That was a brave and useful bunch of citizens who formed a mob and stormed the Asheville jail Saturday night. They were terribly interested in the welfare of the community, the safety of women, and the good name of North Carolina; so much so that, disregarding the fact that two horrible crimes, the like of which make every white man’s blood boil, had been committed within a few days on Sunset Mountain, they went calmly about their own affairs, if they had any, neglected to assist in the search for the beast whose crime horrified all North Carolina, and in no way assisted in his capture; he waited until the sheriff had him disarmed, and behind prison bars, when, and not until then, their wrath knew no bounds, could not be held in, and the mob stormed the jail and would have taken the prisoner, now bound and helpless, and exact from him his life, in payment of his crime, not by process of law, but in the name of Judge Lynch. As would be expected from such a brave mob, there are said to have been ex-convicts and other of equally good repute leading the outraged “citizenship.”
The Asheville mob almost rose to the heights obtained by the Georgia one that broke into the state hospital at Milledgeville, and taking an insane Negro from his keepers, beat him to death for a maniacal crime.
Sheriff Mitchell of Buncombe deserves the thanks of the state for having averted the lynching, and without calling on the militia and without bloodshed. At that though, it wasn’t a very difficult job for brains to outdo such a mob.
From the editorial page of the Jackson County Journal, Sylva, N.C., Wednesday, September 23, 1925; Dan Tompkins, editor.
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn91068765/1925-09-23/ed-4/
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