Cross Boys Sent to Roads, Mears Girls to Samarcand Manor, Moses Cross to be Tried Feb. 12, 1924

Readers of the News Reporter are familiar with the Mears case, a sordid story wherein a white woman and her children were mixed up with negroes in the manufacture of whiskey and immorality. Two negro boys named Cross were sent to the chain gang for several months, two young white girls were sent to Samarcand Manor, and the ring leader of the manufacturing enterprise and other evils, Moses Cross, escaped.

Cross kept the two white girls in his home near Durham for a considerable length of time. When his sons and the mother of the girls were arrested in Welches Creek township, he fled the State.

Last week he was captured in Durham, and Monday he was brought back here by deputy sheriff L.J. Spivey. He will be tried in the county court next Tuesday.

From page 5 of The Whiteville News Reporter, “For the County of Columbus and Her People,” Thursday, Feb. 7, 1924