"Lynched"
Like journalists Jesse Duke and <a title="Ida B. Wells" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/202">Ida B. Wells</a>, <a title="The Richmond Planet" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/204"><em>Richmond Planet</em></a> editor <a title="John Mitchell, Jr." href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/203">John Mitchell, Jr.</a>, had braved mob retaliation for defending an African American man from a rape charge, and challenged the increase in lynching actively. In 1894, for example, Mitchell organized a lecture for Isaac Jenkins, who was the lone survivor following mob violence against African Americans in Clifton Forge, Virginia, in 1891, and included a postcard from that lynching within the frame of the advertisement.
owproject
2013-06-28 17:58:21
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"Ohio Refused"
<a title="John Mitchell, Jr." href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/203">John Mitchell, Jr.</a> created this drawing to contrast two states’ commitments to “law and order.” An Ohio judge refused to release a black man accused of murder to Kentucky, for fear that the man would be lynched in transit. In the illustration, Kentucky “justice” presents extradition papers, while shielding from view the lynch mob and its work. Boldly, Ohio “justice” stands firm, holding a sword ready to protect the prisoner from the mob. “Ohio refuses to act as an agent for murderers,” the caption declared, “and rejects with scorn the plea for the delivery of the colored man into the hands of the lynchers.”
owproject
2013-06-24 03:54:39
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John Mitchell, Jr.
John Mitchell, Jr., was a newspaper editor, amateur illustrator and political leader in Richmond, Virginia in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He began his career as the Richmond correspondent for the New York <em>Freeman</em>, and took over the editorship of the <a title="The Richmond Planet" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/204"><em>Richmond Planet</em></a> in 1884. In 1891, early journalism historian I. Garland Penn called Mitchell a "[b]old and fearless writer almost to a fault," whose "forte as an editor [was] to battle against outrages perpetrated upon his people in the South." Mitchell was elected to the Richmond City Council in 1888, but remained the <em>Planet's </em>editor through the 1890s. Under Mitchell's editorship, the <em>Planet </em>was an independent critic of moderation. He died in 1929, a penniless man.
owproject
2013-09-10 16:25:00
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Prays For His Persecutors
In early 1895, <a title="The Richmond Planet" href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/204"><em>Richmond Planet</em></a> editor <a title="John Mitchell, Jr." href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/203">John Mitchell, Jr.</a>, published a series of his own drawings, beginning with this illustration “Prays for His Persecutors.” The image depicts an African American man kneeling in prayer against a backdrop of lynched bodies, a reference to a recent murder of six men in Tennessee. The man appears forgiving, even saintly, despite the violent backdrop. The least confrontational cartoon from this series, it invokes non-threatening protest against violence. Like a popular “Day of Prayer and Fasting” three years earlier, the drawing appealed to the conscience of observers and urged the federal government to offer support and protection.
owproject
2013-06-25 17:17:06
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The Richmond Planet
The <em>Richmond Planet </em>was founded in 1883 by thirteen former slaves, in the city of Richmond, Virginia. This four page (sometimes eight page) weekly was an independent newspaper that focused on African American civil rights in the post-Reconstruction era. Agitation for voting rights, protests against lynching and denunciations of the Ku Klux Klan filled the paper's pages. <a title="John Mitchell, Jr." href="http://songswithoutwords.org/items/show/203">John Mitchell, Jr.</a>, formerly the Richmond correspondent to the New York <em>Freeman</em>,took over as the <em>Planet's </em>editor in 1884. Politically independent, the paper continued publication through 1938, when it merged with the <em>Afro-American</em>.
owproject
2013-09-10 16:12:34
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