On Saturday afternoon, September 22 1906, Atlanta newspapers reported four alleged assaults by black men upon white local women. None of these were substantiated but the newspapers sensationalized them with lurid details and inflammatory language. Within hours, thousands of white men and boys gathered in downtown Atlanta, surging down Atlanta streets assaulting hundreds of blacks. They attacked black-owned business and streetcars. At least three of the men were beaten to death. By Sunday, the state militia were able to control the mob, but despite the presence of armed police, and militia patrolling the streets, blacks were able to secretly obtain weapons to arm themselves. On Monday, a group of heavily armed black men met in Brownsville, just south of downtown Atlanta to hold a meeting. Police learned of the gathering and launched a raid on them. This led to a shootout and one officer was killed. Sporadic fighting continued throughout the day, city officials, businessmen, clergy and the press cried out for an end to the violence.
These were times of much strife between the races. There was no greater crime than a white woman being raped or sexually assaulted by a black man. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt called rape, "the most abominable in all the category of crimes, even worse than murder". In many parts of the country, the consequence of such a crime was lynching, and in 1906 there were 62 lynchings. Some of these men were guilty, but so often they were convicted just based upon suspicion or the word of one white woman. There was no trial and no jury, just the noose. The punishment was not just death, but often torture, torture by mobs of men "avenging in bestial fashion a bestial deed, and reducing themselves to a level with the criminal" (Roosevelt 1906).
Thus in 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt took a bold stand against not only lynching, mob action and race riots but also on declining race relations. In his sixth annual address to congress, he preached racial equality and outlined his plan to get there.
"Reward or punish the individual on his merits as an individual"
"There is but one safe rule in dealing with black men as with white men; it is the same rule that must be applied in dealing with rich men and poor men; that is, to treat each man, whatever his color, his creed, or his social position, with even-handed justice on his real worth as a man. White people owe it quite as much to themselves as to the colored race to treat well the colored man who shows by his life that he deserves such treatment; for it is surely the highest wisdom to encourage in the colored race all those individuals who are honest, industrious, law-abiding, and who therefore make good and safe neighbors and citizens. Reward or punish the individual on his merits as an individual."
"the crime of rape should always be punished with death"
"Every colored man should realize that the worst enemy of his race is the negro criminal, and above all the negro criminal who commits the dreadful crime of rape; and it should be felt as in the highest degree an offense against the whole country, and against the colored race in particular, for a colored man to fail to help the officers of the law in hunting down with all possible earnestness and zeal every such infamous offender. Moreover, in my judgment, the crime of rape should always be punished with death"
"let it be justice under the law, and not the wild and crooked savagery of a mob"
"The members of the white race on the other hand should understand that every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilization; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered. Every lynching means just so much moral deterioration in all the children who have any knowledge of it, and therefore just so much additional trouble for the next generation of Americans.
Let justice be both sure and swift; but let it be justice under the law, and not the wild and crooked savagery of a mob."
"those who commit the crime of rape, are in the great majority men who have had either no education or very little" (Promote Public Education)
"No more shortsighted policy can be imagined than, in the fancied interest of one class, to prevent the education of another class. The free public school, the chance for each boy or girl to get a good elementary education, lies at the foundation of our whole political situation. In every community the poorest citizens, those who need the schools most, would be deprived of them if they only received school facilities proportioned to the taxes they paid. This is as true of one portion of our country as of another. It is as true for the negro as for the white man. The white man, if he is wise, will decline to allow the Negroes in a mass to grow to manhood and womanhood without education. Unquestionably education such as is obtained in our public schools does not do everything towards making a man a good citizen; but it does much. The lowest and most brutal criminals, those for instance who commit the crime of rape, are in the great majority men who have had either no education or very little; just as they are almost invariably men who own no property; for the man who puts money by out of his earnings, like the man who acquires education, is usually lifted above mere brutal criminality."
"[incendiary speeches and writings] increase the likelihood of a repetition of the very crime against which they are inveighing" (Stop sensationalizing the crimes)
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29547"Be it remembered, furthermore, that the individuals who, whether from folly, from evil temper, from greed for office, or in a spirit of mere base demagogy, indulge in the inflammatory and incendiary speeches and writings which tend to arouse mobs and to bring about lynching, not only thus excite the mob, but also tend by what criminologists call "suggestion," greatly to increase the likelihood of a repetition of the very crime against which they are inveighing. When the mob is composed of the people of one race and the man lynched is of another race, the men who in their speeches and writings either excite or justify the action tend, of course, to excite a bitter race feeling and to cause the people of the opposite race to lose sight of the abominable act of the criminal himself; and in addition, by the prominence they give to the hideous deed they undoubtedly tend to excite in other brutal and depraved natures thoughts of committing it. Swift, relentless, and orderly punishment under the law is the only way by which criminality of this type can permanently be supprest."
http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/atlanta-race-riot-1906
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Le_Petit_Journal_7_Oct_1906.jpg
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