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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 49, 6 December 1948, p. 4.
ranscribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Civil rights promises come and civil rights promises go, but lynch terror continues as usual in the South, and as usual the. government does nothing about it. The latest evidence of this grisly fact is the story of Robert Mallard and his wife, Amy.
On the night of Nov. 20, less than three weeks after the elections, Mallard, accompanied by his wife, 18-month old son and two other persons, was driving to his home, 20 miles outside of Vidalia, Georgia, when he found the road blocked by a group of automobiles and a gang of 50 to 75 hooded men. Mallard was dragged from his seat and shot to death; the mob would not even permit his horror-stricken family and friends to take the body, which they left lying by the roadside.
For several days the fact that a man had been lynched was hushed up and kept out of the press. When a newspaper finally did break through the curtain of silence on Nov. 23, and it was revealed that Mrs. Mallard accused the Ku Klux Klan of the crime, the Georgia authorities moved into action – and arrested Mrs. Mallard at the funeral of her husband, charging her with his murder!
This was so raw that the Georgia police were later compelled to release her. But, as this is written, they have not yet arrested the member of the mob whom she had positively identified, or the owner of an automobile which she recognized in the roadblock. Add those facts together, and you will understand the real attitude of Georgia authorities toward prosecuting known white lynchers of a Negro.
That’s the attitude of the Southern ruling class – but what about the attitude of the government in Washington? It’s substantially the same. Truman’s agents are not trying to arrest Mrs. Mallard, but neither are they trying to do anything to apprehend or punish the lynch mob.
Walter White assures us that Truman assured him that his civil rights program, including an anti-lynching bill, will get top priority in the 81st Congress. It remains to be seen if Truman will actually do this, or if it will have any success if he does.
This does not mean that foes of lynching should sit back now and wait to see what will happen next year. If we do that, little or nothing will be accomplished and the lynch murderers will remain free to continue their savage practices. What we need now is the mobilization of mass pressure, through a conference of Negro and labor organizations in Washington to force the new Congress to take appropriate action.
Finally, we must recognize an important truth – the passage of an anti-lynching bill will not automatically end lynch terror any more than the presence of an anti-murder law in the Georgia statutes has prevented the mob murder of Negroes. It is possible to have an anti-lynching law that will achieve nothing, just as it is possible to have one that has some real teeth in it. And much will depend not only on the kind of law passed, but also on. who enforces it, and how.
That is why, while pressing for the strongest possible kind of anti-lynch law, we must also work unceasingly for the abolition of the capitalist-bred Jim-Crow system that encourages lynching and for the establishment of a Workers and Farmers Government that would really be concerned with wiping out terror and violence against minority groups.
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