Digital History>eXplorations>Lynching>Anti-Lynching Legislation of the 1930s>Robert Wagner's Letter to Walter White

Robert Wagner's Letter to Walter White (December 27, 1933)

Source: NAACP Papers, Library of Congress

In recent months there have been shocking reversions to primitive brutality. Mob passions have flared into uncontrolled crime extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Constituted authority has not simply been rendered impotent; something infinitely worse has happened, for some officers of the law have connived with mass murder and some high public officials have condoned it. It is this latter aspect of the situation that creates a crisis today. There may always be an irresponsible and blood-thirsty element in our population so long as some men are below normal in human sensibilities. But there need not be, and there must not be, any breakdown of the barriers which prevent this criminal element from gaining popular applause and from continuing to participate in the benefits of free citizenship.

We have been told many times that the problems created by lynching are local and can be solved by local authority. One might as well expect an epidemic to cure itself, or for healthy people to take no steps to prevent its ravages from sweeping over them. The test of the supremacy of law comes at the very time when a locality has temporarily lost its equilibrium and when its supposedly sober elements are at the mercy of the mob. In such cases, the federal government should act.

Mr. Justice Holmes, whom no one would accuse of an arrant desire to override local authority, delivered the classic polemic against lynch law in the Frank case. He said that while he did not believe it impossible to preserve the guarantees of the federal constitution everywhere in the United States, to do so necessitated at times the intrusion of federal authority into local areas.

I am writing to you because you champion a race which suffers most acutely from mob terrorism despite the fact that its right to the equal protection of the laws has been sealed with the blood of countless Americans of every race and creed. The courage and nobility with which the Negro race is waging the war against lynching should receive not only the militant cooperation of every citizen, but also the approbation and assistance of federal law.