“Young men who attempt to violate the morals of young girls had better stay away from me as I have no patience with that kind of person,” Judge Thomas Shaw of Greensboro said Friday before he sentenced Arthur Gayle, 21-year-old white man of White Oak, to serve four months on the county roads for an assault on a female.
Counsel for the defense urged the judge to be as light as possible on Gayle, declaring that he is not fully developed mentally and offered testimony tending to show that he is weak minded. “It has gotten so that then a person gets into trouble it develops that he is weak minded or has some other trouble,” Judge Shaw said.
The judge lectured at some length, deploring the present day tendency of young men and some who are not young to think that young girls and women are their prey. “They must be taught to let girls alone,” he said.
In passing sentence on Gayle he told the young man that he will have “plenty of time to think about his way of living,” while serving the four months on the roads.
Judge Shaw said that he was not a pessimist, but he could not help being startled by the apparent disregard for moral laws shown on every hand since the war. However, he believes that the moral pendulum has swung too far from the right and feels that a marked change may come over a majority of the people within a short time. “I believe that the world is growing better and not going to the bow-wows,” he said.
Judge Shaw advises young men of Greensboro, White oak and other places to stop loafing about picture shows and on the streets at night. “Young men, instead of roaming around at night, to over to the tent where Cyclone Mack is preaching. You will hear a simple, pure and forceful gospel preaching and it will do you good, he advised.
Gayle was convicted of assaulting Gertrude Alberty, 14-year-old white girl of White Oak.
From The Mocksville Enterprise, Thursday, Aug. 9, 1923, A.C. Huneycutt, publisher. Cyclone Mack was religious revivalist Baxter Franklin McLendon.
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