Frog lynching

The Catholic Church is trying to blackmail the District of Columbia into dropping plans to legalize gay marriage, threatening to withdraw from all provision of social services in the city if it can’t discriminate against gay couples seeking to adopt or has to provide benefits to the partners of its gay employees.

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Today Minus 100 Years, we have two lynchings in Cairo, Ill. Unusually, one of them was white. Here’s the first sentence, and see if you can spot the subtle difference in the way the two men, neither of them convicted in any court of law, are treated: “A negro who had murdered a white girl, and a white man accused of wife murder, were lynched here to-night.” The former, Will “The Frog” James, was “taken to the most prominent square in the city and strung up. The rope broke and the man was riddled with [nearly 500] bullets. The body was then dragged by the rope for a mile to the scene of the crime and burned in the presence of at least 10,000 rejoicing persons. Many women were in the crowd, and some helped to hang the negro and to drag the body.” There was a long chase through the woods before the mob, which at one point commandeered a train, caught up to the sheriff and the prisoner.

Not sated, some of the mob lynched the white guy, smashing through the bars of his cell with some effort.