Madera Tribune, Volume LXIX, Number 134, 14 April 1937 — MISSISSIPPI LYNCH MOBS UNDER PROBE Blow Torches Are Turned on Two Negroes Bring Crime Confessions TORTURES DESCRIBED No Member of Mob Was Recognized Statement of Three Officers [ARTICLE]

MISSISSIPPI LYNCH MOBS UNDER PROBE Blow Torches Are Turned on Two Negroes Bring Crime Confessions TORTURES DESCRIBED No Member of Mob Was Recognized Statement of Three Officers

DUCK HILL, Miss., April 14. A grand Jury investigation into the lynching of two negroes was promised today. Sheriff E. E. Wright and two deputies announced that they had not recognized ' any member of the mob that tortured the prison--1 ers with blow torches before killing them. The full details of the lynching | spread over the country-side to- | day. though it was witnessed only i by members of the mob. While I it was taking place, the news was I conveyed to Governor Hugh White in the capital at Jackson, about i 30 miles from the scene. He t called Adjutant General John !» O’Keefe into conference, but did , not call out troops. Frightful Torture The details revealed today indicated that the negroes had died I slowly, under frightful torture. They were Roosevelt Townes, 25,. I and “Bootjack” McDaniel, 26, acI cused of murdering George S. 5 Windham, operator of a cross roads 1 store near here, on December 30. > Since their arrest, they had been * held in the mob proof jail at Jack- ■ son. Yesterday they were taken 1 to Windona, Mississippi, the county seat, for arraignment. They pleaded not guilty and Sheriff Wright and his deputies were about to take them back to Jackson when the mob of approximately 300 men surrounded them. Pleaded With Mob Wright said he pleaded with the mob in vain. It had a school bus and into the bus went the manacled prisoners. Thirty to 40 automobiles loaded with men followed the bus to a woods near the scene of the murder. There the negroes were chained to trees. A mobster produced a blow torch and struck a match and in a minute it was roaring above the pleadings of the doomed men. The negroes were asserting their innocence. The torch was applied first to McDaniel. His screamed for mercy and it was withdrawn. Asked to confess the murder, he refused, and the torch was applied again. He then agreed to confess. He said that Townes had killed the white storekeeper and that he had assisted. He sobbed out his story amid screams and groans and as he continued to scream, his torturers stepped bade, a volley of shots rang out, and McDaniel dangled in his chains, dead. Victim Burned While this was happening, Townes was struggling against his chains. He was invited to confess, then the torch was applied to him. It was a slow process, punctuaged by screams and subbing and by the time he had confessed in the detail the mob wanted, he was but partly conscious, held up by the chains. Brush was piled around him. Someone came forward with a can of gasoline. Townes was drenched with it, as was the brush. The instant the watch was applied a

great sheet of flame shot up and Townes died in it. On the way to the scene of the lynching, the mob picked up another negro, “Shorty” Dorroh. Between the executions, the mob beat and kicked him until he confessed that he had helped the others plan the murder, but had hot taken part in it. After watching the others die, he was beaten some more, then told to “get out of the state.”