The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron Read Online Free PDF Page B

be different from the rest of the South crumbled. The newspapers increased their character assault on Mobile’s blacks, including a decision by the newspaper editors to publish on the front page reports of crimes committed by blacks hundreds of miles away.
    BOUND FACE TO FACE 7
    They had murdered a young farmer
while on his way home
One of the negroes escaped into Arkansas
    N EWBORN , T ENN ., O CTOBER 8—Garfield Burley, and Curtis Brown, negroes, were lynched here at 9 o’clock tonight by a mob of 500 persons…. The mob would not listen to the judge and forcibly took possession of the two men…. Ropes were presented and the two men were taken to a telephone pole where they were securely tied face to face. At a given word, they were strung up and in a few minutes both were pronounced dead. The lynching programme was carried out in an orderly manner, not a shot being fired.
    BAD NEGRO
    Sam Harris Riddled with Bullets at Salem Ala .
    USED AXE ON WOMEN 8
    The negro was placed in custody and held until Miss Meadows had sufficiently recovered to identify him. This she did at 4 o’clock this afternoon, and the negro was taken in charge by about 125 armed men and his body riddled with bullets on the spot. He denied his guilt until the first shot was fired, when he acknowledged the crime.
    By October 16, 1902, Mobile reacted with a sweeping ordinance that had been adopted in New Orleans, as well as in Montgomery and Memphis.
    TEN MORE POLICEMEN PROVIDED 9
FOR CITY: SEPARATION OF THE
RACES ON STREET CARS
    Petitions, circulated by the Item and
Signed by More Than 500 People ,
Read and Favorably Acted Upon—
full text for the Ordinance Requiring
the Separation of the Races on
All of the Street Cars .
    Be it ordained by the mayor and general counsel of the city of Mobile as follows: That all street railcars operated in the city of Mobile and its police jurisdiction shall provide seats for the white people and negroes, when there are white people and negroes on the same car, by requiring the conductor or any other employee in charge of said car or cars to assign passengers to seats on the cars, or when the car is divided in two compartments in such manner as to separate the white people from the negroes by seating the white people in the front seats and the negroes in the rear seats as they enter said cars; but in the event such order of seating might cause inconvenience to those who are already properly seated, the conductor … may use his discretion in seating passengers, but in such manner that no white person and negro must be placed or seated in the same section or compartment arranged for two persons; provided that negro nurses having in charge white children or sick or infirm white persons may be assigned seats among the white people.
    Be it further ordained, that all conductors and other employees while in charge of cars are hereby invoked with the police power of a police officer of the city of Mobile, to carry out rail provisions, and any person failing or refusing to take a seat among those assigned to the race to which he or she belongs, if there is any such seat vacant, at the behest of a conductor … shall, upon conviction, be fined a sum not less than five dollars and not more than fifty dollars.
    And so it was done. Jim Crow laws were now established in Mobile, if not as violently enforced as in other southern cities, although equally rigid. Two weeks later, on November 1, the black leaders A. F. Owens, A. N. Johnson, and A. N. McEwen staged a boycott, which lasted barely two months. During the time of the boycott, some white business owners, unconvinced the city would benefit from the segregation ordinance, openly defied it. James Wilson, the owner of the Mobile Light and Railroad Company, told his conductors not to enforce the law. Whites sat anywhere they chose on Wilson’s cars, and blacks were, for a time, seen seated in the front. The courts intervened and the segregation laws were not only upheld