Sam Hose: The More Things Change the More They Stay the Same

Today I will start with an article covering the results of a private detective's investigation into the lynching. If you are like me, you were probably wondering how a man going around a town asking questions of everyone would get any answers. I had this whole image in my head of this dapper dressed gentleman asking people around town if anyone knew anything about the crime. I have a vivid imagination and it was quite funny in my head. Luckily he wasn't so obvious. Apparently, he posed as a vendor of hog cholera medicine in order to gain the trust of people and learn more about the crime. 

The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois) dated June 5, 1899:

LIGHT ON GEORGIA LYNCHING.

Detective Reports That Mrs. Cranford Now Admits Sam Hose Did Not Attack Her.

Louis Le Vin, a private detective, who was sent by colored people of Chicago to Newman [sic], Ga., to learn the facts concerning the burning of Sam Hose at the stake, made his report yesterday afternoon at a meeting held in Bethel Church, Thirtieth and Dearborn streets.

"Hose had been employed by Cranford," he said, "and in a quarrel over wages Cranford ran into his house and came out again with a revolver. As he was about to shoot Hose seized an ax and struck Cranford in the head and killed him instantly. Hose fled to avoid arrest. Mrs. Cranford, who witnessed the tragedy, said herself that Hose did not say a word to her or in anyway touch her."

The men who sent the detective to Georgia will have his report printed and will distribute it all over the United States. 

Next is an article that is a reminder that there can be far reaching affects from something that happens in a small town. The article is found in The Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, N. Y.) dated November 6, 1899:

THE SAM HOSE ATROCITY NOT FORGOTTEN

An echo in the distant Philippines of the fiendish atrocities perpetrated upon many colored persons in the South has been heard. It takes the form of an appeal to out colored troops thereto join the native insurgents in fighting against our flag, and sites the cases of Sam Hose and Gray, who were tortured to death by white mobs in the South.

There is no reason to believe that this appeal will have any effect upon the loyalty of the colored troops. They know that the American people at large and the government are in no sense responsible for the horrible atrocities perpetrated by those mobs, and they also know that the Filipino leaders who have invited them to join the insurgent cause are equal to the perpetration of atrocities as terrible as that which attended the death of Sam Hose.

But this Filipino call to the blacks shows how far-reaching may be the influence of such a crime. There is reason to believe that the Filipinos themselves are not solely responsible for this attempt to incite our colored troops to desert the flag and take up arms against it. The spirit of the treasonable anti-expansion movement in this country is entirely equal to such an infamous performance, and it is not at all improbable that some of the men who are indulging in bitter denunciation of the war and of our government have put the Filipino insurgent chiefs up to this despicable piece of business.

The incident itself is a scathing reflection both upon Aquinaldo's sympathizers in this country and upon the white sentiment in the South which instigated, perpetrated and approved the Sam Hose horror. 

Lastly, I have added an article from The North Carolinian (Raleigh, N. C.) dated August 22, 1901:

SHOULD EDITORS BE LYNCHED?

Mr. John Temple Graves charges up the prevalence of the crime that leads to lynching in the newspapers. Hear him:  

"My attention was first directed to these reflections by the reports of the Sam Hose burning exploited in the columns of the Atlanta papers three years ago.

"No sensational event of the decade has been more vitally and elaborately described in the papers than this weirdly horrible holocaust of the Palmetto rapist. Column on column of gruesome description pulsed under the glare of blazing headlines, and day after day the Journal and the Constitution went flaming northward and southward to carry from the scene of the tragedy the details of the crime crimes against the woman and the crime against the criminal, emphasized by all the lurid glow and color of local passion and excitement.

"Among thinking men the first sober reflection after the burning was that the action of the mob, deplorable and terrible as it was, would be a terrific warning to the demons of lust and an effective intimidation to the spirit of rape. 

"This was an ignorant and a lamentable fallacy.

"The Sam Hose burning was followed by a perfect carnival of rape. So far intimidating, it seemed to inspire the black demon to a most desperate and hellish activity. There were seven attempts at rape, in Georgia alone, and one of them within the same county.

"Why this sequence to so appalling an antecedent? The punishment was enough to intimidate. Its detailed publicity was well nigh perfect and universal.

"There can be no other explanation than that the criminal mind, unappalled by the horror of punishment, revelled in the lustful details of the crime, and rushed to an imitation of the inviting crime, reckless of the swift and inevitable Nemesis that followed on its commission."

If this indictment is true, the presses ought to be burned and the editors lynched. To show that the logic is bad, we need only to state that the brutes who imitated Sam Hose do not know how to read, they did not read the papers mentioned or see them, and therefore could not have been influenced by them. Booker Washington has often made the statement that no educated negro has been guilty of the crime which evokes lynching. So far nobody has denied his assertion. If the educated negroes, who read the papers, had elapsed into barbarism by the detailed accounts of the crimes, Mr. Graves might have support for his serious charge against the newspapers, but as the brutes cannot read and do not see newspapers, his indictment falls to the ground.

If Mr. Graves had confined his criticism to those accounts of such crimes as are so written and printed as to offend against decency, he could maintain his charge against some newspapers, but to saddle the whole responsibility upon the newspapers is so grave an accusation as to shock the newspapers and the newspaper readers. 

Along with a great deal of good, newspapers do some harm, but Mr. Graves has drawn an indictment that would warrant the lynching of the editors if it were true.

This article is such a disaster of logic. The first claim being made seems to be that being aware of the details of a crime will make someone commit the same crime. That is certainly a ludicrous statement. But not to be outdone, the author of the article chose to let logic fall by the wayside and throw in rampant racism as well. 

Thank you for reading and as always, we hope we leave you with something to ponder.