1938's NOS. 1 & 2

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People this month saluted the fact that the first six months of 1938 had passed without a single U. S. lynching.

One day last week Robert Purdy Flanagan. 36. a prosperous planter who with his brother Jack operated 12,000 acres near Rolling Fork, Miss., went to his plantation smithy to berate his black blacksmith, Tom Green, 48, for working on the side for another planter. On the spot Planter Flanagan fired Blacksmith Green, started sorting out his tools. He came to a rifle. The smith claimed it. The planter did likewise.

Green drew a pistol and shot. Wounded in the jaw, Flanagan fired the rifle, hit Green in the side. Green fired twice more and the planter dropped dead.

Within 30 minutes, a lynch mob of 300 assembled at Green's cabin, where he had barricaded himself with rifle, pistol and shotgun. Planter L. H. Harris rushed the door with a riot gun. blew Green's head off. Then they burned Green's body, dragged it behind a car 18 miles to the Rolling Fork dump, burned it again. Sheriff M. C. Ewing "arrived later."

Tom Green's lynching, 1938's No. 1, received extra headlines. Although he was not known as a "bad nigger," eight members of his own race appeared among the white folks in the lynch mob.

Three days after No. 1, Police Marshal Freeman O. Epps of Arabi, Ga. started to take drunken Negro John Dukes, 60, to jail. Dukes pulled a pistol, drilled Epps thrice. Dying, Epps wounded Dukes mortally. A mob finished off Dukes by setting him afire.

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