Page:The rising son, or, The antecedents and advancement of the colored race (IA risingsonthe00browrich).pdf/396

 first robbing the little black children of their clothing, seemed a most heartless transaction.

Nearly forty colored persons were murdered during this reign of terror. Some were hung at lamp-posts, some thrown off the docks, while others, shot, clubbed, and cut to pieces with knives, were seen lying dead in the streets.

Numbers of men and boys amused themselves by cutting pieces of flesh from the dead body of a black man who was suspended from a lamp-post at the corner of Prince Street.

Hundreds of colored men and women had taken shelter in the buildings reached by passing through the "Arch," on Thompson Street. The mob made several unsuccessful attempts to gain admission to this alley, where, in one of the buildings, was a room about thirty by forty feet square, in the centre of which stood an old-fashioned cook-stove, the top of which seemed filled with boilers, and all steaming away, completely filling the place with a dense fog. Two lamps, with dingy chimneys, and the light from the fire, which shone brightly through the broken doors of the stove, lighted up the room. Eight athletic black women, looking for all the world as if they had just returned from a Virginia corn-field, weary and hungry, stood around the room.

Each of these Amazons was armed with a tin dipper, apparently new, which had no doubt been purchased for the occasion. A woman of exceedingly large proportions—tall, long-armed, with a deep scar down the side of her face, and with a half grin, half smile—was the commander-in-chief of the "hot room." This woman stood by the stove, dipper in hand, and