K)  Notes  Transcribe
           << PREVIOUS   NEXT >>
QUIET REIGNS AFTER HANGING IN SALISBURY Tension ReportedTo Have, Waned Overnight On Shore LYNCHING DEPLORED BY CITY PASTORS Branded As Humiliation, Worse Than Murder, Community Crime Quiet once more reigned yesterday in the Eastern Shore town of Salisbury, where Friday night a mob hanged and burned a wounded Negro murderer, and authorities Saturday found precautions against further disturbance necessary. Reports from there indicated the tension resulting from the fatal shooting of Daniel J. Elliott, lumber dealer, and the subsequent lynching of Matthew Williams, his Negro assailant, had lessened materially overnight. Clergymen Ignore Topic Adding to that atmosphere was the silence of Salisbury clergymen on the lynching. None was reported to have I made a direct reference to the Friday i night affair from his pulpit. In Baltimore, however, the lynching was deplored from many pulpits. W. Preston Lane, Jr., Attorney-General of Maryland, yesterday refused to divulge his plans in the investigation of the lynching. The Attorney-General pointed to the fact that the Governor had directed him Jo assist in the investigation at Salisbury and added that any comment at this time would impair his progress. The case of Yuel Lee, alias Orphan Jones, charged with the murder of a family of four near Berlin, is scheduled to go before the Court of Appeals the latter part of this week or the beginning of next week, Mr. Lane stated. The Rev. Dr. F. R. Sturtevant, of the First Unitarian Church, was among the Baltimore ministers who referred to the lynching in their sermons. He alluded to the "passion and inhumanity" released at Salisbury, and said itm:-;ht be well if a monument were erected on the site, not to memorialize the criminal, but in expiation of the lynching. He said an expiatory monument had been erected at Geneva in 1903 by followers of Calvin, who in 1553 ordered Michael Servetus burned at the stake for theological heresy. He said the same passion and inhumanity was evidenced at Salisbury. "Should Hang Crepe" The Rev. Dr. Peter Ainslie, pastor of the Christian Temple, said: "Every church in Salisbury ought to hang crepe on its doors and ask itself the question: What have we been teaching through the years to have produced such a result in our quiet community? Is there no sense of alarm in the conscience of those churches? "No one can tell yet whether the Governor and the courts are going to do what is usually done in such cases, but I am hoping they will do the unusual and bring the lynchers to trial. That is what courts are for. "Besides that, the city of Salisbury should be called upon to pay not less than ?2,500 out of its tax levy to be spent by a commission in establishing better relations between the Negroes and the whites on the Eastern Shore. The issue must be frankly faced or worse calamities will come to us." Urges Reading Of Bible The Rev. Bruce H. McDonald, pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church, in a sermon on The Growing Bible referred to the lynching and expressed the hope that the reading of the Bible would so move the hearts of men that they would put into practice in daily life the precept "Thou shalt not kill," and that this might lead the people of "this so-called Christian country" to overcome the tendency to do in haste what often is repented at leisure." The Rev. H. N. Arrowsmith, canon of the Protestant Episcopal Pro-Cathedral, said: "We cannot look upon the outrage that 'happened on the Eastern Shore otherwise than as barbaric. It is doubtless condemned as much by the best people of the Eastern Shore as by the people on the Western Shore, and cer-