|
\»IOB TOPPLES LAW AND ORDER
ALL advocates of the orderly processes of the law in meting out justice to offenders ¦"will deplore the disgraceful lynching of a Negro murderer at Salisbury, , Md., last evening.
It may be that the legal dilly-dallying and court delays in the handling of another particularly atrocious tnd yet untried murder case not many miles from Salisbury had wrought lip a lawless element to the point ©f assuring that there would be no provoking court delay after yesterday's murder in Salisbury, resulting in mob vengeance that in fury swept aside law and order and reverted to a form of primitive savagery.
As revolting as this lynching is. it should point a lesson to the constituted law enforcement authorities of the Eastern Shore.
Twenty years have elapsed since our neighboring State has had a lynching. The Baltimore Sun comments editorially today on last night's mob domination, which we feel it appropriate to reprint herewith:
The Eastern Shore has reaped its reward. For four weeks its reckless elements have proclaimed mob law. For four weeks its officials and its responsible citizens have yielded ground. They started" with their minds fixed upon law as the means of dealing with crime, however atrocious. But they have increasingly wavered'. In the Yuel Lee case the court could find last Monday no conditions which would prevent a fair and orderly trial at Cambridge, although no more than two weeks ago the tame court and the State's Attorney had petitioned the Governor for troops and for police "armed for any emergency." That judicial finding, so strangely in accord with popular clamor, so hazardous in the view of observers, was hailed on the Eastern Shore as a vindication of the dignity of the people! And, as if in logical ssqusnee, last night a mob in Salisbury heeded the law not at all, but instantly wreaked barbarous vengenci Upon a Negro murderer.
We say the Eastern Shore has its reward. Whethe the reward takes the form this morning cf satisfactic or of shame we have no means of knowing. We do know feat the Eastern Shore's reward is shame for the State of Maryland. It is twenty years since Maryland has been disgraced by this savagery. We had supposed the freedom ircm disgrace was permanent. It is not necessary to demonstrate to intelligent men and women that lynching is an assault upon the State, upon the law and upon civilization—or that in unloosing the violent, mur- |
