Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/171

Rh rifle and a shot gun at him, he was halted and taken to the Labouisse house.

"When we got there," said Mr. Lang," We took the negro before Mrs. Labouisse.

" 'Do you know this negro?' I asked.

" 'Yes,' she answered; 'he is the one who attacked me an hour ago.'

" 'Are you certain?' I asked her, for in Pass Christian we are not given to lynching the wrong man.

" 'Yes,' replied Mrs. Labouisse; 'I am certain that is he.' Then she called out her nurse and old man Allen. They identified him, too. Mrs. Labouisse lost control of herself.

" 'Let me kill him! Oh, let me kill that negro brute!' she cried in a terrible voice that we who heard it shall never forget. We hurried Adams away toward the jail, and the servants calmed Mrs. Labouisse."

A meeting was called at the Knights of Honor hall, in Pass Christian, and Adams was sentenced to death. The constable was advised to get Adams out of the county that night, and it was while he was being taken away that he was captured and strung up. When the rope was thrown around his neck, a voice said: "Adams, you have ten minutes in which to pray and repent."

"I don't want to pray none," said the doomed man sullenly.

For five minutes everybody waited, and then the same voice asked again: "What have you to say before you die?"

Adams shifted his leg lazily from one leg to the other. By the light of a single lantern in the midst