Editorial Mention [excerpt]

     It is a fine compliment, not only to James F. Parker, “a Hercules in bronze,” but to the Negro race, that he was the first one to seize the assassin who shot President McKinley and disarm him. Secret service agent S. R. Ireland is credited with saying, in an Associated Press dispatch: “That colored man was quicker than we. He nearly killed the man.” Parker, who is 6 feet 4 inches high, weighing 250 pounds, was born in Atlanta, 44 years ago, in slavery. He went to the Exposition to take a place as waiter in a restaurant. In speaking of the matter afterward, he said: “It’s the very best day’s work I ever did. If I had not grabbed that crazy loon he would have shot again. I got a strangle-hold on his neck that I learned down South. Just think, old Father Abe freed me, and now I saved his successor from death provided that bullet that he got into the President don’t kill him.” Whether the President recovers or not, that bronzed hero will not fail of fitting reward.