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Ml 48106-1346 USA 313.'761-4700 800/521-0600 LAWLESSNESS AND THE NEW DEAL; CONGRESS AND ANTILYNCHING LEGISLATION, 1934-1938 DISSERTATION presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Robin Bernice Balthrope, A.B., J.D., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1995 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Michael Les Benedict Warren Van Tine Advisor Leila Rupp Department of History OMI Number: 9525990 UMI Microform 9525990 Copyright 1995, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 To My Parents XX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Michael Les Benedict for all of the valuable criticism and direction he has provided over the years, and especially with this project. I also wish to thank the other members of my committee, Warren Van Tine and Leila Rupp, for their assistance and advice, and to all of my professors at Ohio State University I wish continued success at guiding graduate students. To the good friends I've made at Ohio State--Erik and Melissa, Mala and Kaushik, Felton, Joe, Selika and others--I could never have made it without your camaraderie and support. To my family and friends, I am eternally grateful for your deep faith in me and your encouragement when things did not always proceed smoothly. And to Roye, without whose technical assistance and longstanding friendship I could never have completed this endeavor. VITA March 22, 1957 ............. .. Born - Cleveland, Ohio 1979 .......................... A.B., Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1982 .......................... J.D., University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 1982-1984 ................... Attomey-Advisor, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Administrative Law Judges, Cincinnati, Ohio 1984-1987 ................... Trial Attorney, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Cleveland, Ohio 1988 .......................... M.A., John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio 1993-Present ................. Assistant Professor, California State University, San Bernardino, San Bernardino, California PUBLICATIONS Annette Gibbs and Robin B. Balthrope, "Sexual Harassment in the Workplace and Its Ramifications for Academia," Journal of College Student Personnel 23 (March 1982), 158-162. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: History Studies in Legal/Constitutional History, Michael Les Benedict; Black History, Women's History IV TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ............................................. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ......................................... iii VITA .................................................... Iv CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION............................ 1 II. " TO HELP PROTECT HIS DISTANT NEIGHBOR". 19 III. BLACK AND WHITE LEADERS PROTEST LYNCHING . 54 IV. "FIGHTING A TRADITION OF COMMUNITY ACTION" . 74 V. "A NEW DEAL OF LAW ENFORCEMENT"........... 115 VI. "FDR MAY BE COUNTED ON TO SAVE LYNCHING__". 149 VII. THE LAST "NEW DEAL" EFFORT FOR AN ANTILYNCHING L A W ..........................173 VIII. 1939 TO THE PRESENT........................ 217 IX. CONCLUSION .................................239 FOOTNOTES..................... 244 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................... 297 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION During 1930, twenty-one men, all but one black, were lynched in the United States. They were accused of various crimes but had not been proven guilty in a court trial. The victims were burned and tortured, which terrified the local black communities. Not only men but women and children were present at these lynchings, indicating that much of the white community approved of these activities.^ One of those lynchings took place at Sherman, Texas that May. In many respects it was atypical. A black man, George Hughes, went to his employer's house to collect wages due him; he found the farmer's wife at home instead. After several unsuccessful attempts to get his wages from her, he assaulted her. A short while later, Hughes was arrested, pled guilty and was jailed away from Sherman for safekeeping before his upcoming trial. Meanwhile, rumors about the crime spread around Sherman, inflaming the townspeople. When Hughes was brought back to the town, for trial, the crowd stormed the courthouse and set it afire. The National 2 Guardsmen, sent to protect the courthouse, soon retreated; the next wave of troops fought the mob but lost. The mob dynamited its way into Hughes's cell, and took him to the town's black business district. He was castrated in front of a large crowd that included women and children. Then he was set ablaze. Finally, the crowd rampaged through the black community, destroying black-owned property throughout Sherman, whose black citizens took refuge with whites or fled town. In the aftermath of the violence, twenty nine people were arrested and fourteen indicted for "rioting, engaging in riot to burn courthouse, burglary of courthouse with explosives to commit arson, engaging in riot to commit arson, and engaging in riot to commit murder." Yet no one was indicted for the murder of George Hughes, and they likely would not have been prosecuted if indicted. No one was convicted of any crime and only one person had taxable property which could be taken to pay deimages. The state was interested in the amount of property the defendants owned because it sought compensation for damage done to the jailhouse, but they were never subjected to civil lawsuits for the damage committed to black homes and institutions. The black community itself had to bear the financial cost of the mob frenzy.^ This incident was typical, because the victim was black, continuing a pattern that began in the late 3 nineteenth century. Thirteen of the twenty-one men were taken from jail cells when killed. The other eight had not been charged with a crime and were lynched on non-criminal grounds. The fact that these lynchings generally took place below the Mason-Dixon line was also characteristic. Nineteen lynchings took place in the former Confederacy, the other two in Oklahoma and Indiana. Of the thirteen outrages the following year, seven were perpetrated in the Deep South, although one lynching took place as far north as North Dakota, where a white man accused of murder was taken from jail and hanged.^ The number of lynchings in 1930 increased compared to the previous year, reversing the declining trend of the 1920s. After a high of eighty-three lynchings in 1919, a year when dozens of race riots erupted across the country, lynchings dropped off in the 1920s. But with the onset of the Depression, the number of lynchings rose once again, a reflection of the impact economic dislocation had on ever present racial tensions.* The earliest scholarly work on lynching was James Elbert Cutler's Lvnch-Law. which examined the history of lynching, present status of lynch mobs, state remedies and proposed federal solution. Walter White, NAACP Executive Secretary, wrote Rope and Faoaot after an exhaustive personal study of lynchings across the South; he ultimately recommended federal legislation to stop lynchings. A series 4 of books on lynching were written in the 1930s under the auspices of the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, including Arthur Raper's The Tragedy of Lynching and James Chadbourn's Lynching and the Law. These and Frank Shay'8 Judge Lynch are historically (and legally) oriented, in that they not only detail the various lynchings over time (as well as in the recent past) but specify the laws' preventive and remedial powers.® A number of books discuss individual lynchings and the circumstances that led to and resulted from them. From Death at Cross Plains, about a Reconstruction Alabama lynching, to No Crooked Death, about the 1911 Zachariah Walker lynching in Coatesville, Pennsylvania, the recent monographs do not address the larger issues of national jurisdiction over lynching or the legal basis for antilynching legislation. Even the recent book on Virginia and Georgia, W. Fitzhugh Brundage's