Twin City Herald

Anti-Lynching Broadside By Alabama Leader

BIRMINGHAM PREACHER ARRAIGNS MOB MURDER IN POWERFUL INDICTMENT—DAILY PAPER FEATURES COURAGEOUS UTTERANCE

Birmingham, Ala., Oct. 14—A terrific broadside against lynching was launched here last Sunday by Dr. Henry M. Edmonds, chairman of the State Interracial Commission and pastor of the Independent Presbyterian Church, in a sermon before many of the city's most representative people. On Monday, the Age Herald broadcast the sermon in full to the entire city, under heavy front-page headlines.

Quoting extensively from the studies of mob violence made by the Southern Commission on the Study of Lynching, Dr. Edmonds painted many vivid pictures of the insane brutality of lynching mobs, arraigned their work as a deadly attack on civilization, and pointed out means for the eradication of this type of crime. Of all the latter, he said, the most valuable is education for both races—education of a kind that deters people from crime and gives them an appreciation of the sanctity of personality, without respect to condition or color. Summing up his indictment of lynching, Dr. Edmonds said:

"My conviction is that it costs civilization too much to turn over the work of our courts to young, ignorant, undisciplined, irresponsible, cowardly, non-tax-paying, sadistic, vagrant and self-appointed agents.

"It costs too much to expose men, women, young people and children to the sight of mobs howling, dancing and singing about their mutilated, burning, human victims.

"It costs too much to expose possible innocence to a crowd gone crazy, lustful and unreasoning as a forest fire.

"It costs too much to turn madness loose to burn down schoolhouses, hotels, office buildings and jails.

"The kernel of the matter is, it costs too much to relinquish the principle of orderly trial based on evidence.

"A number of prominent people in Alabama have declared themselves recently as willing to sponsor the mob in certain cases. They are very nice people, some of them are my friends, but their days are numbered, their opinions are senile, and destiny says they must stand aside and give places to the children of tomorrow."

As a member of the Alabama Interracial Commission and of the Southern Commission on Interracial Cooperation, Dr. Edmonds for years has been active in the effort to improve interracial conditions and is recognized by both races as a sincere and able advocate of inter-racial justice. The first page prominence given his sermon by the Age Herald is significant of the consistent fight on lynching that has been waged by the daily papers of this city.