The Daily Worker

MILITIA COMMANDER AT DECATUR IS BOSS OVER 500 NEGROES
Captain Burleson Freely Admits Has Heard Remarks: "Those Niggers Ain't Worth A Trial", and Threats to Kill Negroes

By Our Special Correspondent

DECATUR, Ala. (By Mail).-Captain Burleson, in charge of the thirty national guardsmen brought here from Hartselle, Alabama, to "prevent the boys from breaking jail" has quite a different concept of his reason for being here. When the sheriff, after due consultation, asked for troops on the eve of the trial of the Scottsboro boys, the weakness of the jail was stressed and stories were bruited about that prisoners had escaped before.

The captain knows his South and is not deceived. Standing by the jail window and reminiscing about his days in the North as an actor, he became more confidential about his duties here.

On the trial itself, he said, he had an open mind. He was not sure whether the first trial was fair or not, claiming not to know enough about it. He conceded reluctantly that, in the heat of the first few days excitement, the crowd at Scottsboro two years ago might not have given the boys an equal chance. He thought that if a fair trial, which he thinks the present one will turn out to be, proves the boys innocent they should be freed. If guilty they "should get what's coming to them."

"WORKED" 500 NEGROES
In civil life he is a building contractor who has "worked" 500 Negroes and "treated them fine."

His whole approach on the Negro question is very typical of the paternal attitude of the local intelligentsia: "If the nigger knows his place and keeps it, we will keep ours; if he treats us right, we will treat him right; if he is good, we will take care of him."

He freely admits that he and his men have overheard "irresponsible elements" remark: "Those niggers ain't worth a trial;" and "standing right here I could shoot them full of lead." And quite correctly he adds that this is not yet mob action, that "organization is needed to get up a mob."

KNEW LYNCH PLANS
When the Supreme Court of the United States reversed the death sentence of the Scottsboro court, he knew personally about a group that was beginning to organize for a lynching should the case again come up in the court at Scottsboro. Scottsboro is only about 60 miles from Decatur-not quite a two-hour ride by automobile. The Captain hastened to add that the organization had been discontinued since then, but he was nervous thinking of such a possibility and of the decision he will have to make should it come about. Huntsville, the home town of Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, also is a possible center for the organization of night riders," let alone Morgan County itself which has all the timber ready to be kindled.

ONE MUST NOT FORGET THAT THE SOUTH AND ITS DECADES-LONG SYSTEM OF OPPRESSION OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE IS ON TRIAL BEFORE THE WHOLE WORLD, THAT THE MASS MOVEMENT HAS PUT THE SOUTH ON THE DEFENSIVE. NOW THAT WE ARE BEGINNING TO REAP EVEN GREATER VICTORIES AS A RESULT OF MASS PROTEST, THERE MUST BE NO LET-UP IN THIS MOVEMENT, FOR UPON IT WILL DEPEND NOT ONLY A VICTORY IN COURT, BUT A VICTORY AGAINST POSSIBLE LYNCH TERROR.