SOURCE: Brundage, W. Fitzhugh. “‘We Live in an Age of Lawlessness’: The Response to Lynching in Virginia.” In Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930, pp. 161-90. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

[In the following essay, Brundage details responses to lynching by politicans and the press in Virginia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.]

Opposition to lynching in Virginia mounted slowly. Even at its strongest, it faced daunting obstacles. Opposition to mob violence was controversial everywhere in the South because virtually any discussion of the legitimacy of lynching touched upon white attitudes about race, crime, sexuality, and the very foundations of ordered society. Southern critics of lynching were always vulnerable to the charge that they were guilty of sectional treason, of pandering to the North, and of advocating “negrophilism.” Meanwhile, the crippling dogma of white supremacy, the autonomy of county governments, and the weakness of state institutions all worked to frustrate opponents of mob violence.

The federal government, constrained by the prevailing constitutional doctrines and the absence of explicit antilynching statutes, was reluctant to play any role in suppressing lynching. Thus, any action had to be taken by state and local authorities. But both tradition and the intransigence of state legislators, who were jealous of any expansion of executive authority, held in check the powers of southern governors. With law-enforcement agencies limited to municipal police forces in the cities and county sheriffs in the rural areas, no statewide police forces could be relied upon either to prevent lynchings or prosecute mob members.

Yet, opponents of lynching in Virginia managed to overcome the obstacles of weak executive authority, entrenched localism, and hypersensitivity to criticism of southern institutions. Of critical importance was the limited role that mob violence and extralegal coercion played in the maintenance of the racial hierarchy. Neither violence nor intimidation were at the heart of the state's labor or rural race relations, as was the case in the plantation regions and the expanding agricultural frontiers of the South. In addition, whites in Virginia were more tolerant of black property-holding, mobility, and independence than was typical elsewhere. Because most whites believed that traditional labor and race relations could be maintained without routine recourse to extralegal violence, opponents of mob violence faced less vociferous opposition than they did in Georgia and other southern states.

Of course, however comparatively favorable conditions for agitation against lynching were in Virginia, opponents still had to take advantage of opportunities to campaign against mob violence. They did so to a degree matched in only a few other southern states, exerting meaningful influence and contributing to the decline of mob violence decades before their counterparts in the Deep South even were able to organize. The earliest opposition came from black leaders, who battled the constraints imposed by virulent white racism and political impotence in protests against the brutality of white oppression. Their opposition reflected an urgent quest for freedom from white racism and for meaningful participation in the region's economic and political affairs. Initially, black agitation against mob violence was either assailed or, more often, simply ignored. But during the 1890s a growing number of conservative whites, concerned that lynching threatened the social tranquility and economic future of the state, decided that “the age of lawlessness” must end.¹

Unlike the southern white opponents of mob violence during the 1920s and 1930s, conservative white critics of lynching in Virginia drew little inspiration from either religiously inspired social humanitarianism or any profound opposition to the southern racial hierarchy. Lacking in any formal organization, they were united by only their commitment to law and order. The theme of law and order provided an opening, although admittedly only a small opening, for a seemingly improbable common front of conservative white state and local officials and some black agitators in Virginia. The combined influence of governors who took steps against mob violence and local authorities who showed greater urgency in efforts to prevent lynchings helped speed the rapid decline of extralegal violence. Although similar tactics were attempted to varying degrees in most southern states, nowhere were they as successful as in Virginia.

During most of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, black opposition to mob violence was uncoordinated and lacked any concrete program. The intertwined burdens of white racism and declining political influence posed formidable obstacles to any effective strategy opposing lynching. Not until the second decade of the twentieth century, when chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) were established in the state, did blacks create a permanent organization that pressed for improvements in their status and an end to mob violence. Despite these impediments, however, blacks in Virginia during the late nineteenth century did not respond to white violence with either resignation or submissiveness. Instead, they displayed great ingenuity in seizing the opportunities that did exist to challenge extralegal violence.

As long as Virginia's blacks retained any political leverage, they looked to the Republican party and the nation's conscience for remedies to the problem of white violence. During the 1860s and 1870s, the political clout of the large black population in eastern Virginia had sustained Republican fortunes and secured political office for a substantial number of black politicians. Despite the “redemption” of the state by white conservatives in 1873, the national retreat from Reconstruction in the 1870s, and the subsequent quarter-century-long campaign by white Democrats against black political rights, blacks continued to participate actively and in large numbers until the mid-1890s. Not until the turn of the century did white Democrats, through constitutional manipulation, effectively deprive them of their political rights. Until then, Virginia's blacks continued to exercise more local political authority than most southern blacks, even as they lost meaningful power over state and national affairs.²

Until the collapse of biracial Republicanism after the turn of the century, black Republicans attempted to goad state and local governments to suppress extra-legal violence. For example, when they met in convention in Richmond in 1879 “for the purpose of considering matters connected with the welfare, rights and improvement of the colored race,” they warned of an epidemic of black migration “provided our condition is not bettered.” More to the heart of the matter, in 1880, Republican delegate Richard G. L. Paige of Norfolk County, frustrated by the failure of state and local authorities to prevent and investigate lynchings, tried unsuccessfully to prod the legislature to pass antilynching legislation.³ These failed legislative efforts were important less because they impeded white violence against blacks—they did not—than because they reflected the continued belief and hope of many blacks that redress and protection could be gained through political activism and government intervention.

Deteriorating political fortunes and mounting frustration with the Republican party's failure to take meaningful action gradually eroded the institutional focus of black opposition to mob violence. Rising mob violence during the late nineteenth century exposed the limits of previous strategies against lynching. The surge of racial violence in southwestern Virginia and throughout the South as a whole during the early 1890s stimulated growing debate within the African-American community over appropriate tactics of protest and added urgency to their search for protection against violence.

Black leaders and local institutions attempted to fill some of the void left by the absence of any organized antilynching campaign. In sermons, public addresses, and convention reports, ministers and church members hammered away at the blatant hypocrisy of whites who claimed to be Christians while at the same time torturing and illegally executing blacks.⁴ Black institutions in Virginian cities, with deeper pockets to dig into and more pressing needs to meet than organizations in rural areas, played a prominent role in sustaining activism during an era of worsening race relations. Although financially precarious and susceptible to white interference, such institutions, particularly newspapers, clubs, and churches, helped to bind together divided black communities and provide forums for self-expression sheltered from the hostile eyes of whites.⁵

Beginning in the 1880s, black newspapers assumed particular prominence in the campaign against mob violence. John L. Mitchell, Jr., the editor of the Richmond Planet, was particularly outspoken.⁶ He used the Planet to publicize injustices and, through an insistent call for social justice, strove to dispel disillusionment. As black editors so often did, Mitchell turned his paper into a “safety-valve for the boiling black protest.”⁷ Even the masthead of the Planet, a drawing of a muscular black arm with a clenched fist, symbolized the newspaper's defiance. Mitchell published letters of protest from readers, accounts of sermons against lynching, and news of national organizations devoted to fighting black oppression. By publishing black eyewitness accounts of lynchings, the newspaper became the conduit for the rage of readers who could not remain silent in the wake of local mob violence. The newspaper's exposés of lynchings ensured that white news accounts, which routinely suffocated the truth of savagery with racist platitudes, did not become the sole historical record. In a real sense, Mitchell helped blacks to compile their own history of white repression.⁸

In editorials distinguished by both their passion and sardonic humor, Mitchell took it upon himself “to howl, yes, howl loudly, until the American people hear our cries.”⁹ His editorials offered blacks a crucial alternative to the often laudatory depictions of lynchings published in white newspapers. He lashed out at whites who failed to recognize the barbarism of lynch mobs. “Southern white folks have gone to roasting Negroes,” he noted with disgust, “we presume the next step will be to eat them.” And he offered nothing but reproach for elected officials who failed to take every possible step to prevent lynchings and prosecute lynchers.¹⁰

Mitchell's frustration led him to urge blacks to arm themselves in self-defense against mob violence. Although always careful to advocate only self-defense, his editorials, given the tenor of racial debate at the time, were incendiary: “You may say what you will, but a Winchester rifle is a mighty convenient thing when two-legged animals are prowling around your house in the dead of night.” Every mob, he implored, should suffer the loss of “one or more of its members as a silent testimonial to the unerring aim of some Negro.”¹¹

Mitchell's sensational editorials were more than hollow rhetoric, for he was willing to back up his prose with action. In 1886, he received a threatening letter from a white who promised that he would be lynched if he were ever to set foot in Prince Edward County. In an act of bravado that gained wide attention, Mitchell armed himself and boldly traveled about the county. Although his visit to Prince Edward County was in keeping with nineteenth-century traditions of grandstanding newspapermen, it also conveyed to whites and blacks alike that Mitchell was, in his own words, a man “who would walk into the jaws of death to serve his race.”¹² In addition, the flamboyant gesture was intended to demonstrate that fear should and could not intimidate blacks into surrendering either their rights or their dignity.

Mitchell also demonstrated his flair for activism in deeds of more enduring significance. In 1893, Isaac Jenkins, a black man accused of arson in Nansemond County, survived a lynching only to face trial as an arsonist. Mitchell seized upon the case as a blatant example of the injustices blacks suffered. With shocked disbelief, he complained that local authorities were more intent on persecuting Jenkins than on prosecuting the lynchers. He raised money for the black man's defense and published weekly accounts of his plight. When a jury finally acquitted Jenkins, Mitchell brought him to Richmond and organized speaking engagements so that Richmonders could hear a firsthand account of the horrors of mob violence.¹³

Mitchell recognized the serious limitations of the black press as a vehicle for protest. Beyond appealing to blacks to defend themselves against white attacks, few editors could offer practical methods to combat mob violence. Mitchell understood that white behavior, and not black conduct, needed to be altered, and consequently he attempted to prick the consciences of whites. But during the 1880s and early 1890s, his protests and those of other blacks fell upon deaf ears.

During the 1880s, the response of Virginia's governors to lynching in no way presaged the future opposition of their successors. Rather, the governors steadfastly ignored the rising tide of mob violence. Although mobs claimed an average of two victims a year during the decade, governors William E. Cameron (1882-86) and Fitzhugh Lee (1886-90) remained silent. Cameron was a member of the Readjuster party, a fragile biracial coalition of Republicans as well as whites outraged by the Democrats' solution to the state's debt problem. He failed to take any action against lynching almost certainly because he did not want to squander his limited political influence at a time when the Democratic party was ascendant. Moreover, Cameron could not count on support for any controversial steps against mob violence from within the Democratic-controlled House of Delegates. The silence of Lee, a Democrat, was in keeping with his unobtrusive style and firm commitment to avoid the exercise of authority whenever possible. As one historian has noted laconically, “Governor Lee seldom provided dynamic leadership.”¹⁴ Lee and the Democratic party were interested in consolidating power and had neither the inclination nor incentive to defend the rights of blacks. After all, the Democrats had regained political power in part through a strident white supremacist campaign that included healthy doses of intimidation and thinly veiled threats of violence.¹⁵

Governor Philip W. McKinney (1890-94) showed no greater proclivity for innovative or aggressive leadership than had Governor Lee. McKinney's administration coincided with the peak of lynching in the state, when nearly a third of all lynchings in the state's history occurred. Foremost of McKinney's aims was to ensure that the Democratic party gained complete hegemony in the Old Dominion. In a climate of sharpening racial tensions brought on by fears of increased federal intervention in southern affairs, worsening economic conditions, and the rise of a new generation of shrill white supremacists, McKinney possessed a peculiar ability to whip up racial tensions.¹⁶

McKinney's failure to speak out against mob violence provoked outrage among blacks. When he showed uncharacteristic energy in threatening to prosecute the organizers and participants in a Norfolk prizefight in 1892, the Richmond Planet bitterly contrasted his zeal in suppressing boxing bouts with his inaction on lynching. After a mob lynched five blacks in Tazewell County in February 1893, Mitchell again complained, “Governor McKinney is as silent as though he had suddenly turned to Venetian marble.”¹⁷

Before 1893 there was little to suggest that either the effectiveness of black protests against lynching or white attitudes about mob violence differed in any meaningful way from the patterns elsewhere in the South. Like their southern counterparts, Virginia blacks initially had been committed to seeking redress through the political process. But as they met increasing frustration in the political arena during the late 1880s, efforts to capture the attention of white officials seemed to produce little more than white apathy. As long as no prominent whites, in particular governors, spoke out against lynching, local authorities had few incentives to risk social ostracism or violent retaliation by taking forceful steps to suppress mob violence.

Governor McKinney maintained his silence on mob violence until the close of his administration, when the Roanoke lynching riot in September 1893—“the greatest tragedy that ever darkened the city's chronicles”—virtually compelled him to address the issue.¹⁸ On September 23, while the governor was out of state admiring the neoclassical wonderland of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a young black laborer named Thomas Smith allegedly choked, beat, and robbed Mrs. Henry Bishop, a “respectable” white woman, in the downtown of the industrial boom city of Roanoke. Within a short time, Smith was arrested and jailed. Throughout that afternoon, a surly crowd milled in front of the jail and demanded the prisoner. The pleas from the commonwealth attorney, the mayor, and the chief of police for the crowd to disperse were met with shouts and threatened violence. Realizing that open violence might break out at any moment, the mayor summoned his senior police officers for consultation. The chief of police suggested that Smith be transferred to another locale, but a city judge was quick to point out that a city of twenty-five thousand ought to guarantee the protection of its prisoners.

Mayor Trout, who had been critical of a lynching that had occurred in the previous administration and had been embarrassed by an attempted lynching during his own, was determined to maintain order. He ordered the entire city police force of fifteen to protect the prisoner and to resist, with firearms if necessary, any mob assault. In addition, he alerted the local militia. The first detachment of the Roanoke Light Infantry, some twenty men in all, arrived at five o'clock that afternoon. The presence of the soldiers, who advanced with fixed bayonets, temporarily reduced the size of the mob and partially cleared the congested streets in front of the jail.

Events, however, conspired to ensure that the mob's passions were kept at a fever pitch. Some of the demonstrators who refused to disperse were arrested, and then Mrs. Bishop's son whipped up the crowd by “shouting and hollering, ‘Come on boys … they won't shoot.’” Finally, the enormous crowd, variously estimated at between 1,500 and 5,000 participants, advanced on the jail. They made a wild rush at the front and side doors while simultaneously hurling a barrage of rocks and missiles at a small group of militiamen upstairs. Shooting broke out, and in the chaos that followed, seven mob members were killed and at least twenty-five members of the mob and the jail's defenders were wounded, including the mayor, who had caught a pistol ball in his foot.¹⁹

Once the wounded and dead were cleared from the streets, the mob's fury was directed against two targets: the mayor, whom they believed had given the order to shoot, and the militia, which they believed had fired without provocation. With the danger of renewed violence an immediate threat, the commander of the militia dismissed his men with the instructions to change out of their military uniforms immediately and to go home quietly. The mob began a furious search for the mayor and ransacked both his home and the hotel to which he had been moved for medical care. Meanwhile, worried friends had convinced the mayor to escape by taking a special train to Lynchburg. Having failed to punish either the militia or the mayor, the mob set about locating Thomas Smith, who had been quietly removed from the jail during the chaos. Early the next morning, his hiding place was finally discovered, and he was captured and lynched. Only the timely intercession of a local minister prevented the mob from burying Smith's body—which bore the sign “Mayor Trout's friend”—in the front yard of the mayor's home. In the end, the mob satisfied itself by burning the body.

Smith's murder did nothing to eliminate the mob's grievances stemming from the previous night's clash. For three days, they remained encamped in front of the jail, demanding the removal of the mayor, the chief of police, and several police officers. During protracted negotiations between a committee of prominent city businessmen and leaders of the mob it was agreed that all officials but the mayor would be suspended pending the completion of a full-scale inquiry. Despite much grumbling, the mob accepted the terms and allowed the mayor to return from exile and resume authority.²⁰

The mob's destructiveness and violent challenge to legal authority shocked the state.²¹ The tension created by the riot only subsided with time; threats on the mayor's life continued to circulate, and members of the militia received letters that warned, “We want your blood. You shot our friends.” Graphic reminders of the tragedy remained visible in downtown Roanoke: “the station house, the jail, and the courthouse have the appearance of being struck by a cyclone … the windows of the Mayor's office are filled with bullet holes and some of the glasses are broken out.”²²

During the turmoil in Roanoke, Governor McKinney was reluctant to comment on the lynching, and even after his return to Virginia he skirted the issue.²³ Finally, he addressed the problem in his final message to the general assembly. He admitted that lawlessness had prevailed during his administration and especially condemned the violence in Roanoke. He sternly cautioned that the law must be enforced through whatever means necessary and concluded, “let us profit from this terrible lesson, and learn in all cases to respect the authorities and obey the law.”²⁴ McKinney's denunciation, the Richmond Planet lamented, was too little and too late to compensate for his years of silence.²⁵ That the governor felt compelled to issue any statement at all, however, bespoke the growing concerns of many whites that mob violence posed a serious challenge to social order in the state. The eleven other lynchings that occurred in 1893 provoked only modest comment or concern, but the attack on authority and the resulting anarchy in Roanoke simply could not be ignored. The Richmond State captured the urgent concern of many Virginians in an editorial shortly after the September lynching: “It seems that the time has come when every good citizen must enter his protest against such exhibitions of lawlessness. The situation is truly alarming and unless law-abiding citizens all assert themselves and exert the dignity and the majesty of the law, the time will come when the mob will rule and no man's life will be secure.”²⁶

When Governor McKinney's successor Charles T. O'Ferrall assumed office in January 1894, he quickly provided the leadership that had been absent during his predecessor's term. His administration proved to be the decisive turning point in the chief executive's stance on mob violence. Ironically, O'Ferrall shared many traits with McKinney. He was an old-fashioned Virginia gentleman and a Confederate war veteran. In political philosophy, he was a staunchly conservative Democrat who denounced with equal vigor free silver, Populism, and labor unions. Confronted, he believed, with a hydra-headed monster of social anarchy, he was quick to use the militia to chase Coxey's army, a protest organization of unemployed workers, from the state in 1894 and to suppress labor unrest in the southwestern coal fields in 1895. And like his predecessor, he was firmly devoted to white supremacy.²⁷

But neither O'Ferrall's conservatism nor his devotion to white supremacy allowed for toleration of mob violence. He set the tone of his administration by announcing in his inaugural address that he would enforce the laws of the state, “let it cost what it will in blood or money.” In each of his succeeding annual messages to the general assembly, he condemned lynching and called upon Virginians to stamp it out, as he explained in 1894, because “Christianity demands it; public morality requires it; popular sentiments exact it.”²⁸

For O'Ferrall and many other conservative whites, the upheaval in Roanoke was a clarion call for strong action against the excesses of mob violence. Simultaneously, elsewhere in the South, other white critics also struggled to be heard, but their pleas were drowned out by the violent rhetoric of the defenders of mob violence. In Virginia, however, the theme of law and order had a resonance that it lacked in most other southern states, and consequently conservative white opponents of lynching were able to exert decisive influence.

To a great extent, conservative opponents of lynching like O'Ferrall benefited from the peculiar tenor of Virginia politics, which throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries remained distinctly elitist. The state's ruling oligarchy demonstrated remarkable tenacity, even during the turmoil of Reconstruction. Virginia passed from military rule into the arms of the Conservative party (the pseudonym for the Democratic party until 1882) without ever experiencing Republican civilian rule. While the old, formerly established elites in other states had resorted to extensive and organized violence to regain power, conservatives in Virginia secured their rule largely through astute political maneuvers. Not only did they restore “home rule” without resorting to wholesale violence, but they also condemned the violence in other states.²⁹

During the late 1870s and early 1880s, the oligarchy suffered defeat at the hands of the Readjuster party. The Conservative party, after renaming itself the Democratic party, responded vigorously and smashed its challengers in 1883. The bitter defeat taught the party to bend with prevailing political winds to head off political insurgency, all the while retaining its underlying commitments to elitist government, white supremacy, and economic orthodoxy. After the collapse of the Readjuster and Republican parties in the late 1880s and the stillbirth of the Populist party in the early 1890s, moderate and conservative Democrats enjoyed virtual hegemony. What political divisions there were existed along factional lines within the Democratic party.³⁰

Unlike politics in many other southern states, leadership and political values were not transient in Virginia. The recruitment, development, and advancement of political leaders was orderly and predictable. Party leaders either committed themselves to the prevailing political orthodoxy or faced a rocky political future. The political scientist V. O. Key, writing in 1949, offered a description of Virginia politics that applied to the early 1900s no less than the 1940s. “The little oligarchy that rules Virginia demonstrates a sense of honor, an aversion to venality, a degree of sensitivity to public opinion, a concern for efficiency in administration, and so long as it does not cost much, a feeling of social responsibility.” By means of an exceedingly effective machine organization that ran from the Virginia statehouse to the courthouse “cliques” and “rings,” the homogeneous social values of the oligarchic leadership of the party dominated the legislature, the party machinery, and even city and county offices.³¹

Strident white supremacists, or to borrow the historian Joel Williamson's phrase “radical racists,” never exerted the powerful influence, political or otherwise, in Virginia that they did elsewhere in the South. Among the Democratic leadership in Virginia, there were few racial extremists who strenuously proclaimed that blacks were retrogressing toward a state of bestiality and threatening the very foundations of white society. In states where racial extremists were ascendant, their attacks on opponents of mob violence hindered concerted efforts to suppress lynching. For such extremists, anything that whites might do to defend their supremacy was both justifiable and laudable. In Virginia, by contrast, opponents of mob violence were free to condemn lynching without fearing a backlash from strident racists.³²

The oligarchic structure of government in Virginia was instinctively conservative and resistant to profound change. Regardless of faction, leaders within the party were drawn from the same patrician stock. By the early 1890s, the marriage of the Democratic party and the business interests of the state was nearly complete. Some party members remained suspicious of innovation, but most ardently embraced the industrial gospel of the age.³³ In keeping with their commitment to the doctrines of the New South, they believed that good race relations depended upon the state being left alone to solve the problem at its own pace and in its own way. In an age of violent, even hysterical, racism, the racial views of the Virginia Democratic leadership were moderate. Firm racial and class boundaries ensured social harmony, and in this fixed universe blacks were inherently inferior and naturally subordinate. Few seriously doubted that whites retained ample means to prevent blacks from threatening white dominance. Occasional slackness and lapses in the maintenance of racial lines, although not welcomed, could at least be tolerated because the party's leadership saw nothing too alarming in them as long as the established social order went unchallenged. In an editorial in February 1890, the Petersburg Index-Appeal vented its frustration with the fears of “negro domination” in the Old Dominion. The paper warned that “If all our interests, all our convictions are to be sacrificed to an African fetich [fetish] manufactured and erected by a set of political charlatans who still harbor or feign a foolish horror of the impossible,” white Virginians would “cast aside the most beneficent measures and policies … because of a baseless fear of the negro.”; The Index-Appeal stressed that the cry of “negro domination … is a great danger, and the democratic party will perish of it if it do[es] not shake off its childish ‘make-believe’ and attend to our real necessities.” With power securely in Democratic hands, rabble-rousing and Negro-baiting were tolerated only so long as they did not imperil the tone of civility that constituted the heart of the state's political culture.³⁴

Social unrest, whether the product of lynch mobs or labor unions, Virginia's elite concluded, retarded economic progress. In 1891, when the editors of the Richmond Times addressed the issue of “Mob Law,” they saw a direct connection between labor unrest and lynching. The action of a crowd of striking Tennessee miners who liberated convict miners prompted the Times to label the action as “simply anarchism, pure and simple, and but the natural outcome of the contempt into which the courts have been thrown by various lynching cases.” The wave of labor violence that swept the nation in 1894 stirred similar fears, arousing the Times to warn that “no one who has the least property or wishes to exercise with impunity his individual abilities to earn a living can hope to enjoy the property or work for his living as a free man unless that lawless and violent spirit is absolutely suppressed.” It was not coincidental that in 1895 the leading Democratic newspaper in the state lumped labor unions, Coxey's army, illegal oyster fishing in the Chesapeake Bay, and lynching under the heading of anarchy and mob rule.³⁵

This concern for social order also sustained the loud applause for Governor O'Ferrall's decision in 1894 to order the militia to drive encamped Coxeyites from Virginia at bayonet point. The Coxeyites, the Richmond Dispatch explained, demanded “a show of force” because “their way was to beg, bulldoze and steal, and thus … become terrors in the community afflicted by their presence.” A year later, when O'Ferrall sent troops to preserve the order in the strike-torn town of Pocahontas near the West Virginia border, the Dispatch again warned of the persisting dangers of mob rule. “Cost what it may,” the newspaper noted gravely, “the question to be decided at Pocahontas is whether our Virginia authorities shall enforce our laws and give protection to men who want to work, or shall surrender to a West Virginia mob.” For these conservative white newspapers and much of the leadership of the Democratic party, mob lawlessness, in all of its many guises, threatened to overwhelm the entire social and economic order upon which the New South and Virginia rested. The choice before the South, the Richmond Times concluded in 1897, was quite stark: “We cannot serve two masters. Either the law or the mob must rule, and if we are to have mob rule, then let us abolish the law altogether.”³⁶

In light of the profoundly conservative inclinations of Virginia's elite, the absence of shrill advocates of racial extremism, and the clear threat to constituted authority that the mobs posed, it is hardly surprising that the Roanoke riot served as a catalyst for widespread demands for the suppression of social disorder. The major tenets of the conservative argument for law and order, of course, were not new. At least as early as 1871 the editors of the Richmond Enquirer had sketched with great clarity the threat that mob violence posed to the social order. Few subsequent calls by white conservatives seeking the suppression of mob violence would move far beyond the position taken by the Enquirer. When the lynching of a white horse thief in the Shenandoah Valley in 1871 provoked a debate over summary justice, a prominent lawyer had staunchly defended the mob's action in a letter to the newspaper: “It is simply an illegal performance of a deed, which, if legally done, could have met the approbation of all right-thinking men. No one was hurt who should not have been.” The editors of the Enquirer dismissed such justifications as “sophistical.” The crucial virtue of law, the newspaper observed, was to establish secure rules and standards of conduct that bound society together. “The dangers of this mob law is, that if you unchain the tiger, there is no telling whom it will tear.” Social chaos was the inevitable consequence of a cavalier acceptance of the legitimacy of mob violence. “What human society wants is order and stability. The great point of the Law is, not that it is the best law, but that it affords a standard and fixes the tribunal of appeal between man and man.”³⁷ Two decades later, the tragedy at Roanoke graphically drove home the precise dangers that unimpeded mob violence could pose to social stability and property alike in Virginia.

But even if some prominent Virginians believed that lynching could not be tolerated, these sentiments had to be turned into meaningful and direct action. Whites who opposed lynching never created an enduring organization to combat mob violence like those established elsewhere in the South during the 1920s. Instead, the burden of suppressing lynchings was placed on the governor and local authorities, who faced daunting obstacles when they attempted to act. The conspicuous limitations of executive powers placed considerable restraints on governors. Yet in the aftermath of the Roanoke lynching, Governor O'Ferrall demonstrated that even limited powers could be used to make important contributions to the suppression of mob violence. Spurred on by concerns for law and order, he placed the power of the state, however limited it may have been, firmly behind the suppression of lynching.

Each time a lynching occurred during his term, O'Ferrall undertook a careful investigation to determine if it could have been prevented. After a lynching in Alexandria in 1897, for example, he sent his personal aide to the city to inquire into the conduct of local authorities during the incident. The subsequent report exposed the incompetence and cowardice of the local police and the mayor.³⁸ Although the governor had no legal authority to punish the officials, he sharply criticized them in newspaper interviews and in his annual address to the general assembly.³⁹

On several occasions, O'Ferrall's determination to crush mob violence led him to overstep the traditional powers of his office. In 1897, he sent troops to protect a black prisoner during a trial in Fairfax County, even though local authorities had not called for the militia. Once the troops had arrived, O'Ferrall convinced local authorities to make a formal request for their presence during the trial.⁴⁰

In 1895, he went to even greater lengths to protect three black women in Lunenberg County charged with the murder of an elderly white woman. The “Lunenberg affair” reveals both the strengths and limitations of O'Ferrall's conservative opposition to mob violence. One noteworthy aspect of the episode was that it enabled a conservative white Democrat such as O'Ferrall to find common ground with the black firebrand John Mitchell. Certainly, the men were unlikely partners in a campaign against mob violence. But both shared concerns for the social order and the preservation of the sanctity of legal institutions, anxieties common among conservative whites and black opponents of lynching alike. For O'Ferrall, the protection of the three women became a symbolic defense of Virginia's legal institutions. For Mitchell, their defense was significant not only because mob violence threatened the integrity of Virginia's courts, but also because the women's plight exposed graphically the blatant injustices that blacks endured at the hands of white justice. Thus, O'Ferrall's concerns for suppressing social unrest provided an opening for John Mitchell, who skillfully took advantage of the real, if fragile, spirit of cooperation to nudge the governor to intervene on behalf of the women.

From the very beginning of the Lunenberg affair, it was clear that the plight of the three black women, Mary Abernathy, Porkey Barnes, and Mary Barnes, would be resolved either through lengthy court battles or through extralegal violence. Although the women all bore good reputations, they were arrested for the murder of Lucy Pollard after a fourth suspect, William Henry Marable, implicated them. In the first of the trials of the four murder suspects, Marable claimed that he had been with the three women when they committed the murder, but he denied any participation in the crime. The jury of ten whites and two blacks needed only nine minutes to find a verdict of murder in the first degree. During the subsequent trials, Marable was the principal witness for the prosecution and testified against each woman. Despite glaring discrepancies and erratic changes in his testimony, Mary Abernathy and Pokey Barnes were convicted and sentenced to hang, and Mary Barnes received a prison term.⁴¹

While covering the trials for the Planet, Mitchell determined that the women were innocent, the charges against them spurious, and the trials tainted by the threat of mob violence. His perceptions were shared by the commander of the militia troops that had stood guard throughout the trials to prevent lynching. The commander later reported that “threats were openly made that in the event of the acquittal of any of them … they would certainly have been lynched had they been without the protection of the troops.”⁴²

After starting a fundraising effort for money to hire attorneys to appeal the women's convictions, Mitchell appealed to George D. Wise, Henry W. Flournoy, and A. B. Guigon, three of Richmond's leading white attorneys, to take up their cases. By agreeing to do so, Wise, a former U.S. congressman and commonwealth attorney for Richmond, Flournoy, a former secretary of the commonwealth and judge in Danville, and Guigon, a member of the Richmond city council and school board, immediately drew local and statewide attention to the women's predicament. Various newspapers, most prominently the white Richmond Times, joined with the Planet and began to question the fairness of the trials.⁴³

While the lawyers began the lengthy process of appeal, Mitchell methodically exposed the flimsy evidence that had convicted the women, the flagrant failures of the trial judge to follow established legal procedures, the dubious fairness of allowing some of the jurors to serve in more than one of the trials, and the extent to which threatened mob violence had intimidated the jurors. As one admitted in the Planet, he had voted for the guilty verdict because of “the excitement of the occasion” and in order “to go with the majority.”⁴⁴

Mitchell also alerted Governor O'Ferrall to the grave threat of mob violence that the women faced. Mitchell worked to convince the governor to delay the execution of Marable so that the condemned man could testify at the women's retrial. Despite strong misgivings about delaying the execution of a man he judged to be guilty, O'Ferrall acquiesced and delayed the execution. Throughout the ensuing months, while the legal battle wore on, Mitchell met with the governor and other prominent whites to discuss the case. In September 1895, when events took a surprising turn and the women again seemed threatened with mob violence, the governor decided to overstep the traditional powers of his office and take unorthodox steps to protect them.⁴⁵

Drastic steps had become necessary because the commonwealth attorney of Lunenburg County, concerned that his prosecution during the women's trial might not survive a challenge in the Virginia supreme court, called for the return of the prisoners to Lunenburg so deficiencies in the trial record could be corrected. The warnings of defense lawyers that their clients probably would be lynched if returned to the county spurred O'Ferrall to declare that he would not allow their return without military escort. Sheriff M. C. Cardoza of Lunenburg County, however, refused to request troops and announced that he would transport the prisoners himself.⁴⁶

When Sheriff Cardoza arrived in Richmond to retrieve the prisoners, the governor refused to allow them to be removed, explaining that “my sense of personal responsibility and public duty, and my obligation to protect the lives of these convicts … compel me to retain them in the city jail.” After yet more complex legal wrangling, the Virginia supreme court ruled that the governor did not have the authority to prevent the prisoners from being returned to Lunenburg and ordered a retrial.⁴⁷

O'Ferrall, who still harbored grave doubts about the safety of the women should they return to Lunenburg, sent a special message to the general assembly, defending his handling of the case and asking for the authority to take further steps to protect the women. Aware that his position might offend residents of the county, the governor forthrightly explained that “I would be unworthy indeed to hold the high and honorable position to which I have been called, if I stifle my sense of duty to avoid the censure of the thoughtless or to save the feelings of a community.” He complained that he lacked authority to send militia without a formal request by the sheriff, and in this instance, the sheriff refused to make such a request. He entreated the legislature to amend the law immediately so he could order out troops at his own discretion. The legislators, by a large margin, refused his request.⁴⁸

Without any further recourse, O'Ferrall could not prevent the women's return. Their trials, despite rumors of mob violence, were marked only by legal pyrotechnics. The team of defense lawyers succeeded in forcing the prosecution to drop the charges against two of the women. The third, Mary Barnes, who had chosen not to appeal her case because she refused to expose herself to possible mob violence at the retrial, remained in the state penitentiary. O'Ferrall, who felt compelled by “every mandate of justice and dictate of conscience,” pardoned her shortly after the conclusion of the retrial in Lunenburg. When Mary Barnes finally was released from jail in 1896, Mitchell escorted her to the capitol, where they personally thanked the governor.⁴⁹

The complexities of the Lunenburg case and its large number of participants should not obscure the governor's prominent role. On behalf of three blacks convicted of the murder of a white woman, and on tenuous legal grounds, he ordered state officials to defy county authorities. Moreover, he urged the legislature to expand the powers of his office so that he could take more forceful steps to prevent lynchings. John Mitchell of the Planet heaped unrestrained praise on the governor for his efforts. “The final release of Porkey Barnes and Mary Abernathy,” he wrote, “is … an everlasting tribute to that spirit of justice and fair play which … is ever present and vigorously manifest in the actions of Governor O'Ferrall.”⁵⁰

The Lunenburg case, although a dramatic example of O'Ferrall's dogged determination to stop mob violence, also demonstrated the obstacles he faced. It alerted him to the modest powers of his office when local authorities appeared to be unwilling to take necessary steps to prevent mob violence. He concluded that “the spirit of lynching will never be eradicated in any state until there are stringent laws against it, so enacted as to be enforceable.”⁵¹ In 1895 and again in 1897, he proposed several laws to force local officials to suppress mobs. Local jurisdictions, he argued, should be subject to fines for lynchings that occurred within their borders and also be liable for costs incurred in calling out the militia. He also urged that law officers who gave up prisoners be subject to summary suspension and jury investigations. Furthermore, a prisoner who was mobbed—or the prisoner's heirs—should have the right to sue the officer for damages, and the burden of proof in any trial should be on the officer. O'Ferrall's reforms found little support in the general assembly, where legislators, who steadfastly championed limited executive powers and the autonomy of county governments worried that his proposals would unduly centralize power.⁵²

Although many conservative whites in Virginia recognized the seriousness of the problem of mob violence, their anxiety over the issue was never sufficient to inspire them to support far-reaching reforms in state power. The only significant measure that the legislature passed to address the issue of mob violence during the 1890s was a law that raised the penalty for attempted rape from imprisonment to death. The justification for the law, the Richmond Dispatch explained, was that the “severe and expeditious” law would prevent both attacks on women and, in turn, lynchings.⁵³ But state legislators would not go beyond this measure. By their very nature, most conservative white opponents of mob violence shied away from any dramatic innovations in meeting its threat. Even O'Ferrall's advocacy of the modest expansion of state authority offered no suggestions beyond the timid anti-lynching laws enacted in some other southern states, laws that almost certainly would have accomplished no more in Virginia than they did elsewhere. Moreover, because O'Ferrall and other conservative whites believed that the campaign against mob violence amounted to little more than a struggle between lawlessness and order, they saw a victory for law and order whenever punishment was meted out by the courts rather than mobs. Thus, the mantra of law and order served as an inspiration to suppress mob violence while simultaneously as a damper on any reform that would have addressed the root causes of mob violence. Their intentions, then, were a far cry from what either John Mitchell and other black agitators sought or from the aspirations of the antilynching movement in the Deep South two decades later.

With pardonable vanity, O'Ferrall boasted in his autobiography that he “had broken down almost entirely the spirit of lynching that had prevailed to an alarming extent in the state so long.”⁵⁴ Certainly, a partial explanation for the sharp decline in the number of lynchings during his administration must be traced to his campaign against mob violence. Whereas twenty-seven men had died at the hands of mobs during his predecessor's four-year term, mobs executed only three black men and one white man during O'Ferrall's term.⁵⁵ Moreover, his outspoken opposition and aggressive efforts to squelch lynching set the standard against which the actions of all later governors were judged. His frequent denunciations of lynch mobs, his appeal to local authorities to make use of the state militia, and his unorthodox actions during the Lunenburg case showed that the governor, despite limited powers, could find ways to take effective steps to curtail mob violence.

Governor O'Ferrall's hope that the “mob spirit” had been crushed proved to be overly optimistic. During the term of his successor J. Hoge Tyler, mobs executed seven blacks and three whites. Tyler privately lamented, in May 1898, that “the lynch spirit is so strong again.”⁵⁶ The resurgence coincided with racial tensions over the role of blacks in the military during the Spanish-American War and agitation over segregation and disfranchisement.⁵⁷ Mob violence also plagued Tyler's successor, Andrew J. Montague (1902-6), who deeply regretted that the lynchings of seven blacks marred his administration. Mob violence finally declined sharply during the administration of Claude A. Swanson (1906-10), and no more than three lynchings took place during any subsequent governor's term.

The governors who succeeded O'Ferrall showed more scrupulous concern for the limits on their powers than he had, but they were equally vigorous in pressing local authorities to prevent lynchings and punish lynchers. When local authorities requested troops, governors sometimes responded with dramatic displays of force. In 1904, when the rape of a white woman in Roanoke, allegedly by a black man, threatened to lead to mob violence, Governor Montague ordered nearly eight hundred troops to protect the man during his trial.⁵⁸ In 1907, when a threatened lynching and race riot in Accomack County induced local authorities to request the militia, Governor Swanson responded not only by sending troops but also by traveling overnight on a police boat to reach the scene of the disturbance on the Eastern Shore peninsula. Swanson addressed a crowd in the town, warning that he would “stay a week, a month, or even spend the summer … to keep the peace.”⁵⁹ More often, governors chose to work closely with local authorities by carefully arranging adequate militia protection for the transportation and trial of alleged criminals.⁶⁰

O'Ferrall's legacy was most apparent in the widespread conviction among all Virginians that governors had a personal responsibility to prevent lynchings. Any that could have been prevented by state intervention were viewed as blots on the governor's record. Governor Tyler, for example, suffered sharp criticism for his indecisiveness during a lynching in Greenville County in 1900. In March 1900, Walter Cotton, a black murderer, escaped from jail in Portsmouth and, while a fugitive, killed two more people. On March 22, local authorities in Greenville County arrested both Cotton and Brandt O'Grady, a white tramp from Boston who was Cotton's suspected accomplish. Threats of mob violence soon compelled the sheriff and judge of the county to request troops. A militia company from Richmond quickly responded and reached Emporia, the county seat of Greenville County, within hours. After witnessing the emotion-charged atmosphere in the town, the militia commander suggested that the prisoners be moved to Richmond, but local authorities refused, claiming that any such attempts would enflame the mob.⁶¹

Conditions worsened the following morning. After the militia commander wired for reinforcements on his own initiative, county officials ordered him to withdraw the troops. He immediately sent Governor Tyler a telegram describing the crisis and expressing his firm conviction that the withdrawal of the troops would result in the lynching of the prisoners. The governor ignored his warnings and ordered the troops to comply with the wishes of county officials. The militia commander, after a last-ditch effort to convince county officials that the troops should remain, assembled his men and marched away. Within minutes of their departure, a mob made up of both blacks and whites stormed the jail and hanged Cotton and O'Grady.⁶²

The tragedy at Emporia immediately provoked a bitter and lengthy dispute over the governor's handling of the crisis. The Richmond Times lamented that “the state of Virginia has been disgraced and Governor Tyler is responsible for it.” The Portsmouth Star charged that Tyler had permitted, even invited, the lynching by withdrawing the troops. His subsequent attempts to defend his actions led the paper to conclude “his foot has the proverbial proclivity for filling his mouth.” Perhaps the sharpest criticisms came from Samuel C. Mitchell, a history professor at Richmond College (now the University of Richmond). In a sermon delivered at the Second Baptist Church in Richmond, Mitchell assailed Tyler, complaining that he lacked both courage and vision and that his handling of the Emporia affair was “the most criminal instance of official incapacity to be found in the annals of Virginia.” Mitchell concluded that Governor O'Ferrall would have easily prevented the lynching at Emporia.⁶³

Governor Tyler was not without defenders. The Richmond Dispatch and the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot consistently defended him while roundly condemning the local authorities in Greenville County. Prominent citizens from throughout the state also wrote to the governor to express support and sympathy. But even some supporters admitted that the governor had made a mistake in judgment by withdrawing the troops.⁶⁴ Tyler's defenders repeated traditional refrains about the supremacy of local authorities and the dangers of executive tyranny, but they, too, were critical of the county officials and condemned the lynching as “an element of barbarism which causes a shudder in the heart of every good man and woman.”⁶⁵

Although Virginians entertained different opinions about how far governors should go to suppress lynching, the controversy over events in Emporia demonstrated that by 1900 widespread sentiment held that mob violence posed a serious threat to social order and that governors had to assume a large responsibility for the prevention of lynching. Whereas in many southern states governors passed off the prevention of lynchings as the responsibility of local authorities, governors in Virginia did so at the risk of public censure.

Of course, if mob violence were to be suppressed, local authorities, as well as state officials, had to respond swiftly and decisively to prevent lynchings and punish lynch mobs. As long as sheriffs and public authorities displayed indifference or actively participated in lynchings, mob violence would continue unchecked. Local authorities in Virginia, like their counterparts throughout the South, felt the pull of powerful forces that militated against vigorous opposition to mob violence, yet many struggled to uphold the law with a determination that too often was absent elsewhere.

Local officials were spurred on by pressure from state officials and fear of statewide censure by governors and newspapers for any dereliction of duty. Almost certainly, many believed that the preservation of social order and the maintenance of respect for legal authority demanded the suppression of lynching. They were also loath to admit that they could not control their community during a lynching. Even if lynchers committed no serious damage or destruction of property, local officials knew that mobs challenged their role as guardians of the community and the dignity of the law. Many suffered from divided allegiances when they faced lynch mobs. Community ties often led them to sympathize with the mob's objectives; even if they did not, any vigorous steps to prevent a lynching or punish lynchers could provoke social ostracism or even violent retaliation. They also might face political retaliation if they angered local residents by their handling of a lynching. Finally, many local officials held a conception of law and order that neither stressed the abstract principles of justice nor drew precise distinctions between legal and extralegal justice. Instead, many saw mob violence as a means of carrying out the spirit of formal law, if not the letter.⁶⁶ Thus, local authorities often felt the tug of competing forces both to stifle mob violence and to ignore, or even aid, lynch mobs.

Virtually all of the lynchings in Virginia were the result of the failure of local officials to protect their prisoners adequately. Sometimes, law officers made little pretense of preventing mob violence, whereas in other instances, they and county officials displayed glaring incompetence. Many incidents resulted from open complicity between local law officers and the mob. Occasionally, however, conscientious sheriffs and jailers were simply caught off guard and overpowered by well-organized and heavily armed mobs.

If some local authorities withered in the face of lynch mobs, many managed to thwart them. By far the most effective immediate action local authorities could take, particularly in rural areas, was to remove a threatened prisoner to a distant and secure jail. For example, in 1895 local authorities in Bristol protected a black man accused of assaulting a white girl by rushing him out of town before he fell into the hands of a mob. Similarly, by quickly moving two suspected arsonists to nearby Rockingham County, Augusta County officials managed to forestall a lynching in 1897. On countless other occasions, prudent law officers protected their prisoners either by hiding them or by simply outrunning the mob.⁶⁷

When flight became impossible, authorities faced a potentially explosive situation if they insisted on protecting a prisoner. Officials often bargained with mobs to let the law take its course, promising that, if tried, the alleged criminal would receive the death penalty.⁶⁸ For most local authorities there was nothing unseemly about essentially agreeing to “legal lynchings” at the hand of the state. After all, they were more concerned about preserving the sanctity of the courts and legal authority than the rights of threatened prisoners. During a threatened lynching in Glen Wilton in 1909, for example, a local official and prominent businessman addressed the mob. “I wouldn't lift my little finger to save this nigger,” he announced, “but it will be the greatest shame on the county and the greatest setback to law and order … if we let this fellow be lynched. … I'll give you my word of honor … that if a shyster lawyer gets him off, … I'll lead the lynching party, and we'll hang the negro and the shyster to the same branch of one tree.” With shocking regularity, local authorities resorted to similar pledges to persuade mobs that lynching was unnecessary.⁶⁹

Resolute law officers sometimes refused to offer any concessions to the mob and resorted to force to thwart a lynching. In 1895, the deputies protecting a prisoner in Clarke County had to fire warning shots before a mob threatening the jail dispersed. Five years later a Mecklenburg County constable showed perhaps more courage than prudence when he stood off a mob by drawing his pistol and warning that he intended to defend his prisoner “to the last extremity.” And in 1920, in Wise County, a mob ignored the machine gun mounted atop the jail and opened fire on the sheriff and his deputies, who were protecting the building. They returned the fire, killing one mob member and wounding another.⁷⁰

With growing frequency, local authorities turned to the state militia to quell mob violence during the 1890s. Although a mere show of force usually quieted threatening mobs, troops had to demonstrate readiness to use their weapons on several occasions. Militia called out in Norfolk in 1888 succeeded in clearing the streets around the jail only after they marched in ranks with fixed bayonets.⁷¹ And the Roanoke militia had fired on a mob in September 1893, killing seven and wounding at least twenty-five. Between 1880 and 1908, sheriffs, superior court judges, and mayors requested militia from the governor to protect prisoners and disperse mobs on forty-three occasions, a total that far exceeded the totals for every other southern state, with the exception of Texas.⁷²

Virginia's urban authorities, undoubtedly concerned about the potential damage and bloodshed if mob violence went unchecked, were particularly conscientious opponents of lynching. When mobs appeared in the streets and threatened jails, mayors usually were quick to request troops from the governor. City authorities also adopted various tactics of crowd control, such as ordering fire companies to turn their hoses on a mob or ordering police to arrest its members. In 1904, police in Fredericksburg arrested two members of a mob that had attempted to break into the town jail and murder a black prisoner. Also in 1904, a well-organized mob in Danville tried to take advantage of the absence of the local militia, but the mayor had eighteen of the mob members arrested. Several received sentences ranging from thirty days in jail to a ＄50 fine and sixty days in jail. Similarly, in 1908, the mayor of Portsmouth had several members of a mob arrested when they tried to lynch two blacks charged with assault. Although several belonged to prominent local families, the mayor insisted on prosecuting them. To his great irritation, however, a jury refused to convict any of them.⁷³

After lynchings, local authorities typically showed little inclination to prosecute mob members. County officials recognized the potential political costs and social ostracism they might be subjected to if they did so. Nevertheless, commonwealth attorneys or city officials ignored local sentiment on several occasions and attempted to prosecute lynchers. Following the Roanoke lynching riot of 1893, for example, local authorities brought charges against sixteen members of the mob, but only three were convicted. Even the stiffest sentences only amounted to thirty days' imprisonment and a ＄100 fine. In 1902, the commonwealth attorney of Loudoun County endured harsh criticism when he prosecuted fifteen men accused of participating in the lynching of a black. After a long and often bitter trial, the jury acquitted them all. Yet in a few exceptional instances, prosecution of mob members resulted in convictions. In 1898, the commonwealth attorney of Patrick County successfully prosecuted six men who had participated in the lynching of a white man charged with rape, and in 1920, the commonwealth attorney of Wise County secured the conviction of the leader of a mob that had murdered a black.⁷⁴

That commonwealth attorneys often failed to convince juries to convict mob members underscores the frustrations that conscientious authorities confronted when local sentiment supported mob violence. Yet, their efforts indicate the deliberate if lonely struggle that many local officials waged to harass and punish lynchers. Moreover, such attempts at prosecution are in marked contrast to the inaction of local officials in Georgia and other southern states.⁷⁵

The motives that drove local authorities to prevent lynchings or prosecute mob members remain obscure in most instances. Concern for the preservation of social order and the maintenance of respect for legal authority almost certainly were paramount. Humanitarian concern for victims either was absent or never admitted publicly. Whatever the particular motivations, by moving prisoners, calling out the militia to protect alleged criminals during trials, or promising mobs that prisoners would receive a speedy trial, local authorities did help to curb lynching.

The commitment to law and order that played such a prominent part of any white opposition to mob violence also provided an opening for blacks to combat lynching. Just as a shared devotion to institutional justice enabled Governor O'Ferrall and John Mitchell to work together, so, too, it sometimes roused blacks and whites alike to diffuse racial tensions and prevent lynchings in communities gripped by hysteria in the aftermath of a crime. For example, in 1909, in the town of Glen Wilton in western Virginia, a murder allegedly committed by a black miner threatened to provoke a wholesale pogrom against all blacks in the community. Local blacks, including several ministers, met with concerned local whites, in particular a prominent woman. By posting signs warning that “all bad negroes must quit town,” the black community hoped to mollify white concerns about black lawlessness. Local officials moved the alleged murderer to a safe jail, and tensions subsided. As one white later observed, “what's the use of having race trouble when the good negroes want to be good?”⁷⁶

There were clear limits, however, beyond which whites would not accept black tactics against mob violence. For rural blacks, the only available recourse often was spontaneous and unorganized protests. As long as indirect forms of protest were adopted, white anger usually was not aroused. For example, in late August 1917, after a mob lynched a black in Northumberland County, blacks refused to work for the leader of the mob even though he offered them double wages.

When blacks employed more militant methods, however, they risked the severest sanctions. Individuals sometimes fended off mobs fiercely and, in other cases, organized into unofficial militia to protect jailed blacks.⁷⁷ In 1904, for example, following the murder of a local black man at the hands of a small mob of whites, aroused blacks in a suburb of Norfolk took to the streets to protest both the lynching and the police's apparent complicity in the murder. Local authorities, who failed to intimidate the crowd, requested state militia “to restore order.” Only after several tense days and numerous melées did a semblance of tranquility return.⁷⁸ The black press proudly reported these incidents and urged readers to emulate such defiant stands. But the hazards of armed self-defense were obvious; it usually provoked local authorities to act swiftly to suppress any organized black opposition and, in addition, only rarely was countenanced by even conservative white critics of mob violence, who saw it as nothing more than another expression of lawlessness.

Not until the outbreak of World War I, when urban African-American activists in the state founded chapters of the NAACP, did permanent institutional opposition replace the spontaneous protest of the past. As early as 1914, students and faculty at Virginia Union University in Richmond had organized the first branch of the NAACP in the state, but interest in starting branches elsewhere was sporadic. The turning point for the organization in Virginia came in 1917, when the NAACP launched a drive to expand membership in the South. James Weldon Johnson, who was appointed field secretary and organizer for the NAACP in December 1916, set out on a strenuous speaking and organizing tour that included mass meetings in Richmond and Norfolk. He later recalled that his tour had not been “overwhelmingly successful,” but that, at the very least, it had demonstrated that “everywhere there was a rise in the level of the Negro's morale.”⁷⁹

In the aftermath of Johnson's trip, blacks in Norfolk and Richmond established NAACP branches in 1917. The “quickening effect” that Johnson perceived among the southern black population increased during the war years, organization grew rapidly, and branches were organized in many of Virginia's most important cities and towns. By the end of 1918, branches had been chartered in the smaller cities of Charlottesville, Danville, Lynchburg, Portsmouth, Roanoke, and Salem, and in the following year branches opened in Alexandria, Graham, Louisa County, Martinsville, and Petersburg. Although enthusiasm seemed to wane during the immediate postwar years, blacks in Arlington, City Point, Leesburg, Newport News, and Staunton stirred up enough local interest to establish branches in their communities by 1921.⁸⁰

The initial enthusiasm for the NAACP in Virginia eroded during the 1920s, and many branches succumbed to apathy, ineffective leadership, and white hostility. In Norfolk, for instance, after the initial fervor evoked by its founding faded, the local branch became moribund. After several failed attempts, it finally was revived in 1926.⁸¹ In nearby Portsmouth, branch president David Harrell bitterly complained of the hurdles that he had to overcome in his decade-long struggle to sustain the organization. After its founding in 1918, the Portsmouth branch had to be revived and reorganized in 1927 and 1933.⁸² The same pattern of early enthusiasm and slow disintegration held in Leesburg, Martinsville, Salem, and Staunton. The Lynchburg, Roanoke, Richmond, and Norfolk (after 1926) branches, however, survived lapses in membership enthusiasm and, along with the national headquarters in New York, played important roles in voicing black anger over racial violence and organizing against discrimination in the courts.

In most regards, the arrival of the NAACP in the region did not mark a dramatic departure from earlier methods of agitating against mob violence. As a staunch defender of law and order, the organization typically was circumspect rather than confrontational. It attempted to reform racial inequities by pressuring white officials to prevent or punish mob violence, by providing legal representation for alleged black criminals, and by publicizing racial outrages. The infrequency of mob violence in Virginia by the early twentieth century led local branches to devote their resources to pressing urban problems, and only rarely did the organization extend its reach into the countryside.

Residential segregation, rather than lynching, was the preeminent concern of most branches of the NAACP in Virginia.⁸³ In 1917 the Virginia Union University branch gave an early indication of the priorities of many Virginia branches when it appealed to national headquarters to return a recent contribution to the national antilynching fund. “Now that the segregation fight is on,” the vice president of the branch asked, “we would like to know if it would not be better for us to use that money in this present fight.”⁸⁴ With attention understandably focused on urban problems, rural blacks, for all practical purposes, had to continue to rely upon their own strategies of defense against white attacks. Especially egregious attacks did stir urban NAACP branches to assist rural black communities, however, and the organization worked diligently to support efforts to investigate and prosecute participants in seven lynchings that occurred between 1918 and 1927.⁸⁵

The mixture of caution and activism that typified the activities of the NAACP in Virginia was also evident in the antilynching activities of P. B. Young, the editor of the Norfolk Journal and Guide and one of the most influential blacks in the state during the 1920s and 1930s. After assuming the editorship of the newspaper in 1909, Young gradually turned the Journal and Guide into the most widely read black newspaper in Virginia, while at the same time gaining the attention and respect of prominent whites in Norfolk. Young's influence grew in direct proportion to his attempts to discourage the Great Migration northward during World War I and dismiss expressions of black militancy. In numerous editorials, he assured southern blacks that their brightest political and economic future lay in the South. At the same time, he openly appealed to Louis Jaffé, editor of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, and other prominent Norfolk whites—the “best white citizens”—to accept their obligations to blacks and, in particular, “to forestall bloodshed and riot.”⁸⁶ Although a member of the Norfolk branch of the NAACP, Young disavowed the “agitation and protest” he associated with the national leaders of the organization and instead preferred to work for black advancement by building ties to the white establishment locally. He discovered common ground with Jaffé on the race relations issue in general and on lynching in particular. Jaffé almost certainly was in complete agreement with Young's belief that “able and safe” black leaders should join with “good white people” and “the best blood of the Old South” to preserve Virginia's “happy race relations.” United both by their contempt for mob violence and its effects on blacks and whites alike, as well as by their opposition to any federal antilynching statute, the two men joined forces in their editorial columns to denounce lynching tirelessly.⁸⁷

The immediate effectiveness of Young's editorials and the NACCP's actions against mob violence was modest. In an era when few whites welcomed outspoken attacks by blacks on the racial hierarchy and when the civil rights of blacks were repeatedly abridged, blacks in Virginia and elsewhere in the South lacked sufficient leverage to halt mob violence. But black agitators in Virginia, unlike those in many other states in the South, were not systematically intimidated or silenced, and some whites were attentive to at least some of their concerns. Some, especially John Mitchell, warned whites that lynching would not be endured silently and implied that black discontent could not be ignored. Others, including P. B. Young, urged that the races collaborate to crush extralegal violence. Some whites found the tone of these protests, especially Mitchell's, shrill, but others were sympathetic to an appeal to the best class of whites to blunt vicious racist attacks.

Blacks in Virginia in the early twentieth century, like their counterparts in other border states, confronted a dilemma when they campaigned for improvement in the comparatively peaceful race relations in the Old Dominion. They needed only look to the Deep South to see how dire conditions could be, including levels of persistent mob violence that were unheard of in Virginia, even at the end of the nineteenth century. Their challenge was to call for the advancement of blacks and yet not alienate white Virginians by appearing to be ungrateful trouble-makers. However suffocating the paternalistic character of white concern, many black leaders adopted a strategy of defending the status quo which, for all of its shortcomings, remained preferable to the worst that the South had to offer.

The evolution of opposition to lynching in Virginia is but another reminder of the complexities of southern mob violence. Just as there is no one explanation for a phenomenon with as many insidious permutations as mob violence, so, too, no single explanation can explain either the opposition to or demise of lynching. For the practice of lynching to cease in Virginia or, for that matter, in the South as a whole, strong steps were needed either to suppress mob violence or to address the underlying socioeconomic tensions that were its catalysts. Mob violence would persist until legal authorities imposed social order or until whites repudiated the bloody practice.

The forces that mobilized against mob violence in Virginia during the 1890s were by no means without counterparts in other southern states. But, with the possible exception of Kentucky, circumstances in few other southern states were as favorable to opponents of mob violence as in Virginia. The demise of lynching in the state cannot be separated easily from the conditions that gave rise to lynching in the first place. Of crucial importance was the simple fact that mob violence was not nearly as integral to the logic of socioeconomic and race relations in Virginia as it was in many other southern states. It was because lynching was never as deeply rooted in Virginia as in Georgia, for example, that the unorganized opposition to mob lawlessness in the Old Dominion, with its theme of law and order, was ever effective at all. Throughout the South during the 1890s and early 1900s, various governors, including Andrew H. Longino of Mississippi, Emmett O'Neal of Alabama, and Duncan C. Heyward of South Carolina, championed law and order. Unlike Virginia's governors, however, they met with frustration and failure. While they pleaded endlessly for defense of the sanctity of the courts, their pleas alone could not supplant mob justice with court-imposed justice. Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina was too deeply embedded in the fabric of social and economic relations to be disposed of by rhetoric alone. Moreover, Longino, Heyward, O'Neal, and other “law and order” governors faced severe—even withering—criticism for their stands against mob violence.

In Virginia, by contrast, ardent critics of mob violence faced only isolated criticism. The elitist, temperamentally conservative character of Virginia politics created precisely the sort of environment in which opposition rooted in fears about social order could take root and flourish. Moreover, the theme of law and order, at the heart of conservative white opposition to mob violence, allowed whites to ignore troubling questions about the sources of mob mentality. The issue for them quite simply was anarchy, not racism. Whereas later antilynching organizations in the Deep South took tentative steps toward revealing the complex causes of lynching by applying the methods and insights of the social sciences to the problem of mob violence, most white opponents in Virginia saw lynching as little more than glaring evidence of the absence of adequate popular devotion to legal authority. Unlike later white opponents of lynching, only a few prominent Virginians recognized that mob violence raised the most profound questions about the values and traditions of southern whites. A small group of Baptist academics and ministers in Richmond did voice strong opposition to lynching on humanitarian grounds and worked to nudge the Baptist churches of the state to condemn mob violence publicly. In 1904, the group, led by Samuel C. Mitchell, who four years earlier had criticized Governor Tyler so sharply for his mishandling of the Emporia lynching, composed a “Protest Against Lynching” that was later adopted by the Virginia Baptist General Association. However, they were unable to move the association to do anything further, and it issued no subsequent declarations until the 1920s.⁸⁸ Although individual white ministers sometimes spoke out against mob violence in the aftermath of lynchings in their communities, none of the white churches in Virginia made any organized or sustained efforts to convince its members of the incompatibility of Christian values and mob violence. Thus, white opposition was largely bereft of compassion for either the black victims of mob violence or the black community that endured the wrenching pain of vigilante violence.

Because of the simple solution they proposed—justice at the hands of the courts rather than the mob—conservative white opponents of lynching in Virginia had no need to create enduring organizations. Instead, all that was needed was effective law enforcement and the temporary mobilization of all right-thinking citizens in mob-threatened communities. Whites even were willing to work with members of the black community as long as the intended goal was to defend the courts and legal authority from mob violence. Few believed that anything more than modest reforms in state laws aimed at strengthening the hand of state authorities was needed. These attitudes were hardly conductive to the creation of any progressively inclined white organizations committed to opposing mob violence. Consequently, in the 1920s when the Commission on Interracial Cooperation (CIC), with its program of interracial harmony and antilynching activism, spread across the South, Virginia whites responded tepidly at best. One of the organizers of the CIC in the state explained at a regional convention that Virginia was one of the most difficult states to organize because it was “one of the most conservative.” The comparative infrequency of many of the most extreme forms of racial oppression—in particular, lynching—by the 1920s convinced many whites that race relations in Virginia hardly merited attention. As a CIC supporter noted with regret, white Virginians typically doubted that there was “any need of an inter-racial committee.” The sheer lack of interest led CIC organizers “to pursue a course of safety rather than speed,” and as a result the CIC was virtually stillborn in Virginia.⁸⁹ It should come as no surprise, then, that white Virginians, residents of the southern state in which mob violence had met with early opposition and had hosted the fewest lynchings, would play only the most inconspicuous role in any of the major antilynching organizations of the twentieth century.

Nothing more fully reveals the character of white opposition to mob violence in Virginia than the circumstances surrounding the passage of the first antilynching law in the state's history in 1928. The force behind the passage of the statute was not an antilynching organization, but rather was Louis I. Jaffé of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. A spate of lynchings during the mid-1920s troubled Jaffé, prompting him to launch a relentless editorial campaign denouncing extralegal violence. Although his editorials touched upon the barbarity of lynch mobs, he dwelled upon the theme that lynching was “a crime which is plainly destructive of guarantees which have been regarded as inviolate in Anglo-Saxon thinking and jurisprudence since Runnymede.”⁹⁰

Following the lynching of Leonard Woods in southwestern Virginia in November 1927, he implored Governor Harry F. Byrd to “find a means to force a showdown on this outrage.” Jaffé's advocacy prompted the governor to request from the editor a draft proposal of antilynching legislation. The governor adopted the outline of Jaffé's legislation and, after modest changes, pushed the bill through the Virginia General Assembly. The new antilynching law, signed on March 14, 1928, gave the governor the authority to use state officers to investigate lynchings and try mob members. Furthermore, the legislation declared participation in a violent mob equivalent to committing a comparable crime as an individual. Jaffé took great pride in the passage of the antilynching law, which he viewed as the culmination of his advocacy for legislation making “the punishment of lynchers … a primary obligation of the State.” In 1929 he was rewarded with the Pulitzer Prize for his editorials “on the lynching evil and [his] successful advocacy of legislation to prevent it.” He had no doubt that the law was “an epochal measure” and was proud of the fact that no lynchings took place in Virginia after the law was adopted.⁹¹

The passage of the antilynching law was in equal measures the product of Jaffé's single-minded persistence and of new attitudes toward executive authority. The expansion of the governor's powers during the Byrd administration, of which the antilynching statue was part, reflected new notions of executive power that moved considerably beyond the narrow conceptions of the past.⁹² Moreover, the Virginia law was a calculated effort to help stave off federal antilynching legislation, which Congress was threatening to pass, by demonstrating that the southern states had the means and the will to suppress mob lawlessness. The Virginia antilynching law is the culmination of a nearly forty-year campaign for social order rather than any victory for racial enlightenment.

On balance, then, the virtual demise of lynching in the state by 1904 did not mark a new era of racial harmony and tolerance. After all, the criminal justice system continued to punish blacks harshly, executing them with frightful regularity. Blacks, moreover, continued to bear the burdens of disfranchisement, segregation, poverty, and pervasive racism. Yet, the demise of lynching in Virginia lifted one of the most onerous badges of black oppression.

Notes

1. Clinch Valley News (Tazewell), July 2, 1897.

2. On Tidewater politics, see Michael B. Chesson, “Richmond's Black Councilmen, 1871-96,” in Southern Black Leaders of the Reconstruction Era, ed. Howard N. Rabinowitz (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 191-222; and Joseph P. Harahan, “Politics, Political Parties, and Voter Participation in Tidewater Virginia during Reconstruction, 1865-1900,” Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1973.

3. [New York Times; hereafter NYT], May 20, 21, 1879; [Richmond Dispatch; hereafter RD], Jan. 22, 1880; Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 20; Luther P. Jackson, Negro Officeholders in Virginia, 1865-1895 (Norfolk: Guide Quality Press, 1945), 7.

4. For examples of black church conventions in Virginia condemning mob violence, see NYT, May 28, 1892; [Richmond Times; hereafter RT], July 27, 29, 1897; and RD, July 28, 1897.

5. Raymond Gavins, The Perils and Prospects of Southern Black Leadership: Gordon Blaine Hancock, 1884-1970 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1977), chapters 1-4; Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), esp. chapter 3; Cynthia Neverdon-Morton, Afro-American Women of the South and the Advancement of the Race, 1895-1925 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 104-21.

6. Unfortunately, little is known about most black editors in Virginia, and, with the exception of the Richmond Planet, virtually no files of Virginia black newspapers remain. On Mitchell, see Ann F. Alexander, “Black Protest in the New South: John Mitchell, Jr. and the Richmond Planet,” Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1973; and W. Fitzhugh Brundage, “To Howl Loudly: John Mitchell and the Campaign against Lynching,” Canadian Journal of American Studies, 22 (Winter 1991): 325-42.

7. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1944), 2:910.

8. For examples of accounts of lynchings in the Planet that are far superior to white news accounts (if white newspapers even mentioned the lynchings), see issues of June 6, 1891, Jan. 16, April 9, April 16, 23, May 7, July 23, Oct. 22, 1892, February 11, March 4, 1893, and July 23, 1893.

9. [Richmond Planet; hereafter RP], Jan. 3, 1891.

10. RP, June 11, 1891.

11. RP, Sept. 6, 1890, Aug. 10, 1901.

12. New York Freeman, May 26, 1886; Alexander, “Black Protest in the New South,” 151-52; RP, Jan. 3, 1891.

13. RP, July 22, 29, Aug. 5, 12, Sept. 30, Oct. 14, Nov. 4, 18, 28, 1893; NYT, July 19, 1893.

14. Henry Warren Readnour, “Fitzhugh Lee, Confederate Calvaryman of the New South,” in The Governors of Virginia, 1868-1978, ed. Edward Younger and James T. Moore (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1982), 115.

15. The election of 1883 marked the turning point in Democratic prospects after a decade of frustration. See Charmoin Higgenbotham, “The Danville Riot of 1883,” M.A. thesis, Virginia State College, 1955; John T. Melzer, “The Danville Riot, November 3, 1883,” M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1963; and James T. Moore, Two Paths to the New South: The Virginia Debt Controversy, 1870-1883 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1974), 115-17.

16. The various elements of the heightened tensions in the South are discussed in Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 112-13. Governor McKinney earned the enduring enmity of blacks by recommending segregation in railroad coaches and by his pronouncements and actions on education, criminal justice, and black holiday celebrations. See Bernice B. Zuckerman, “Phillip Watkins McKinney, Governor of Virginia, 1890-1894,” M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1967, 60-64, 67.

17. RP, April 9, 16, 1892, May 20, 1893. For other attacks by Mitchell on McKinney, see issues of Feb. 21, 28, March 28, April 11, Nov. 21, 1891, and July 22, 1893.

18. Roanoke Times, Sept. 29, 1893.

19. The best discussions of the Roanoke riot are in the Roanoke Times, Sept. 21-27, 1893, and [Norfolk Virginian; hereafter NV], Sept. 21-23, 1893. Three scholarly accounts are Ann Alexander, “Like an Evil Wind: The Roanoke Riot of 1893 and the Lynching of Thomas Smith,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 100 (April 1992): 173-206; John A. Waits, “Roanoke's Tragedy: The Lynch Riot of 1893,” M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1972; and Gordon McKinney, “Industrialization and Violence in the 1890's” in An Appalachian Symposium, ed. J. W. Williamson (Boone, N.C.: Appalachian State University Press, 1977), 131-44.

20. Roanoke Times, Sept. 22-24, 1893; Waits, “Roanoke's Tragedy,” 45-54.

21. For examples of the outpouring of editorial support for the local authorities of Roanoke and calls for aggressive steps to crush mob violence, see RT, Sept. 22, 1893; [Richmond State; hereafter RS], Sept. 22, 1892; RD, Sept. 24, 1893; and Staunton Daily News, Sept. 24, 27, 1893.

22. RD, Sept. 24, 1893; Roanoke Times, Sept. 27, 1893.

23. On Sept. 30, 1893, the Richmond Planet complained, “Incompetency and cowardice is thoroughly exemplified in our present chief executive.”

24. Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1893-1894 (Richmond: Superintendent of Public Printing, 1894): Message of the Governor, 45-46.

25. RP, Dec. 16, 1893.

26. RS, Sept. 24, 1893. For similar conclusions about the significance of the Roanoke lynching, see Raymond Pulley, Old Virginia Restored: An Interpretation of the Progressive Impulse, 1870-1930 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968), 52-53; and Zuckerman, “Phillip Watkins McKinney,” 54-57.

27. Carlos A. Schwantes, Coxey's Army: An American Odyssey (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), 248-54; C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 267-68; Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1895 (Richmond: Superintendent of Public Printing, 1895), 34-37. O'Ferrall's paternalistic racism was most explicit in his response to the antilynching agitator Ida Wells-Barnett's speaking tour of Britain in 1894. See RD, Sept. 12, 13, 1894; and Governor Charles T. O'Ferrall to Afro-American Press Association, Sept. 12, 1894, O'Ferrall Papers, VSL. Also see Mildred Thompson, “Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman, 1893-1930,” Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1979, 119-20.

28. Charles T. O'Ferrall, Forty Years of Active Service (New York: Neale Publishing, 1904), 234; Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1894-1895, Message of the Governor, 33.

29. For surveys of postwar political developments, see Jack P. Maddex, Jr., The Virginia Conservatives, 1867-1979: A Study in Reconstruction Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970); and Catherine S. Silverman, “‘Of Wealth, Virtue, and Intelligence’: The Redeemers and Their Triumph in Virginia and North Carolina, 1865-1877,” Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1972. Contrast with Paul D. Escott, Many Excellent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 159.

30. For surveys of the political fortunes of the Democratic party, see Allen W. Moger, Virginia: Bourbonism to Byrd, 1870-1925 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968), 95-121; and Pulley, Old Virginia Restored, 48-66.

31. V. O. Key, Jr., Southern Politics (New York: Knopf, 1949), 19. See also, Herman L. Horn, “The Growth and Development of the Democratic Party in Virginia since 1890,” Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1949; and Allen W. Moger, “The Origin of the Democratic Machine in Virginia,” Journal of Southern History 8 (May 1942): 183-209.

32. Moger, “Origin of the Democratic Machine,” esp. 111-39, 259-84. There were prominent racial “radicals” in Virginia, including the author Phillip Alexander Bruce; Paul B. Barringer, a college professor and president; and the author Myrta Lockett Avary. They exerted hardly more influence than did such racial liberals as Lewis Harvey Blair, Orra Langhorne, and Samuel C. Mitchell.

33. A succinct discussion of the character of the Democratic party in Virginia is found in Allen W. Moger, “Virginia's Conservative Political Heritage,” South Atlantic Quarterly 50 (July, 1951): 318-29. The best extended treatment of the Democratic party during the period remains Horn, “The Growth and Development of the Democratic Party in Virginia since 1890.”

34. Petersburg Index-Appeal, Feb. 17, July 7, 1890. The newspaper complained on Feb. 19, 1896, that “much vicious legislation, [was] done ostensibly in the name of civilization and white supremacy, but in reality to promote partisan or factional advantage.” See also, Dewey Grantham, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), 65-74; and Williamson, Crucible of Race, 234-41.

35. RT, Nov. 3, 1891, June 6, 1894; RD, May 15, 1895. For similar sentiments, see RT, Aug. 18, 1892, Jan. 24, 1895; RD, May 5, 7, 10, 15, 18, 21, 1895; and Clinch Valley News (Tazewell) June 22, 1891, July 2, 1897.

36. RD, Aug. 12, 1894, May 21, 1895; RT, June 26, 1897.

37. [Richmond Enquirer; hereafter RE], April 14, 21, 1871.

38. The report, comprised of forty-one pages of interviews with local authorities in Alexandria, is a testament to O'Ferrall's determination to squelch mob violence. The investigation outraged many whites in Alexandria and provoked sharp criticism of the governor for meddling in county affairs. See Special Report on the Joseph McCoy Lynching, O'Ferrall Papers, [Virginia State Library, Richmond; hereafter VSL]. The investigation is discussed in [Baltimore Sun; hereafter BS], April 26, 28, 1897; and [Washington Post; hereafter WP], April 27, 1897. Predictably, the harshest criticism of the governor was in the local Alexandria Gazette, April 28, 29, 1897.

39. BS, April 26-28, 1897; WP, April 27, 1897; RD, April 26-28, 1897. In his annual address he censured Alexandria authorities and concluded that “there can be no possible excuse for the success of the mob.” Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1897-1898 (Richmond: Superintendent of Public Printing, 1898), 15.

40. BS, April 28, 1897; Alexandria Gazette, April 29, 1897; RP, May 1, 8, 1897.

41. RP, July 20, 27, Aug. 3, 1895; RD, Sept. 13, 1895; Annual Report of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1895, 5; Annual Report of the Adjutant General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1895, 64-65.

42. Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1895-1896 (Richmond: Superintendent of Public Printing, 1896), 119.

43. According to Mitchell, Wise “was highly indignant over the alleged trial and declared their [the women's] treatment to be an outrage,” RP, July 27, 1895. For biographical detail on the three white lawyers, see Lyon G. Tyler, ed., Men of Mark in Virginia (Washington D.C.: Men of Mark Publishing Co., 1909), 5:189-94; and Lyon G. Tyler, ed., Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1915), 3:133, 264. The RT sent the attorney William M. Justis to Lunenburg to investigate the case against the women. His reports in the Times substantiated the charges that Mitchell had already made in the Planet. See RP, Aug. 10, 24, 1895.

44. RP, Aug. 24, 1895.

45. RP, Sept. 21, 1895.

46. RP, July 27, Aug. 10, 24, 1895; RT, July 23, 1895; RD, Sept. 13-19, 1895. The most lucid summary of the complex legal battles of the case is Samuel N. Pincus, The Virginia Supreme Court, Blacks and the Law, 1870-1902 (New York: Garland, 1990), chapter 11.

47. Governor Charles T. O'Ferrall to Judge George C. Orgain, Nov. 11, 1895, reprinted in Annual Report of the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1895 (Richmond: Superintendent of Public Printing, 1895), 70; Barnes v. Commonwealth, 92 Va. 794 (1895); RP, Nov. 16-Dec. 13, 1895.

48. Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1895-1896, 115-21.

49. RP, Jan.-Sept. 1896, Sept. 26, 1896; Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1897-1898, Communication from the Governor Transmitting List of Pardons, House Document 3, 4-5.

50. RP, Nov. 14, 1896.

51. Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1897-1898, 16.

52. Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1895-1896, 32-34; Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1897-1898, 15-17. During the 1901-2 constitutional convention, various reforms similar to O'Ferrall's were suggested, but none was enacted. See Albert O. Porter, County Government in Virginia: A Legislative History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1947), 317.

53. RD, July 25, 1897.

54. O'Ferrall, Forty Years of Service, 235-37. O'Ferrall's strong stand against lynching won him widespread praise; for example, see Edward L. Pell, “The Prevention of Lynchings,” Review of Reviews 17 (March 1898): 321-23. At least one Virginia newspaper was skeptical of O'Ferrall's claims. The Winchester Times complained, “The Governor, of course, claims all the credit for the suppression of lynching in recent years, but to well-informed people his claim is ridiculous.” Quoted in RT, Dec. 9, 1897.

55. The number of lynchings between 1894 and 1897 is impossible to determine with precision. The NAACP recorded fourteen in Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918 (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 100. The NAACP list incorrectly includes several legal executions and several prevented lynchings in the total of actual lynchings, however. O'Ferrall claimed that only three lynchings occurred during his term; see Journal of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1897, 47.

56. J. Hoge Tyler to Waitman Stigleman, May 8, 1899, box 14, Tyler Papers, VSL.

57. Charles E. Wynes, Race Relations in Virginia, 1870-1902 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1961), 54-66. The tensions arising from the mobilization of black troops are treated in Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., “Virginia's Negro Regiment in the Spanish-American War,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 80 (April 1971): 193-209; and Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898-1903 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 82-83, 96-98.

58. Roanoke Times, Jan. 24-Feb. 17, 1904; [Richmond Times-Dispatch; hereafter [RTD], Jan. 25-Feb. 18, 1904; Andrew J. Montague to W. F. Battel, Jr., March 8, 1905, Montague Papers, VSL; William Larsen, Montague of Virginia: The Making of a Southern Progressive (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), 122.

59. Swanson's visit is described in Brooks Miles Barnes, “The Onancock Race Riot of 1907,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 92 (July 1984): 336-50; and Henry C. Ferrell, Jr., Claude A. Swanson of Virginia: A Political Biography (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 178. In 1925, Governor E. Lee Trinkle visited the scene of a lynching in Sussex County and strongly urged local authorities to take every possible action to punish the lynchers. He offered the state's aid in prosecuting the lynchers. See Petersburg Progress-Index, March 22, 23, 1925; and RTD, March 23, 1925.

60. For examples, see G. W. Smith to A. J. Montague, Jan. 20, 1902, Montague Papers, VSL; Henry C. Stuart to Judge George J. Hundley, July 21, 1917, Stuart to Hundley, July 27, 1917, and Stuart to Vernon Ford, Sept. 7, 1917, all in Stuart Papers, VSL.

61. RD, March 25, 1900; NVP, March 25, 1900; RP, March 31, 1900; Report of the Adjutant-General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1900, 29-33.

62. Report of the Adjutant-General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1900, 29-33.

63. RT, March 25, 27, 1900; Portsmouth Star, March 27, 1900. For similar conclusions, see Alexandria Gazette, March 27, 1900; Norfolk Landmark, March 27, 1900; and Letters to the Editor, RT, May 1, 4, 1900.

64. Phillip V. Cogbill to J. Hoge Tyler, March 27, 1900, Isaac B. Bell to Tyler, March 28, 1900, and George J. Hundley to Tyler, March 28, 1900, all in box 16, Tyler Papers, VSL.

65. Camm Patteson to Tyler, March 28, 1900. For similar denunciations of the lynching, see Rev. J. William Jones to Tyler, March 29, 1900, and George E. Smith to Tyler, April 5, 1900, both in box 16, Tyler Papers, VSL.

66. For valuable discussions of the attitudes of officials, see Richard M. Brown, Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 146-52; and Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 1:523-26.

67. Staunton Post, Sept. 9, 1895; Shenandoah Valley (New Market), June 10, 1897; RD, Feb. 7, 1886; Augusta County Argus (Staunton), Sept. 29, 1891; RP, April 2, 1916; NYT, July 22, 1922.

68. For example, authorities in Augusta County promised a mob that a black man charged with murder would receive a prompt trial. True to their words, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death within three days of the crime. RP, May 5, 1894; Augusta County Argus May 8, 15, 1894.

69. Richard W. Hale, “Lynching Unnecessary: A Report on Commonwealth v. Christian,” American Law Review 45 (Nov.-Dec. 1911): 878-79. For other examples of authorities striking bargains with mobs, see Charlottesville Chronicle, March 21, 1889; Charlottesville Cavalier Daily, March 26, April 2, 1889; Muscoe v. Commonwealth, 87 Va. 460, 461 (1891); and RP, Feb. 10, 1894, Aug. 12, 1899, Feb. 16, 1901.

70. Augusta County Argus, July 2, 16, 1895; Staunton Post, July 9, 1895; [Norfolk Virginian Pilot; hereafter NVP], April 25, 1900; RD, April 25, 1900; RP, May 5, 1900; NYT, Dec. 6, 1920; Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Dec. 7, 1920; Lynchburg News, Dec. 7, 1920.

71. Report of the Adjutant-General of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1888, 60-62.

72. See Appendix A, Table 21, “Number of Times Militia Aid given to Civil Authorities to Prevent Lynchings, 1886-1908.” There are no comparable records for the years after 1908 with which to compare the use of the militia in Virginia and other southern states.

73. On Fredericksburg, see WP, May 18, 1904; on Danville, see RTD, July 20-26, 1904; NYT, July 21, 1904; and Norfolk Landmark, July 26, 1904; on Portsmouth, see Portsmouth Star, Aug. 12-Sept. 24, 1908; and NVP, Sept. 23-26, 1908. In 1920, two leaders of an unsuccessful mob in Lynchburg were sentenced to ten days in jail and ＄25 fines; see WP, Aug. 16, 19, 1920, and BS, Aug. 19, 1920. Similarly, in 1921, fifteen members of a mob that attempted to lynch a black in Danville were convicted: the leader received a fine of ＄500 and a one-year jail sentence; see RTD, March 29-April 4, 1921, and New York Globe, March 29, April 4, 8, 1921.

74. On Roanoke, see Roanoke Times, Nov. 16-26, and Dec. 2, 1893. On Loudoun County, see WP, Aug. 2-Sept. 16, 1902; NVP, Aug. 6, 7, 1902; Leesburg Washingtonian, Aug. 2, 9, 1902; and Loudoun Mirror (Leesburg), Aug. 7, 1902. The harshest local criticism was in the Hamilton Weekly Enterprise, Aug. 8, 15, Sept. 12, 19, 1902. On Patrick County, see RP, July 8, 1899; RT, March 29, 1900; Baltimore American, March 31, 1900; and RD, Aug. 10, 1902. On Wise County, see C. R. McCorkle to Governor Westmoreland Davis, Nov. 16, 1920, and C. R. McCorkle to Westmoreland Davis, Aug. 16, 1921, both in Westmoreland Davis Papers, VSL. See also, RTD, Jan. 5, 1923; Richmond Leader, Jan. 31, 1923; and Norfolk Journal and Guide, March 17, 1923.

75. Other examples of attempts—all unsuccessful—to prosecute lynchers include two white men and a black man who allegedly had led the mob that lynched a white in Charlotte County in 1893; see WP, Nov. 2-5, 1893, and NV, Nov. 2-6, 1893. In 1895, several whites involved in a lynching in Tazewell County were prosecuted (RP, Aug. 8, 1895), and a white man who had led a mob that wounded but failed to kill a black in Campbell County was tried in 1898; see RP, March 30, May 29, Sept. 18, 1897, and Jan. 15, 1898.

76. Hale, “Lynching Unnecessary,” 875-83; Hampton Monitor, March 26, 1909.

77. Norfolk Journal and Guide, Oct. 6, 1917; Robert F. Engs, Freedom's First Generation: Black Hampton, Virginia, 1861-1890 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 195; RD, May 8, 1901; RP, May 11, 1901.

78. Portsmouth Star, Oct. 24-27, 1904; NVP, Oct. 25-28, 1904; RTD, Oct. 25-28, 1904; WP, Oct. 24-28, 1904; BS, Oct. 25-26, 1904; Richmond News Leader, Oct. 24-31, 1904; RP, Oct. 29, 1904.

79. James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: Viking, 1933), 315.

80. There is no adequate history of the origins or early history of the NAACP in Virginia. The expansion of the NAACP in the state can be traced in the Virginia Branch Files, Group I, series G, boxes G-206-212, NAACP Papers, [Library of Congress; hereafter LC]. Scattered details of the founding of various branches can be gleaned from Norfolk Journal and Guide, Jan. 27, 1917, July 31, 1921; RP, July 31, 1921; Gavins, Perils and Prospects of Southern Black Leadership, 47; Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 72-74; Crisis 17 (1919): 285; Robert W. Bagnall, “Lights and Shadows in the South,” Crisis 41 (April 1932): 125; and Andrew Buni, The Negro in Virginia Politics, 1902-1965 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1967), 127-28.

81. Norfolk Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-208, NAACP Papers, LC.

82. Portsmouth Branch Files, Group I, series G, boxes G-209, G-210, NAACP Papers, LC.

83. For the campaigns of branches against segregation, see correspondence in Danville Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-206; Falls Church Branch, Group I, series G, box G-207; Lynchburg Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-207; and especially the Norfolk Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-208; and the Richmond Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-209, all in NAACP Papers, LC.

84. Thomas L. Dabney to Roy Nash, March 26, 1917, Richmond Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-210, NAACP Papers, LC.

85. For examples, see James W. Johnson to Governor H. C. Stuart, Dec. 3, 1918, Group I, series C, box C-370, Virginia General Lynching File, 1914-23; Rev. C. B. Holloway to J. E. Springarn, Sept. 7, 20, 1926, Group I, series C, box C-370, Wytheville File; Royal L. Hurtt to Robert W. Bagnall, Nov. [?], 1927, Petersburg Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-209; and P. B. Young to James Weldon Johnson, May 20, May 24, 1929, Norfolk Branch Files, Group I, series G, box G-208, all in NAACP Papers, LC.

86. Norfolk Journal and Guide, Aug. 9, 1917.

87. Norfolk Journal and Guide, Feb. 6, 1926. For example of Young's denunciations of mob violence, see the issues of March 31, April 12, Oct. 27, 1923, Jan. 9, 16, 23, 1928; and Henry Lewis Suggs, P. B. Young, Newspaperman: Race, Politics, and Journalism in the New South, 1910-1962 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988), 36-38, 41, 58-60, 61-62. On Jaffé's antilynching stance, see pages 189-90 of this volume.

88. Virginia Baptist Annual, 1904 (Richmond: n.p.: 1904), 59-63, 67. The lack of concern of Virginia churches on all issues relating to race is discussed in F. Joseph Mitchell, “The Virginia Methodist Conference and Social Issues in the Twentieth Century,” Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1961, 294-334; and Samuel C. Shepherd, “Churches at Work: Richmond, Virginia, White Protestant Leaders and Social Change in a Southern City, 1900-1929,” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1980, 191-218.

89. “Interracial Committee Meeting,” February 17, 1920; and “Conference of Interracial Secretaries,” June 25, 1920, 10. Both in Series II, File 3, CIC [Commission on Interracial Cooperation] Papers, AUL [Atlanta University Library].

90. Quoted in Lenoir Chambers and Joseph E. Shank, Salt Water and Printer's Ink: Norfolk and Its Newspapers, 1865-1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), 315.

91. Quoted in John Hohenberg, The Pulitzer Prize Story (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 78-79. See also, Louis I. Jaffé to Governor Harry F. Byrd, Jan. 12, 1929, Lynching File, Byrd Papers, VSL. For an account of southern journalists that places Jaffé in his milieu, see John T. Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920-1944 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), passim.

92. Robert T. Hawkes, Jr., “Harry F. Byrd: Leadership and Reform,” in The Governors of Virginia, 1860-1978, ed. Younger and Moore, 233-46. See also, Robert T. Hawkes, Jr., “The Career of Harry Flood Byrd, Sr., to 1933,” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1975, passim; and George B. Tindall, “Business Progressivism: Southern Politics in the Twenties,” South Atlantic Quarterly 62 (Winter 1963): 92-106.