A Negro Burned in Pennsylvania
By Editor
A Negro Burned in Pennsylvania.—The burning of a Negro in Pennsylvania, thirty-eight miles from Philadelphia, on August 13, does not speak very highly for our boasted civilization of this twentieth century. The Negro had killed a special watchman, and after fleeing before a posse of men until he saw that all hope of escape was gone, he shot himself through the head. But he was taken to a hospital, and the bullet was taken from his head, and he regained consciousness. He made the claim that he killed the watchman in self-defense. But a mob formed around the hospital, overpowered the officers, and dragged the man, with the cot on which he was lying, to a farmhouse half a mile away, and gathered straw, rails from the fence, etc., and built a fire in which the unfortunate Negro was placed. Once he broke out of the fire and started to run away, crying, “Give a man a chance; I killed him in self-defense.” But the mob quickly caught him and hurled him back into the fire and roasted the poor fellow to death. About 5,000 persons witnessed the burning, a goodly number of whom were women and children. The local sheriff and district attorney have declared their intention to punish the lynchers without regard to private friendship or political affiliations. The San Francisco Examiner, speaking of this intention on the part of these local officers, says: This should be done in national self-defense. The country must quarantine itself against the contagion of such madness. The sporadic cases of fanatical mob murder must be isolated and stamped out in order to save the country from a devastating plague of barbarism. Every right-minded person knows that if mob rule is at all permitted to go unpunished it renders every person’s life and property insecure; for there is no knowing the moment when the private grievance or hatred of some individual may lead him to inflame the mob so that he may be able to lead them to the extreme of violence and cruelty.