Died Under Her Bed

A Democratic politician, who made speeches against black people, was found dead under the bed of a black prostitute.

We are opposed to this mixing. White men should stick to their own women. They charge us with immorality and yet they are parties to the immoral acts.
He was found there-under a Negro prostitute's bed.
We refer to a prominent white Democratic politician of Fluvanna Co. whose name was Charles S. Thomas and who no doubt had made speeches in his lifetime against the Negro.
He died in the room of a Negro woman; one whom a respectable colored man would not look upon save with contempt. In her dusky arm he had lain, and ere morning came death's icy hand touched him and he fell to rise no more.
They tried to claim he was murdered but lt would not do. He died of the hemorrhage of the lungs, and leaves a wife and five children. He was a member of the Virginia legislature as late as '91-2 and was it one time deacon of a church.
How has the mighty fallen!
We are sorry he fell by the wayside, but we have warned white men about their lascivious dispositions, advising them to live moral, upright lives. Why should Deacon Thomas love Mary Johnson?
She was a Negro and he had a svlfe and five children. It is a sad ending and tends to show that after all the Negro has been the imitator rather than the originator of immorality.
One of the Democratic dailies, The State inferred that this colored woman had pulled ex Legislator Thomas in. Here is what it says:
"Several gentlemen who knew Mr. Thomas intimately say that he never frequented places of ill repute, but was in every way a strictly moral man. They believe that while he was in a state of intoxication he wandered past the house, and the girl upon recognizing him and his condition, pulled him in for the purpose of robbing him.”
What was an ex-deacon doing intoxicated ? What was he doing in the neighborhood of Locust and Tobacco Alleys, a regular ranch for prostitutes?
We warned him to let colored prostitutes alone, for when they are cast off by the race, they are bad indeed.
Deacon Thomas has gone on before. May God have mercy upon him and may the suddenness of his taking off and the compromising nature of his surrounding be a warnlng to those who have been accustomed to do likewise.
White men, stay away from colored women. Colored men, stay away from white women.
Let us both do right and fear not.

“Died Under Her Bed,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed April 24, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1554.