A word as to the charge itself.  In considering the third reason assigned by the Southern white people for the butchery of blacks, the question must be asked, what the white man means when he charges the black man with rape.  Does he mean the crime which the statutes of the civilized states describe as such?  Not by any means.  With the Southern white man, any mesalliance existing between a white woman and a colored man is a sufficient foundation for the charge of rape.  The Southern white man says that it is impossible for a voluntary alliance to exist between a white woman and a colored man, and therefore, the fact of an alliance is a proof of force.  In numerous instances where colored men have have been lynched on the charge of rape, it was positively known at the time of lynching, and indisputably proven after the victim’s death, that the relationship sustained between the man and woman was voluntary and clandestine, and that in no court of law could even the charge of assault have been successfully maintained.

It was for the assertion of this fact, in the defense of her own race, that the writer hereof became an exile; her property destroyed and her return to her home forbidden under penalty of death, for writing the following editorial which was printed in her paper, the Free Speech, in Memphis, Tenn., May 21,1892: 

Eight Negroes lynched since last issue of the Free Speech one at Little Rock, Ark., last Saturday morning where the citizens broke(?) into the penitentiary and got their man; three near Anniston, Ala., one near New Orleans; and three at Clarksville, Ga., the last three for killing a white man, and five on the same old racket—­the new alarm about raping white women.  The same programme of hanging, then shooting bullets into the lifeless bodies was carried out to the letter.  Nobody in this section of the country believes the old threadbare lie that Negro men rape white women.  If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.

But threats cannot suppress the truth, and while the Negro suffers the soul deformity, resultant from two and a half centuries of slavery, he is no more guilty of this vilest of all vile charges than the white man who would blacken his name.

During all the years of slavery, no such charge was ever made, not even during the dark days of the rebellion, when the white man, following the fortunes of war went to do battle for the maintenance of slavery.  While the master was away fighting to forge the fetters upon the slave, he left his wife and children with no protectors save the Negroes themselves.  And yet during those years of trust and peril, no Negro proved recreant to his trust and no white man returned to a home that had been dispoiled.