|
SENATOR BRUCE JOINSDEFENSE EASTERN SHORE
Baltimore Soltjn Attacks Prof. Mitchell And Others Who Criticize Eastern Shore
SAYS BACKWARDNESS
NOT EVIDENT HERE
Shore Profits By Isolation From
Baltimore, He Hints Broadly
In Letter
In a letter to the press today former United States Senator William Cabell Bruce adds his voice in reply to the many columns of criticism directed at the Eastern Shore recently.
Senator Bruce's comments are directed pointedly at the report of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America issued last Monday and based upon a two day visit to Salisbury of Prof. Broadus Mitchell, a mtemfoer of the Civil Liberties Union in Baltimore.
If the Eastern Shore is isolated from Baltimore, we are highly benefitted thereby, Senator Bruce broadly hints. He makes an emphatic denial that Eastern Shoremen are in the least backward intellectually, morally or economically.
In his letter, former Senator Bruce said:
"I am sure that no one who knows me would impute to me the least approval of lynching, under any circumstances, however exasperating, and my defeat, when I was a candidate for reelection to the United States Senate in 1928, was, of course, largely due to the rejection by thousands of Democratic voters on the Eastern Shore, of my outspoken convictions relating the prohibition and sectarian intolerance.
"But, having thrice canvassed every part of the Eastern Shore, as a candidate for a seat in th% United States Senate, and having been brought into intimate contact with its people, I wish to deny, if my personal testimony is worth anything, that the Eastern Shore is, as Prof. Broadus Mitchell affirms, 'backward' in its 'mental and spiritual development.' "
"From the recent attack on the character of our Eastern Shore brothers one might suppose that lynching is peculiar to the Eastern Shore. The fact is that it has occurred over and over again in many states of the Union whenever the incitement to it has been sufficiently intense and widespread to provoke it.
"Some years ago a brute who had outraged a woman near my home at Ruxton, in Baltimore county, was lynched by her infuriated neighbors. My recollection is that this brute was dragged from the Towson jail by the lynchers and that no legal punishment was ever inflicted upon any one of them.
"This is but a single illustration that I might employ for the purpose of reminding the people of the Western Shore of Maryland that there has been lynching on both sides of the Chesapeake. Indeed, I might go further north than Maryland and recall another brute who some years ago, was lynched at Port Jervis, on the Hudson river, in the full sight of a large concourse of human beings, not one of whom apparently witnessed the lynching.
|
