DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

negroes word that I was not the person they expected.
The bishop lied to them. That is my
whole story."
But they didn't believe him. Fur it was jest
what he would of said if he had been guilty, as
they thought him. And then Grimes gets up and
says:
"Gentlemen, I demand for this prisoner the
penalty of death.
"He has lent himself to a situation calculated to
disturb in this county the peaceful domination of the
black race by the white.
"He is a Northern man. But that is not against
him. If this were a case where leniency were possible,
it should count for him, as indicating an ignorance
of the gravity of conditions which confront
us here, every day and all the time. If he were my
own brother, I would still demand his death.
"Lest he should think my attitude dictated by
any lingering sectional prejudice, I may tell him what
you all know--you people among whom I have lived
for thirty years--that I am a Northern man myself.
"The negro who was lynched to-day might never
have committed the crime he did had not the wild,
disturbing dream of equality been stirring in his
brain. Every speech, every look, every action
which encourages that idea is a crime. In this
county, where the blacks outnumber us, we must
either rule as masters or be submerged.
"This man is still believed by the negroes to
possess some miraculous power. He is therefore
doubly dangerous. As a sharp warning to them he
must die. His death will do more toward ending
the trouble he has prepared than the death of a
dozen negroes.
"And as God is my witness, I speak and act
not through passion, but from the dictates of