Saturday, April 20, 2019

National Conference Called to Take Action Against Lynching, 1919

From the front page of The Daily Times, Wilson, N.C., Saturday, April 19, 1919

Will Take Action Against Lynching

New York, April 17—A call for a national conference on lynching to be held here May 5 and 6 to take “concerted action against lynching and lawlessness wherever found” was issued today by John R. Shillady, secretary of the conference acting on behalf of a group of 120 well known men and women of the country who have signed the document. The signers represented the district of Columbia and 28 states, including 20 signers from eight southern states.

The signers committee, headed by Moorfield Storey of Boston, states that 3,210 lynchings, exclusive of the east St. Louis and other mob riots, have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years. Of this number, 702 of the victims were white people and 2,514 negroes. During 1918 there are 63 negroes and four white persons lynched, according to the committee, which adds that some of the recent lynchings have been particularly atrocious involving burning at the stake and torture of the victims.

Among the signers are Attorney and former Attorney Generals Charles J. Bonaparte and Judson Harmon; five governors, Hugh M. Dorsey of Georgia, D.W. Davis of Idaho, James O. Goodrich of Indiana, Henry J. Allen of Kansas and Emerson C. Harrington of Maryland; Elihu Root, Chas. E. Hughes, Cardinal Gibbons, Senators Arthur Cooper of Kansas and J. Medill McCormick of Illinois, and Dr. Anna Howard Shaw.

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