With only a little more aggravation than that of Smith who quarreled at Roanoke with the market woman, was the assault which operated as the incentive to a most brutal lynching in Memphis, Tenn.  Memphis is one of the queen cities of the south, with a population of about seventy thousand souls—­easily one of the twenty largest, most progressive and wealthiest cities of the United States.  And yet in its streets there occurred a scene of shocking savagery which would have disgraced the Congo.  No woman was harmed, no serious indignity suffered.  Two women driving to town in a wagon, were suddenly accosted by Lee Walker.  He claimed that he demanded something to eat.  The women claimed that he attempted to assault them.  They gave such an alarm that he ran away.  At once the dispatches spread over the entire country that a big, burly Negro had brutally assaulted two women.  Crowds began to search for the alleged fiend.  While hunting him they shot another Negro dead in his tracks for refusing to stop when ordered to do so.  After a few days Lee Walker was found, and put in jail in Memphis until the mob there was ready for him.

The Memphis Commercial of Sunday, July 23, contains a full account of the tragedy from which the following extracts are made: 

At 12 o’clock last night, Lee Walker, who attempted to outrage Miss Mollie McCadden, last Tuesday morning, was taken from the county jail and hanged to a telegraph pole just north of the prison.  All day rumors were afloat that with nightfall an attack would be made upon the jail, and as everyone anticipated that a vigorous resistance would be made, a conflict between the mob and the authorities was feared.

At 10 o’clock Capt.  O’Haver, Sergt.  Horan and several patrolmen were on hand, but they could do nothing with the crowd.  An attack by the mob was made on the door in the south wall, and it yielded.  Sheriff McLendon and several of his men threw themselves into the breach, but two or three of the storming party shoved by.  They were seized by the police, but were not subdued, the officers refraining from using their clubs.  The entire mob might at first have been dispersed by ten policemen who would use their clubs, but the sheriff insisted that no violence be done.

The mob got an iron rail and used it as a battering ram against the lobby doors.  Sheriff McLendon tried to stop them, and some one of the mob knocked him down with a chair.  Still he counseled moderation and would not order his deputies and the police to disperse the crowd by force.  The pacific policy of the sheriff impressed the mob with the idea that the officers were afraid, or at least would do them no harm, and they redoubled their efforts, urged on by a big switchman.  At 12 o’clock the door of the prison was broken in with a rail.

As soon as the rapist was brought out of the door calls were heard for a rope; then someone