The Dispatch and Lynch Law
May 12, 1894
Summary
The Planet ridicules the Dispatch for their support of lynch law as a means of swift justice.
Transcription
The Richmond, VA Dispatch, the advocate of lynch law in its issue of the 5th inst. Says:
“The newspapers of State, without exception, so far as we know, give honorable praise to the authorities of Staunton for their admirable management of the case of Lawrence Spiller.
If this precedent be generally followed “Judge Lynch” will gave to adjourn his court sine die. Our courts of justice can and should meet the public demand for prompt trial and adequate punishment of ravishers, and they can and should also meet the public demand that no woman who has been the victim of a brutish man shall be put to needless torture on the witness stand.”
Remember the above is as applicable to the colored women as to white ones.
“More ravishers have been lynched in Virginia to save the victims the mortification of cross-examination than because of any fear that the prisoners would escape the gallows. This is the danger-point, and to it due attention should be given.
Let it be understood that no trial judge will permit the chief witness against a ravisher to be put to torture on the witness-stand, and lynchings will rarely or never be heard of again in Virginia”
The above is the most ridiculous position ever occupied by an individual professing to have some knowledge of law. The witness stand may be the platform of the perjurer and in skillful cross-examinations alone rest the hope of detection.
To abolish them would be to place more than one man’s life in jeopardy and white men would be among the first to feel the effect of it, because each and every citizen stands sworn to recognize the civil and political equality of all men before the law.
The secret of this desire not to place white women on the stand in cases of this kind it that it would in many instances compromise them.
The average prejudiced white man believes that any negro who is criminally intimate with even an abandoned white woman even with her consent should be hanged.
“The newspapers of State, without exception, so far as we know, give honorable praise to the authorities of Staunton for their admirable management of the case of Lawrence Spiller.
If this precedent be generally followed “Judge Lynch” will gave to adjourn his court sine die. Our courts of justice can and should meet the public demand for prompt trial and adequate punishment of ravishers, and they can and should also meet the public demand that no woman who has been the victim of a brutish man shall be put to needless torture on the witness stand.”
Remember the above is as applicable to the colored women as to white ones.
“More ravishers have been lynched in Virginia to save the victims the mortification of cross-examination than because of any fear that the prisoners would escape the gallows. This is the danger-point, and to it due attention should be given.
Let it be understood that no trial judge will permit the chief witness against a ravisher to be put to torture on the witness-stand, and lynchings will rarely or never be heard of again in Virginia”
The above is the most ridiculous position ever occupied by an individual professing to have some knowledge of law. The witness stand may be the platform of the perjurer and in skillful cross-examinations alone rest the hope of detection.
To abolish them would be to place more than one man’s life in jeopardy and white men would be among the first to feel the effect of it, because each and every citizen stands sworn to recognize the civil and political equality of all men before the law.
The secret of this desire not to place white women on the stand in cases of this kind it that it would in many instances compromise them.
The average prejudiced white man believes that any negro who is criminally intimate with even an abandoned white woman even with her consent should be hanged.
About this article
Source
Location on Page
Upper Right Quadrant
Topic
Contributed By
Carlos Serrano
Citation
“The Dispatch and Lynch Law,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed January 20, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1548.