In Florida some years ago several lynchings and the burning of the Negro section of the town followed the attempt of a Negro pharmacist to vote in a national election. One morning shortly afterwards I walked along the road which led from the beautiful little town to the spot where five Negroes had been burned. Three shiningeyed, healthy, cleanly children, headed for school, approached me. As I neared them, the eldest, a ruddy-cheeked girl of nine or ten, asked if I was going to the place where "the niggers" had been killed. I told her I might stop and see the spot. Animatedly, almost as joyously as though the memory were of Christmas morning or the circus, she told me, her slightly younger companions interjecting a word here and there or nodding vigorous assent, of "the fun we had burning the niggers."
One need not be a sentimentalist to feel that such warping of the minds of Southern children is by far the worst aspect of lynching. All parents appreciate the difficulty of avoiding in home and in school the inculcation of tendencies towards falsehood, deception, and dishonesty in the minds of their children. A careless
