7

THE CRUSADE JUSTIFIED

_(Appeal from America to the World_)


It has been urged in criticism of the movement appealing to the English
people for sympathy and support in our crusade against Lynch Law that our
action was unpatriotic, vindictive and useless. It is not a part of the
plan of this pamphlet to make any defense for that crusade nor to indict
any apology for the motives which led to the presentation of the facts of
American lynchings to the world at large. To those who are not willfully
blind and unjustly critical, the record of more than a thousand lynchings
in ten years is enough to justify any peaceable movement tending to
ameliorate the conditions which led to this unprecedented slaughter of
human beings.

If America would not hear the cry of men, women and children whose dying
groans ascended to heaven praying for relief, not only for them but for
others who might soon be treated as they, then certainly no fair-minded
person can charge disloyalty to those who make an appeal to the
civilization of the world for such sympathy and help as it is possible to
extend. If stating the facts of these lynchings, as they appeared from
time to time in the white newspapers of America--the news gathered by
white correspondents, compiled by white press bureaus and disseminated
among white people--shows any vindictiveness, then the mind which so
charges is not amenable to argument.

But it is the desire of this pamphlet to urge that the crusade started and