468th & 469th; 248th

Superior Judge Berry T. Moseley was in bed with influenza one day last month when an excited deputy sheriff rushed into his Danielsville, Ga. home, told him he had better hustle over to the jail. The 74-year-old jurist arose, put on some clothes, elbowed his way through a crowd that had just battered a two-foot hole in the jail wall. Sensing what was up. Judge Moseley mounted the steps, thundered: "This is an open violation of the law. ... I declare you all deputized as officers." The crowd quickly dispersed.

Last week Negro Lint Shaw, whom Judge Moseley had thus saved from lynching, returned from safekeeping in Atlanta to Danielsville to stand trial for attempted assault on a white woman. A murderous-looking mob forced his transfer to nearby Royston. There at midnight the same mob ripped him out of the jail. At daybreak his bullet-ridden body was found swaying from a pine tree in a creek bed, Georgia's 468th lynching.* Few days later in Pavo 200 Georgians raised the total to 469 by lynching Negro John Ruskin, confessed murderer of a white man.

P:In Lepanto, Ark. a 19-year-old Negro named Willie Kees was warned to leave town before a mob judged him guilty of a recent assault on a white woman, treated him accordingly. Kees left, last week foolishly returned, was arrested. Before he reached jail ten men snatched him away from the sheriff, bound his hands behind his back, drilled him with bullets that brought Arkansas' lynching total up to 248.

*Lynching records date back only to 1889.

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