Lynchings Nos. 10 & 11

In tree-shaded Marion, Ind., onetime stamping-ground of the Ku Klux Klan, three Negro boys last week were hurried to the Grant County gaol. One of them, Thomas Shipp, 18, confessed he had dragged Claude Deeter, 23, from an automobile parked in Marion's outskirts, shot him to death. Shipp's companion, Abe Smith, admitted attacking Deeter's fiancee, Mary Ball, 19.

Herbert Cameron, Negro, 16, said he had witnessed these proceedings. The news spread; a crowd gathered about the gaol, increased during the day to more than 1,000. About 9 p. m. Hoot Ball, father of Mary, called to confer with Sheriff Jacob Campbell. A weak & sickly man, he emerged to find the crowd augmented by a group of men from Fairmount, Ind., Deeter's home. They pressed in on him, knocked him down.

All thought he had fainted from what he had learned inside. A cry went up. About 75 Fairmounters and Marionites, apparently equipped for the purpose, started a two-sided, business-like assault on the gaol. They battered down door after door, arrived at the bullpen where many Negroes huddled, praying. They stripped Thomas Shipp, dragged him out to the jail yard, strung him to a windowbar until he was dead, lynchee No. 10 of the year. They bashed Abe Smith unconscious with a sledgehammer, let women trample & scratch him, carried him a block away and hung him to a maple in the Courthouse yard, lynchee No. 11.

Returning, they sought Herbert Cameron, mistook and beat another Negro. Their ardor abated, they placed Shipp's body by Smith's, watched them all night.

Meanwhile, 60 State troopers and neighboring police arrived to stand guard over Cameron. From Camp Knox, Ky., where the Indiana National Guard was encamped, two companies were ordered to Marion.

Defending his orders not to shoot to defend his prisoners, Sheriff Campbell said: "One shot would have been the signal for a terrible slaughter."

Said Prosecuting Attorney Harley Hardin, regarding court action against the perpetrators of Indiana's first lynching since 1902*: "The self-satisfaction of the people over the lynching is a psychological matter resting on dissatisfaction with verdicts returned by juries and the sentences imposed. The people feel that the only-way to get justice is to take the law into their own hands."

*Last one: Nov. 20, 1902, at Sullivan; Negro James Dillard, charged with rape. Indiana has had 24 lynchings--14 Negroes, ten whites.

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