Today -100: August 20, 1923: Of floggings, martial law, and dangerous movies

The Macon County, Georgia sheriff is actually cracking down on racist terrorists, arresting 3 white men caught in the act of flogging 2 black men. Everyone in Macon has been buying guns. There are believed to be several flogging gangs, going after adulterers, bootleggers, whatever, not necessarily black. And of course there are lynching gangs.

The NYT notes that Southern governors are more concerned with floggings of white people than lynchings of black ones, the latter being a slippery slope towards the former.

Many Klan and anti-Klan meetings are held in and around Steubenville, Ohio, but police realize that many of the people pouring into the area aren’t either, they just want to see another fight. The NYT says an “impartial investigation,” by whom is not said, claims 90% of the adult men in the agricultural parts of Jefferson County are kluxers.

Oklahoma Gov. J.C. Walton describes the martial law imposed on Tulsa as Tulsahoovians being  “told to go to bed and when to get up”. The Klan denies being responsible for the many recent floggings. Court cases challenge the governor’s right to just declare martial law and place the military over civil authorities.

Headline of the Day -100:  

Annoyingly, we are not told what dangerous film he was watching. And there’s no listing in today’s paper for what’s playing at the Lyric.

Speaking of dangerous movies, French PM Raymond Poincaré bans The Birth of a Nation, which was playing in Paris, worried about more conflict between American tourists and black French citizens. The film had been passed by the censors but Poincaré is using a French Revolutionary decree.

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