“We will get a Nigger down here, you bet!” was the yelling boast that went up from a thousand throats, and for the first time the march of the mob was directed toward the downtown sections.  The words of the rioters were prophetic, for just as Canal Street was reached a car on the Villere line came along.

  “Stop that car!” cried half a hundred men.  The advance guard, heeding
  the injunction, rushed up to the slowly moving car, and several, seizing
  the trolley, jerked it down.

  “Here’s a Nigro!” said half a dozen men who sprang upon the car.

The car was full of passengers at the time, among them several women.  When the trolley was pulled down and the car thrown in total darkness, the latter began to scream, and for a moment or so it looked as if the life of every person in the car was in peril, for some of the crowd with demoniacal yells of “There he goes!” began to fire their weapons indiscriminately.  The passengers in the car hastily jumped to the ground and joined the crowd, as it was evidently the safest place to be.

“Where’s that Nigger?” was the query passed along the line, and with that the search began in earnest.  The Negro, after jumping off the car, lost himself for a few moments in the crowd, but after a brief search he was again located.  The slight delay seemed, if possible, only to whet the desire of the bloodthirsty crowd, for the reappearance of the Negro was the signal for a chorus of screams and pistol shots directed at the fugitive.  With the speed of a deer, the man ran straight from the corner of Canal and Villere to Customhouse Street.  The pursuers, closely following, kept up a running fire, but notwithstanding the fact that they were right at the Negro’s heels their aim was poor and their bullets went wide of the mark.

The Negro, on reaching Customhouse Street, darted from the sidewalk out into the middle of the street.  This was the worst maneuver that he could have made, as it brought him directly under the light from an arc lamp, located on a nearby corner.  When the Negro came plainly in view of the foremost of the closely following mob they directed a volley at him.  Half a dozen pistols flashed simultaneously, and one of the bullets evidently found its mark, for the Negro stopped short, threw up his hands, wavered for a moment, and then started to run again.  This stop, slight as it was, proved fatal to the Negro’s chances, for he had not gotten twenty steps farther when several of the men in advance of the others reached his side.  A burly fellow, grabbing him with one hand, dealt him a terrible blow on the head with the other.  The wounded man sank to the ground.  The crowd pressed around him and began to beat him and stamp him.  The men in the rear pressed forward and those beating the man were shoved forward.  The half-dead Negro, when he was freed from his assailants, crawled over to the gutter.  The men behind, however, stopped