Texas is Texas, and Texas is in the South; the killing of my cousin shocked the community. Late one night I was in town with my brother George from the farm. Someone rushed up and said a "nigger" had killed my cousin, Dr. Augustus Maverick, who had recently returned from Vienna. He was a handsome, red-cheeked young fellow, popular and with plenty of brains.

People stood around that night in excited groups. They remarked that although Southwest Texas had never had a lynching, it was about time to have one. No one knew why the doctor had been killed, but the feeling for revenge was definite and quick.

When Dr. Gus returned from studying medicine in Vienna, he had brought his wife and children and a servant girl. She was learning English. Gus had a colored boy, probably in his low twenties.

One night, just as the doctor was driving up to his home, he heard a scream. He ran into the rear of the house, where the colored boy was attempting to rape the servant girl. As Gus rushed in, the Negro fired his pistol and killed him instantly. Gus' father ran in after him, and stumbled over the body of his son, who lay dead in a pool of blood.

It was really a brutal murder. It was the kind that generally leads to a mob hanging or burning, the more especially in this case, since the victim was popular and there was no doubt of the Negro's guilt. Before my brother and I had left for the farm in our buggy, we heard that the negro had been captured. A mounted policeman, Duke Carver (now one of our leading politicians), had seen the negro running among the trees near the house, and had caught him and roped him. Duke pulled him over to a tree, brought the man's arms around the trunk, and handcuffed him there. But he was not harmed. Later he was taken to the county jail.

Next day the town was in a turmoil. Crowds were gathering. My father and my uncle, the doctor's father, went to their offices as usual. All day long people came with the hope that they would be encouraged to storm the jail, in order to lynch the Negro. Steadfastly, all day long, these two aging men insisted that there should be no mob—more, that the Negro should have a fair trial, with an attorney, and in open court.

I mention this in order that one can understand how members of a family must feel when one of their number is murdered or raped. The tendency to violence is natural. I had some kill-feelings myself that night. But I was just a kid and do not know what I would have done had a mob risen.

Indeed, I am quite frank in admitting that there are plenty of situations that I can imagine where I would not sit back and speak philosophically of the Rights of Man. That is the reason why those who promote anti-lynching legislation should consider the emotions of others, as well as their own.

With a race released from chattel to economic slavery, with white people in practically as bad condition, the Negro is naturally used as a whipping boy.

I have been discussing, so far, lynching as it applies to Negroes. I think the very fact that such legislation is always offered from a racial viewpoint is its greatest drawback. For lynching, as I have said elsewhere in this book, applies to white people all over America, too.

Polls of public opinion show that the South is overwhelmingly opposed to lynching, and is more heartily in favor of a Federal anti-lynching Law than some other sections of the country.

Most of the anti-lynching bills provide that if a lynching occurs in a certain county, such county will pay a fine. There has never been a lynching in my part of Texas. But if a lynching bee is cooked up somewhere else, and the mob carries someone across my county line to be lynched, my county pays the fine. That is one of the objections to the present proposed legislation.

Lynching, or the summary punishment of a dominant race over members of a subject race, goes back into the roots not only of our colonial history, but to concepts developed centuries ago. Beside that are the racial, economic and deeply emotional factors of today. For that reason, we should attempt to think of anti-lynching legislation like any other criminal law, and as a legal obligation which all citizens owe their government.

The answer to my suggestion that the crime of lynching be dealt with as other crimes often brings the answer that there would be court delays and reversals. But I do not believe that any Negro convicted of rape in a southern court, Federal or State, would ever escape the penalty of death. I believe no guilty Negro ever has. The one who murdered my cousin was eventually hanged. I take no great pleasure in a hanging of any sort, but certainly an orderly legal hanging, after the accused has had his day in court, is better than a screaming mob committing violent and public crime.

And speaking of emotions, let us consider the emotions of a Negro who is not guilty—and who gets lynched. I should not think him particularly pleased. But it is true that many mere suspects have been lynched, those found later not to be connected with any crime at all.

This law, then, should not be for the "protection of colored people," but rather for the protection of the human and civil rights of all the people. I am not in favor of the Federal Government assuming the prosecution of all local crimes, but it does seem that the government should protect the constitutional right of "life and liberty" of its own citizens.

But good lawyers assure me that any laws to protect the "life, liberty, or property" as provided in the Constitution, will be declared unconstitutional. I do not understand this.

So, although the proposed legislation of fines against counties is not a perfect piece of legislation, I think it preferable to none. For certainly if law is to be supreme, any civilized country must protect its institutions by preserving orderly processes.

In the case of the murder of my cousin, San Antonio kept its honor. But even if the Negro had been lynched, it would not have been on a par with the near-lynching I ran into in Alabama. Visiting in Tuscaloosa, for an entirely different purpose than studying any social or legal question, and before I was with book, I met an old colored woman in a graveyard who told me a bizarre story; and within an hour or two afterward I saw a ragin mob and a near-lynching.

So be it, I was then the Collector of Taxes in my county. As royalty always visits royalty, I called on the Tax Collector. He knew all about the Mavericks and the Adamses and showed me records of their land holdings. He told me tall tales of Indian fighting; also stories about my grandmother's father, Captain Bob Adams, Chief Indian Agent of the Cherokees for that territory.

The Mavericks had begun buying land just after Chief Osceola and the Cherokees had been killed out by General Jackson. The land was put in big plantations and sold. Slave labor was used, as everywhere else in the South.

I thought I would look around in the graveyard, and see some historic old gravestones, and probabaly find that of Bob Adams, whose mother was a Lynch, and had all the Lynch flair for riding high and handsome. In the graveyard I stayed a long time. I saw some very old dates. Many of those buried there had come from Scotland or Ireland; others were of old American stock.

In the middle of the graveyard stands one of the largest and most beautiful oaks in America. It has grown so big that it has tilted over an impressive vault which stands above the ground.

Here, I thought, was an appropriate place for an ancestor. I could not, however, read the name. I got down close to it. As I knelt there, I had, through a second sense possessed only by Southerners who have been raised by a Negro Mammy, a feeling that someone was peering at me.

I looked around, and saw a colored woman twice as old as P.T. Barnum's old lady, whom Barnum proved, in his own way, to be 156 years of age.

She was smoking a pipe. She drew the pipe out of her mouth.

"Whachu' doin', mister?" she said.

"I am looking for ancestors. . . ."

The old woman (interjecting) . . . "Fuh what?"

"I think possibly my great-grandfather is buried here."

"What he name?" she said, looking me straight in the eye, and spitting fiercely on the ground.

"Adams, Robert Adams, Indian Agent."

"No suh, that ain't no Mr. Adams. That there man is a spec-a-lator. De Lawd done come along and turn ovah his graf fuh his sins. He's a bad man, and de Lawd done punish him."

I found that a spec-a-lator was one who sold slaves at a profit; worse, she said, after slave trade had been "forbid by de law," he continued the practice, bought "nigguhs from Yankees and sol' 'em." He was in hell, where he belonged, and was suffering fire and eternal damnation.

I walked over to her shack, and sat under another oak. Before long there appeared four generations of her family, and I saw all the changes wrought upon them. One was reasonably well educated. I tried to get them to commit themselves on the subject of lynching, but they got scared, and shut up like clams.

This old woman, and all the other generations around her, were living in extreme poverty. One of the grandchildren had gone to Harlem, but times got so hard he had to come home. And they were suspicious of me, for the simple reason that I walked over to the place, and then said something about lynching. Possibly they got my Southern accent, which made it worse.

It was not long, however, before I found a general basis for their fear. Lynching was no academic matter with them. A lynching was actually brewing in the town at that moment. A colored boy on the street had "sassed" and "talked back" to a white boy. People began to congregate from nowhere, and it was with great difficulty that the police got the boy to the jail. Then the crowd gathered around the jail. The feeling of hate seemed to burn the crowds up.

The excitement had begun in the afternoon, and it was midnight before it simmered down. I stood in the crowds and talked. It was a dangerous situation. I talked to a policeman standing by. He said "these niggers are getting too smart," but he thought that if the colored boy could be given thirty days or so on the rock pile, everybody would be satisfied.

The whole question of the Negro, then, is in history, economics, race prejudice, poverty. It is much deeper and bigger than "passing a law to stop lynching." Though I favor such a law, it will solve nothing. Economic justice for the Negro is the important thing. With that, we may begin to solve some of the problems.

People of black skins—and people of black souls in mobs—are only a part of the picture. There is also, they say, the White Light of Justice. Justice, others say, is handed down, or given to us from on high, from the High Court.