The excuse has come to be so safe, it is not surprising that a Philadelphia girl, beautiful and well educated, and of good family, should make a confession published in all the daily papers of that city October, 1894, that she had been stealing for some time, and that to cover one of her thefts, she had said she had been bound and gagged in her father’s house by a colored man, and money stolen therefrom by him.  Had this been done in many localities, it would only have been necessary for her to “identify” the first Negro in that vicinity, to have brought about another lynching bee.

A VILE SLANDER WITH SCANT RETRACTION

The following published in the Cleveland (Ohio) Leader of Oct. 23, 1894, only emphasizes our demand that a fair trial shall be given those accused of crime, and the protection of the law be extended until time for a defense be granted.

The sensational story sent out last night from Hicksville that a Negro had outraged a little four-year-old girl proves to be a base canard.  The correspondents who went into the details should have taken the pains to investigate, and the officials should have known more of the matter before they gave out such grossly exaggerated information.

The Negro, Charles O’Neil, had been working for a couple of women and, it seems, had worked all winter without being remunerated.  There is a little girl, and the girl’s mother and grandmother evidently started the story with idea of frightening the Negro out of the country and thus balancing accounts.  The town was considerably wrought up and for a time things looked serious.  The accused had a preliminary hearing today and not an iota of evidence was produced to indicate that such a crime had been committed, or that he had even attempted such an outrage.  The village marshal was frightened nearly out of his wits and did little to quiet the excitement last night.

  The affair was an outrage on the Negro, at the expense of innocent
  childhood, a brainless fabrication from start to finish.

The original story was sent throughout this country and England, but the Cleveland Leader, so far as known, is the only journal which has published these facts in refutation of the slander so often published against the race.  Not only is it true that many of the alleged cases of rape against the Negro, are like the foregoing, but the same crime committed by white men against Negro women and girls, is never punished by mob or the law.  A leading journal in South Carolina openly said some months ago that “it is not the same thing for a white man to assault a colored woman as for a colored man to assault a white woman, because the colored woman had no finer feelings nor virtue to be outraged!” Yet colored women have always had far more reason to complain of white men in this respect than ever white women have had of Negroes.