Punishing Lynchers

An article from the contemporary newspaper, the Washington D. C. Evening Star, is replicated in this issue of the planet in full, as it reports on a legal precedent against lynching.

Washington D. C. Evening Star – A few more sentences like those imposed yesterday on a couple of Alabama lynchers might go far toward solving the troublesome problem of how to suppress this form of lawlessness. These men participated in a lynching four years ago, but have just been tried and convicted. The court sentenced them to imprisonment for life, and this penalty will probably be hereafter adopted in the state as the proper punishment of these volunteer executioners.
The race question did not enter into the case, for all the party were white. It was possible to consider the offense as murder and to impose the death penalty, for the line between lynching and the great capital crime is too fine to be considered when the public safety, so seriously menaced by the application of lynch law, is in jeopardy.
Yet much has been accomplished by this conviction, and the enemies of the lynching system - for it has grown into such proportions as to begin to deserve that name - should take heart, and labor with more determination than ever to root out the evil.

“Punishing Lynchers,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed September 14, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1608.