Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/63

Rh a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. So long as the colored people get more of those three things in the north than in the south they are going to keep coming, and they are going to stay."

Dr. Hall told the intelligence officer that the situation reminded him of the reply of the colored band leader to Liza Johnson, who asked what was the occasion of the brass band's parading the streets one evening. The reply was, "Lordy, Liza, don't you know we don't need no occasion?"

The declaration of Dr. Williams to the Baptist Ministers' association that eleven new members came from Vicksburg has a direct connection with a lynching story which is being widely circulated by the publicity or propaganda batteries of South State street, reaching at least 1,000,000 of the illiterate colored people of the south. The story, for ingenious cruelty and with relation to the kind of barbarism that is worse for the practitioners than the victims, equals anything recited in recent European war atrocities or anything in the Spanish inquisition or more ancient days.

In Vicksburg, in the third week in June, the story goes, a colored man accused of an assault on a white woman was placed in a hole that came to his shoulders. Earth was tamped around his neck, only his head being left above ground. A steel cage five feet square then was put over the head of the victim and a bulldog was put inside the cage. Around the dog's head was tied a paper bag filled with red pepper to inflame his nostrils and eyes. The dog immediately lunged at the victim's head. Further details are too gruesome to print.

Whatever may be the truth about this amazing story, it is published in newspapers of the colored people and is