The Kentucky Gazette

There lives in this town of Lexington a colored man named Jim Turner, who is much respected by both white and black. He is noted for his exertions in behalf of the education and elevation of his own race, and is a trustee of the colored school. He is thus thrown into intimate relations with all classes of his own people, and if any one is acquainted with their views and feelings on subjects that interest them, Jim Turner is the man. Happening to meet him the other morning we asked his views and those of the more intelligent colored men in reference to the whipping-post. He said that he had just had a conversation with a candidate on that very subject, and told the gentleman that not only he himself but all the leading colored men of the city and county were in favor of it, so far as he knows.

Candidate.—It is a bill merely to reach the negroes; for white men will be sure to get around it somehow.

Turner.—The same applies to the penitentiary. The negroes are sent there by scores for trifling offences and their wives and children are left to starve or beg or to be cared for by charitable colored people. A colored woman whose husband is in the penitentiary finds it almost impossible to get employment—she is regarded with suspicion, and her children are pointed at in the schools by their playmates as those to be avoided. Negroes have not the same dread of the penitentiary that the whites have, they are treated there better by the keepers than are white men—they sacrifice fewer comforts when they go there and have more indulgences while there than the whites. He said that the colored man's skin was much tenderer than a white man's, and that he dreaded the lash above all things. They had not the same dread of the penitentiary that white men have, no disgrace attaches to them after serving in the penitentiary, they are received into their churches the same as ever, and no public opinion among the colored people places a brand on them as on the whites. He further said that if no general law was passed he wanted one for his own benefit in case he was caught in any offence requiring punishment. Let the lash fall upon him if he deserved it, and not to let his wife and children suffer for his fault.