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MARYLAND RIVALS HOUSTON
Hon. Thomas Watt Gregory, former attorney general of the United States in his speech before the Texas Interracial Commission on November 6, last, described the lynching of Robert Powell in Houston on the eve of the Democratic convention in 1928, as the most dastardly crime that had been called to his attention. Louis I. Jaffe, editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, writing the 1928 Pulitzer prize editorial on June 22, 1928, described that lynching in these words: ^^^^^^ ^^«
"As the „ ,no~ratic ho; iate themselves
.uiew to fairness and justice, k uu^. i ern city in which
they are to meet is disgraced by an unspeakaole act of savagery."
In Salisbury, Maryland, last week Mack Williams, another wounded Negro, was taken from his hospital cot, as Robert Powell was taken, by a jungle mob, hanged to a tree in the court house yard, and then his body was burned to ashes on the edge of the Negro district.
If Houston's lynching was "an act of unspeakable savagery," this recent outrage of law and order was a more unspeakable act of barbarism. In thus destroying the orderly processes of government Maryland not only rivals Houston, it surpasses it in wanton bestiality and in gruesome heinousness.
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