rehabilitation. If labor is withdrawn capital will not remain. The
Afro-American is thus the backbone of the South. A thorough knowledge and
judicious exercise of this power in lynching localities could many times
effect a bloodless revolution. The white man's dollar is his god, and to
stop this will be to stop outrages in many localities.

The Afro-Americans of Memphis denounced the lynching of three of their
best citizens, and urged and waited for the authorities to act in the
matter and bring the lynchers to justice. No attempt was made to do so,
and the black men left the city by thousands, bringing about great
stagnation in every branch of business. Those who remained so injured the
business of the street car company by staying off the cars, that the
superintendent, manager and treasurer called personally on the editor of
the _Free Speech_, asked them to urge our people to give them their
patronage again. Other business men became alarmed over the situation and
the _Free Speech_ was run away that the colored people might be more
easily controlled. A meeting of white citizens in June, three months after
the lynching, passed resolutions for the first time, condemning it. _But
they did not punish the lynchers._ Every one of them was known by name,
because they had been selected to do the dirty work, by some of the very
citizens who passed these resolutions. Memphis is fast losing her black
population, who proclaim as they go that there is no protection for the
life and property of any Afro-American citizen in Memphis who is not a
slave.

The Afro-American citizens of Kentucky, whose intellectual and financial
improvement has been phenomenal, have never had a separate car law until
now. Delegations and petitions poured into the Legislature against it, yet
the bill passed and the Jim Crow Car of Kentucky is a legalized
institution. Will the great mass of Negroes continue to patronize the