00:00Dr. John E. White writes on the Fagan case, Atlanta, Georgian Sunday, May 4, 1913, draws a
00:06lesson from the shocking occurrence of a week ago and urges confidence in the courage of the law
00:11by Dr. John E. White, pastor of the Second Baptist Church of Atlanta.
00:16The proper study of mankind is man, but the conditions for this study are only occasionally
00:21favorable. Dressed up in his everyday clothes, thinking his ordinary thoughts and his human
00:26impulses suppressed to the requirements of conventional life, a man throws very little
00:30light on the problem of humanity. The individual exhibits mankind neither at its best nor at its
00:36worst, and never at its deepest. The interesting things about folks are not the things that
00:41individualize and separate them in one mass. Therefore, to obtain insight into humanity you
00:46must catch it off its guard and in the sway of some profound spirit of unity. Whenever something
00:52occurs to startle, alarm, or even amuse a whole community at a stroke, there is the opportunity
00:57to study and understand human nature. The artist with his picture, the poet with his poem, and the
01:02author with his book are each in his way striving to express emotions and awaken sentiments which
01:08belong to all men the chord of human nature that sounds a universal note. It often happens that a
01:13shocking event, a disaster, or a horrible murder affords the supremely favorable situation for
01:19understanding oneself and others, and for realizing the problems presented to society, the interest in
01:25a murder. Consider the extraordinary intensity of public attention upon the horrible occurrence of
01:30the past week. A hundred thousand eyes looking at one thing, a hundred thousand ears listening at one
01:36point, a hundred thousand tongues questioning upon one issue, there is a spectacle worth considering.
01:41It is the murderer who dominates the stage in this drama. Somewhere in this community there is a man who
01:47did
01:48this deed. Upon the retina of every eye and on the film slate of every imagination there is drawn the
01:54figure of one single human being, toward which a hundred thousand questions are hurled and upon whom
01:59a hundred thousand accusations are concentrated. Our interest in him is his shape like ours, his human
02:05likeness to us, and therefore by him all of us degraded. His crime dehumanizes humanity and disgraces the
02:12universe. This is the exquisite woe of a murderer and the secret of the unvoiced consciousness of all
02:18souls poised at him. There is a feeling that the mystery of every murder is bound to be uncovered.
02:23We reckon that all the light of the world, light of stars and moons and suns are conspired against it.
02:29The very existence of God seems to demand that for the honor of the universe the murderer must be
02:34exposed. We feel that the murderer himself must find it impossible to support the guilty secret.
02:40Thus Victor Hugo portrays Cain, the first murderer, unable to elude the great blazing eye that glares
02:47upon him everywhere. Thus Lady Macbeth, rubbing her red fingers, echoes the cry of her guilty husband.
02:53Thus Eugene Arum finds no leaves to cover the dead body, and every stream in which he places it dries
02:59up. Thus Edgar Allan Poe conceives the murderer hearing the heartthrobs of his victim beneath the
03:05floor. Thus the ancients imagined that a dead body would bleed in the presence of the
03:10murderer. Upon him, wherever and whoever it may be, forever falls an insupportable weight of doom.
03:17Whatever society may do by law to punish the murderer, it is nothing compared with the cosmic
03:22wretchedness fixed and fastened upon him. Detected or undetected by men, the murderer never escapes.
03:30It is a somber but true thought that the extreme guiltiness of every murderer indicates the
03:36confraternity of all men who are engaged in the mutilation of human life. In an age to come,
03:42and now coming rapidly, society will not so sharply discriminate between the moral responsibility of
03:48those defined as murderers under the law and those who in more subtle fashion have the moral
03:53responsibility for sapping the vital energy of men and women. This murder in Atlanta is associated
04:00with circumstances and suggestions calculated to emphasize the increasing movement of civilization
04:04to make a direful issue between itself and those who despoil innocence or press degradation upon
04:10womanhood in any fashion. Once, twice, and then again and again we will witness a tearing at the
04:16public heart by the tragedies of lust and greed until one day the social cup will be full and the
04:22resolution which now dimly shows its protest will be resolved into social conscience and then into
04:28social courage and then into social conquest the untamed beasts that prowl for their prey.
04:33The lesser beasts who ply trades and occupations that destroy the bodies and the souls of men
04:38and then send flowers to their funerals are to be socially segregated, placarded, and proclaimed.
04:43Every murderer furiously tears the veil, startling crime is pointing its finger at the sources of
04:50crime. The murderer furiously tears the veil aside for society to see suddenly its needs and problem of
04:56redemption. It is not a hundred years from the coroner's jury and the courthouse and the jury and the judgment
05:02of
05:03a civilization that will focus stern eyes on all the murderous forces at work within it. The statement has been
05:09made that there are ten million white people in the South who are to be described as unsafely
05:13civilized. It was made by a Southern man to the manner born and apparently approved in the
05:18intelligence of a large Southern audience entirely devoted to the South. Edmund Burke said that he did not know how
05:24to draw an
05:25indictment against a whole people. Since there are only 20 million white people in the South, the statement sounds like
05:31an
05:31impossible indictment. To be unsafely civilized, however, is not the same as being uncivilized. The point of attention is that
05:39there are
05:39vast numbers of white people who do not sufficiently appreciate the necessity of personal restraint and
05:44social confidence in respect of law and order to be depended on under all circumstances to support the
05:50orderly processes of government. The Southern people must increase their balance on the side of safety and
05:56civilization as rapidly as possible. Name your man. Who are the unsafely civilized? Name your man. He is the man
06:03we meet on
06:04the street and sometimes at the church who is willing to say, without any sense of saying anything wrong, that
06:09under
06:09certain circumstances he is ready to join a thousand others and batter down the jail to lynch a prisoner
06:14awaiting a trial before a jury in the courthouse. He is the man who expresses a frank readiness to justify
06:20the mob that has already wrecked its fury in this fashion. He is the man who cannot see that the
06:25grossness of the
06:26crime committed is the greater reason why no one, or a few, but all the citizenship should have a share
06:31in its
06:32punishment. He is the man who cannot understand that the successful vengeance of a mob is the disdain
06:38and therefore the dishonor of the state. He is the Southern man who does not appreciate the standards of
06:44civilization by which Southern people, as well as others, are estimated in the judgment of the world.
06:50When he is told that in the four years from 1908 to 1912, all but 14 out of the 398
06:57lynchings in the
06:58United States were committed in the South. It makes no difference to him. There is nothing evasive about
07:03the attitude of this man. He is frankly unconcerned about the consequence of peril to society, including
07:09himself and his own children, which follows the flouting of the law. He does not think that far.
07:14He is civilized, but not safely. The fear of the mob. The presence of such large numbers of men in
07:20Southern communities of this inflammable type, and of large numbers who assert no stubborn defense of law
07:25and order when trouble is brewing, has a powerful influence upon public sentiment, and creates a
07:31spirit of uncertainty and of dread in the whole people. The great majority of the safely civilized
07:36is not available in any outspoken way to assert the power of society to protect itself in support of
07:42its institutions. In several of the Southern states, this fear of the mob is rapidly decreasing.
07:48In one of them, only three lynchings have been allowed in four years, and scores have been
07:53prevented. The state of Georgia will begin to make a better record when the citizens of Georgia get a
07:58little closer together in their thinking on the evils of lawlessness. The peril of the mob decreases in
08:04any community in proportion, as the people get redder in the face instead of paler whenever the rumor
08:10starts that one is forming. A little righteous wrath at the right time would save many vain regrets
08:16after the mob has done its work.
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