Page:Chicago Race Riots (Sandburg, 1919).djvu/66

56 early to-day reports of another attack upon a white woman came. Frightened away once, her assailant hid and seized her as she left her house. She escaped only when all but stripped of her clothing.'

"Here we have the gravest sort of a charge. No names are given, no locations, no witnesses—a wild inflammatory tale sent out on the swift wings of rumor and gabbled and tattled for the consumption of a nation of people struggling to set an example to the rest of the world on the value of self control during a great world crisis.

"In all cases where the old and familiar statement is made that 'a negro attacked a white woman,' let there be something more than this vague allegation. It has too often served to screen ulterior purposes. Unless such a statement is accompanied by names, dates and locations, and has at least a semblance of such facts as are required when a white man is similarly involved, it should be assumed that the vague allegations are camouflage behind which men are working to defeat the intent of the emancipation proclamation, men who hold to the feudal south's theory that the negro is biologically inferior to the white man."

The Anti-Vilification society has been organized by colored men in Chicago who believe that the United States as a republic is headed in the right direction, but that there is being carried on persistent propaganda that can bring no good to the nation. Lieut. Charles S. Duke, colored, a graduate of Harvard university, and Edward H. Morris, an able colored lawyer who is reported to have a fortune close to $1,000,000, are among the officers of the organization.

"A few days ago there was a lynching in a Mississippi