Publication information

Source:
Buffalo Enquirer
Source type: newspaper
Document type: editorial
Document title: “Anti-Lynching Bill”
Author(s): anonymous
City of publication: Buffalo, New York
Date of publication: 1 February 1922
Volume number: 78
Issue number: 122
Pagination: 4

 
Citation
“Anti-Lynching Bill.” Buffalo Enquirer 1 Feb. 1922 v78n122: p. 4.
 
Transcription
excerpt
 
Keywords
McKinley assassination (public response: Buffalo, NY); lawlessness (mob rule: Buffalo, NY); Leon Czolgosz (incarceration: Buffalo, NY: public response); Buffalo, NY (police department); John Martin.
 
Named persons
Leon Czolgosz; John Martin (a); William McKinley.
 
Document


Anti-Lynching Bill
[excerpt]

     Buffalo had an attempted lynching once. On the night of the day William McKinley was shot, a mob estimated at between 20,000 and 50,000, its leaders carrying a section of telephone pole to be used as a battering ram, swung down Franklin street [sic] fully determined to smash the old police headquarters and summarily execute Leon Czolgosz, the assassin. Inspector John Martin led a few dozen police reserves out of headquarters and lined them up, a pitifully thin line, across the street from curb to curb.
     “At the word Fire, shoot and shoot to kill,” came the command of the inspector. Men in the forefront of that mob heard those words and knew they meant business. The thin line of policemen met the massed ranks of the mob, nightsticks rained blows on members of the mob, and the mob scattered and that ended the lynching party.