The Daily Worker

Baltimore Meeting to Get Report on Tuscaloosa Crimes Startling Facts in Hands of Group of Investigators

TUSCALOOSA, Ala., NOV. 12. - Sensational disclosures on the background of the lynching of Dan Pippen, Jr., and A. T. Harden here last August, will be made by the investigating committee of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners, now in this city, at the Baltimore Anti-Lynch Conference, Nov. 18 and 19, it was announced by Alfred E. Hirsch, secretary. The Ku Klux Klan has been riding in full regalia almost every night during the week the delegation has been in Alabama. Deputy Sheriffs Murray Pate and H. W. Holeman and Private Detective W. I. Huff, whom the International Labor Defense has charged with murdering the two Negro youths while they were in their custody, were interviewed by the delegation Saturday. At first they refused to say anything except in the presence of a court stenographer, and later, when one was obtained, refused to talk under any circumstances. Willie Jimison and Dan Pippen, Sr., the latter the father of one of the lynched boys, were persuaded to leave the county for their own safety. Judge Henry B. Foster, whom the I. L. D. has charged with arranging the lynching, told the delegation. The two had been arrested with Pippen, Harden, and Elmore Clarke, the last of whom accidentally escaped lynching, though badly wounded, in the original rape and murder frame-up. Reports, which have not yet been fully confirmed, are current that Jimison and Pippen, Sr., were quietly lynched. Barbara Alexander, white girl on the delegation from Savannah, Ga., asked Judge Foster whether in his opinion the appointment of local counsel to the defense of the three Negro boys, after the I.L.D. counsel retained by them had been driven out of town by him and the militia which he called, was not contributory to the lynching incitement. "No," said Judge Foster, "the people have confidence in Alabama lawyers." "There was no possible excuse for this lynching," Judge Foster said when the lynching of Dennis Cross, aged paralytic Negro, in Tuscaloosa recently, was referred to. Then recollecting himself, he added: "There is no excuse for lynching under any conditions." William Foster, a county solicitor, and the son of the judge, spent the whole day with the delegation, apparently to make sure, under the guise of friendly guidance, that they did not speak to anyone who might give them real information about the lynching. In spite of this, valuable evidence has been gathered by the group, they reported, which will be assembled for the Baltimore Anti-Lynch Conference.