night to hunt one man who had never before been arrested, or made any
record as a criminal has never been explained. When they entered the back
door the young men thought the threatened attack was on, and fired into
them. Three of the officers were wounded, and when the _defending_ party
found it was officers of the law upon whom they had fired, they ceased and
got away.

Thirty-one men were arrested and thrown in jail as "conspirators,"
although they all declared more than once they did not know they were
firing on officers. Excitement was at fever beat until the morning papers,
two days after, announced that the wounded deputy sheriffs were out of
danger. This hindered rather than helped the plans of the whites. There
was no law on the statute books which would execute an Afro-American for
wounding a white man, but the "unwritten law" did. Three of these men, the
president, the manager and clerk of the grocery--"the leaders of the
conspiracy"--were secretly taken from jail and lynched in a shockingly
brutal manner. "The Negroes are getting too independent," they say, "we
must teach them a lesson."

What lesson? The lesson of subordination. "Kill the leaders and it will
cow the Negro who dares to shoot a white man, even in self-defense."

Although the race was wild over the outrage, the mockery of law and
justice which disarmed men and locked them up in jails where they could be
easily and safely reached by the mob--- the Afro-American ministers,
newspapers and leaders counselled obedience to the law which did not
protect them.

Their counsel was heeded and not a hand was uplifted to resent the
outrage; following the advice of the _Free Speech_, people left the city