Digital
History>eXplorations>Lynching>Anti-Lynching
Legislation of the 1920s>Governor Carey to James Johnson
Governor Robert Carey's Letter to James Weldon Johnson March 17,
1922
Source:
NAACP Papers, Library of Congress
"…
I do not believe in lynching under any consideration, and further
I do not believe in mob rule. No citizen or community should have
the right to take the law into their own hands and it is much
better to permit guilty men to escape than that innocent men should
be punished. It is disgraceful that in certain sections of this
country local authorities will not attempt to enforce the law
and particularly that they will willingly turn over to a mob persons
to be lynched. I cannot conceive how the Governor of any State
will make no effort to protect the lives of people threatened,
with lynching and, where local authorities either refuse to do
their duty or are unable to do so, will not lend the assistance
of the State government to stop outrages such as lynchings are.
It is not that I approve of mob rule of lynchings that I do not
want to subscribe to the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, but solely for
the reason that I believe the Federal Government, as well as the
Federal Courts, are constantly encroaching upon the rights of
States. If the Federal Government has power to legislate to prevent
lynchings, it probably has the power to legislate on any matter
in which Congress does not happen to be in accord with the State
Governments. In other words, it can supersede both State Courts
and State Governments. I have never felt that the men who were
responsible for this country and its constitution had any such
thought in mind, but rather that the States should be permitted
to conduct their own business as they saw fit. No doubt the situation
as regards lynching is not only most disgraceful but very serious
in many states, yet I believe that there are enough decent citizens
in any community that if a proper campaign was made the states
themselves would clean house and bring about better conditions."
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