Today -100: September 9, 1921: Of quick and even quicker “justice,” and the consent of the governed

Headline of the Day -100:  

The day after Harry Latimar, a black man, allegedly commits “a crime” against white 8-year-old Wanda Varney in Williamson, West Virginia, he is indicted, tried, and sentenced to death, the verdict and sentence coming less than an hour after the first witness took the stand.

And two black men are lynched in a cornfield near Aiken, South Carolina.

Some time ago the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) fired the head of the English Department, Robert Kerlin, for having written an open letter to the governor of Arkansas, published in The Nation, about black men unjustly sentenced to death after the Elain massacre of 1919. The NYT says too many in the South “cannot see straight or reason clearly when the race question is thrust at them” and thinks Kerlin’s firing “a bad case of stupid intolerance.”

A federal judge enjoins Pittsburgh from banning the street sale of Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent.

British Prime Minister Lloyd George sends Éamon de Valera another letter calling for talks with no preconditions except of course that Ireland must be tied up in Britain’s colonial basement forever. As to Sinn Féin’s call for Consent of the Governed™, he denies that can be used as the basis for an Irish Republic: “the principle of government by consent of the governed™ would undermine the fabric of every democratic State and drive the civilized world back into tribalism.”

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