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A Judge on Unequal Justice

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 5, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 27.

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A Judge on Unequal Justice

RECENTLY in sentencing a negro convicted of murder, a Kansas City (Mo.) judge made this comment touching a tendency characteristic of the times: “Well, you’re guilty of murder all right, but you’re a poor, ignorant black man, and I don’t want to hang you. You have no friends. You have no one to plead that you were insane when you killed this man. If I sentence you to hang, you will hang. . . . There will not be a whole lot of women circulating petitions to save your neck. There will not be a lot of fool men writing letters to the governor to save you. No one will send you flowers. You’ll just be forgotten until the day set for your hanging, and then they’ll hang you. I’ll sentence you to thirty years in the penitentiary.”