word of approbation or reproof may find root in the mind of a child, wholly without the knowledge or intent of mother or father or teacher, and bear unwholesome fruit many years later. Psychologists have established that from birth the human mind passes through all racial experience—from savagery through barbarism and upwards to what we term civilization precisely as the human body from conception to birth passes through the reptile, fish, and animal stages.
Imagine, then, the mind of a normal child in a Southern community. Its parents throw about him all the protection and give to him all the guidance and tender care which parents are accustomed to give. A crime is committed or it is alleged that one has been committed. In law-abiding communities it is bad enough to have the crime and the trial of the accused discussed in homes and in the press, worse if there is added the effect of an execution. But in a community where a lynching or perhaps a burning occurs, where thousands of participants and spectators include mothers and children of tender age among them, where there is morbid scrambling for charred bones or links of the chain which held the victim to his funeral pyre, where leaders of the mob are exalted as men of courage and action—the effect upon young minds is almost too appalling to be contemplated. It is entirely within the range of possibilities that such experiences may result in arrestation. In the unconscious of these immature minds are thus
