Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/61



" persons joined our church the other Sunday and they were all from Vicksburg, Miss., where there had been a lynching a few weeks before," said Dr. L. K. Williams, colored pastor of the largest protestant church in North America, in an address to the Baptist Ministers' council of Chicago.

Tuskeegee institute records of lynchlngs the first six months of this year show the following numbers In the states named: Alabama, 3; Arkansas, 4; Florida, 2; Georgia, 3; Louisiana, 4; Mississippi, 7; Missouri, i; North Carolina, 2; South Carolina, 1; Texas, 1. The total, 28, is seven less than In the corresponding period of 19 1 8 and fourteen more than in the corresponding period of 1917.

Not only Is Chicago a receiving station and port of refuge for colored people who are anxious to be free from the jurisdiction of lynch law, but there has been built here a publicity or propaganda machine that directs Its appeals or carries on an agitation that every week reaches hundreds of thousands of people of the colored race in the southern states. The State street blocks south of 31st street are a "newspaper row," with the Defender, the Broad Ax, the Plaindealer, the Searchlight, the Guide, the Advocate, the Whip, as weekly publications, and there are also Illustrated monthly magazines such as the Half Century and the Favorite.