Today -100: September 15, 1921: Of ethnic cleansing, lynchings, world courts, applications of some force, and little lords

All the black residents of Montlake, Tennessee are driven out after a black girl shoots a white girl.

Negro Gilman Holmes is lynched in Columbia, Louisiana for supposedly attacking a (male) railroad station agent during a robbery. He’s hanged from a telephone pole in front of the station; his body is shot up, then burned.

29 countries agreed to join a World Court, surpassing the minimum needed to establish it, so the League of Nations elects members of the Court, including an American, John Bassett Moore, professor at Columbia and former assistant secretary of state, despite the US not having joined.

The SF coroner’s jury charges Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle with manslaughter, claiming Virginia Rappe’s peritonitis was caused by “the application of some force.” The jury recommends authorities take steps to prevent similar affairs, “so that San Francisco shall not be made the rendezvous of the debauchee and the gangster.” Dude, the official motto of San Fran is “Welcome To The Rendezvous of the Debauchee and the Gangster.”

Headline of the Day -100:  

I believe we’re officially at the lying-about-the-polio stage.

Premiere of Little Lord Fauntleroy, with Mary Pickford, America’s sweetheart, playing both the title character and his mother.

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