Rope & Faggot
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From a lithograph by
COPYRIGHT 1929 BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
in friendship
Twenty-three years ago the late William Graham Sumner of Yale University wrote of lynching: "It would be a disgrace to us if amongst us men should burn a rattlesnake or a mad dog. The badness of the victim is not an element in the case at all. Torture and burning are forbidden, not because the victim is not bad enough, but because we are too good. . . . It is evident, however, that public opinion is not educated up to this level."
More than two decades after Sumner wrote these words, public opinion on burnings and lynchings is not yet educated up to the level where such barbarities are impossible. The number of victims each year has sharply decreased, but the savagery with which the smaller number of victims are tortured by American mobs is proportionately greater than at the turn of the century. From the days when one John Malcolm was "genteely Tarr'd and Feather'd" at Pownalborough, Massachu
ROPE AND FAGGOT
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This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1930.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1955, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 69 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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