The recent attempted lynching at Shelbyville, Tennessee, presents an unusually clear picture of the race hatred that still inflames the South. The charge against the intended negro victim was the usual one of rape. No evidence pointed to E.K. Harris, but he was black and handy and was therefore charged with the crime. Subsequent medical examination of the fourteen-year old girl who had aroused the uproar disclosed the fact that she actually had suffered nothing but a few black-and-blue marks. Nevertheless, the mob of white farmers was so infuriated that, failing to capture Harris, it burned down the $150,000 court house.

Such actions destroy all logical and legalistic defense of lynching and reveal it as it is--the result of blind hatred and fear. The Civil War and the resulting Constitutional amendments were no solution of the racial problem. Calhoun, Yancey, and the other statesmen of the Old South probably realized more clearly than their victorious Northern opponents that when two races live together in constant contact one must inevitably rule over the other. The American Indians and the natives of Malaysia are but two examples. Intermarriage is the only escape from this rigid necessity. This solution is obviously impossible in the South.

The lot of the negro, then, probably involves either migration or subserviency. Nevertheless, the conquering whites need not degenerate into brutes; common justice at least should be granted to the weaker. The existing fiction of equality before the law must become a fact, if the negro and white are to live peaceably together in the semblance of a civilized community.