Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/172

150 of a tragic group his face could be clearly discerned. His black forehead drew itself into a frown, as if he were thinking hard. Suddenly his face cleared, as if he had found what he sought.

"Ah wish," he said simply, "that when you all gets through with me you'd jes' give my shoes to my pa!"

And with this anti-climax, absurd in spite of the tragedy, the negro was hanged. (See, Note 6, p. 246.)

Now does anyone for a moment suppose that even in the event of emasculation rendering this negro impotent, it would have a particle of influence in deterring thousands of other ignorant negroes, who, from their gross ignorance, would never hear of this case, living in widely separated districts all over the country, from doing likewise? Not for one single instant when their passions have been aroused and the means of gratifying them is within their reach.

With the surgeon's knife actually pressing upon his scrotum; with the blazing fagots so near him that he could actually feel the heat of their flames, he would nevertheless seize his victim and outrage her if it lay within his power to do so. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, in cases similar to the one just quoted, the negro having gotten his nearly-exhausted victim down in the brush, then by the threats with his murderous knife, deprived her by fright of nearly all the remaining strength she had left for a struggle with a brutal person of probably five times her strength, would, in the end, compel her to yield to his infamous desires. And, in the case of any chaste woman, if she survived the terrors of the shock, the probable injuries inflicted, the scandal and other feel-