Men and Women Lynched

Three black men and two black women are lynched under the suspicion that they killed a white man in Alabama.

Three colored men and two colored women, under suspicion of having murdered a white man were lynched near Greenville, Ala., Saturday night, April 20, 1895. A more dastardly crime could hardly be conceived. Two helpless women were launched into eternity with the men. No one will ever know the agony to which they were subjected. No one will chronicle the pleadings which they poured into the ears of their merciless slayers.
This occurs in Christian America, with its laws and its officers to enforce them. Is there a man, be he white or black, with a spark of manhood in his body, but what will condemn this atrocious crime?
Five lives have been offered up and two of them women.
Let us imagine such a crime committed by colored men upon white victims. The entire power of the state would have been called into play. Blood-hounds would have scoured the swamps and the forests.
Scores of colored men would have been made to offer up their lives as an atonement of the lynching is made and silence reigns.
The perpetrators of this dastardly deed will never be punished.
Colored men, in far away Tennessee, six colored men were manacled and shot down not long since for barn-burning. Their children are sorrowing and their widows are in tears.
Think you these outrages can go on forever? Oh, no! A check must be placed upon the lawless. Liberal minded, justice loving Christian white men will endorse any legitimate effort to check the evil.
For our part, we believe every colored man should own a Winchester rifle, and a revolver. He should know how to shoot it.
Lynching parties should be unceremoniously shot down. They have forfeited their right to the protection of the law. When every lynching is followed by the funeral of one of the lynchers the business will prove unprofitable and prejudiced, blood-stained white men will find some other means for the employment of their idle pastime.
Lynching women! High heaven is there to be no rest for the weary, or protection for the guiltless!
When the law fails to protect us we must protect ourselves and each other.
Standing forth in its pristine splendor, studded with the diamonds of eternal justice is the declaration, “Self-preservation is the first law of nature.” Let us then preserve ourselves and each other. Meet the lynchers, colored men, whether they come in the name of sheriffs’ posses or vigilantes with anything upon which you can lay your hands, be it an axe or a sabre, a revolver or a rifle. Let us sell our lives as dearly as possible, protect our women and take our chances in the Great Beyond. Lynch-law must go!

“Men and Women Lynched,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 19, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1393.