RACES: Precision at Lewisburg

With three weeks to spare, West Virginia slipped under the wire last week in time to add its name to the list of lynching States for 1931. Last month two Negroes—Tom Jackson, 26, and George Banks, 27—were arrested at Leslie, taken to Lewisburg. They were suspected of shooting two peace officers called to quiet a blackamoor dance.

The Lewisburg lynchings were executed with the drilled precision of a first-class football backfield. With dimmed headlights and without license plates, a string of automobiles quietly circled the Greenbrier County jail, came to a halt. A...