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EASTERN SHORE BACKWARD, SAYS GOUNCILREPORT
Hopkins Professor Investigates Lynching at Salisbury
ISOLATION OF SHORE HELD BIG FACTOR
Report Prepared for the
Federal Council of
Churches
Baltimore, Jan. 2<* (#>)—Professor Broadus Mitchell of the Department of Political Economy, Johns Hopkins University, said today in a report of an investigation made.by him of the lynching of "latthew Williams, negro, at Salisbury,- December 4, last, that the Eastern Shore of Maryland has become backward in its mental and spiritual development.
The report of Professor Mitchell was prepared for the commission on race relations of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.
"The most sorrowful reflection is not that some ignorant countrymen and townsmen gave way to violence, but that no one man among the intelligent fair-minded citizens exerted himself with spirit and determination to stop the lynching," Professor Mitchell said in the report.
The negro was taken from the Peninsular General Hospital after he had been wounded following the shooting of his white employer and walked to the yard of the court house three blocks away, hanged and his body then taken down and burned.
Isolation Factor
The geographical isolation of the shore country was held in the report as a contributory factor in the lynching. The Johns Hopkins professor declared that his investigation of the lynching showed that only two men opposed the mob in the lynching, one voicing objections before the hanging and the other trying to prevent the burning of the body.
Speaking of the location of the Eastern Shore the report said:
"In a sense the Chesapeake Bay , contributed to the lynching in Salis-1 bury. That is, the Eastern Shore is isolatei" geographically and has become backward in its mental and spiritual development. It has suffered from the loss of many of its ablest young men."
Criticizing the attitude of the community of Salisbury as a whole, the report declared "two weeks after the lynching the place was rife with excuses for the hanging, if not indeed full of justifications of it.
The sectional feeling was increased when a local newspaper said that the Eastern Shore feels that the greater part of the responsibility for the lynching results from interference of Baltimore city in the affairs of the shore."
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