Word: thurmond
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Dates: during 1933-1933
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Many & many a citizen throughout the land held Governor James ("Sunny Jim") Rolph Jr. of California directly responsible for Negro Warner's death. Week before, Governor Rolph had congratulated the "patriotic citizens" of San Jose for lynching John Holmes and Thomas H. Thurmond who had confessed to the murderous kidnapping of Brooke Hart. California, boasted its Governor, had given the rest of the Union a "lesson" in dealing with criminals (TIME. Dec. 4). Missouri, it seemed, had been quick to learn...
Warming to a side-fight, "Sunny Jim" Rolph pointedly cracked back at the onetime President of the U. S.: "If troops had been called out [to defend Lynchees Holmes & Thurmond], hundreds of innocent citizens might have been mowed down. There was no shooting such as that which occurred near the White House during the Bonus March trouble...
When lynched at San Jose, Kidnapper Holmes was naked. Kidnapper Thurmond had lost his trousers. Although the Press was unanimously outraged over the incident, few papers chose to print the photographs of the victims as a Horrible Example. Among those that did were the Oakland Post-Enquirer, Santa Cruz News and Sentinel, Los Angeles Herald & Express, Medford (Ore.) Mail-Tribune, Prescott (Ariz.) Journal-Miner, Centralia (Wash.) Chronicle, Oklahoma City News, Knoxville (Tenn.) Journal, Gastonia (N. C.) Gazette, Anderson (S. C.) Independent, Johnson City (Tenn.) Staff News, Kingston (N. C.) Free Press, New York City Daily News, Mirror, American and Journal...
...Hart's body was found in five feet of water by duck hunters one morning last week. Employes in his father's San Jose department store identified the body, painfully recalled fitting the clothes which the corpse still wore. In San Jose, where gaunt-faced Thomas H. Thurmond and hulking John Holmes had been jailed after confessing to the crime, red-hot resentment took shape as a mob. Asked if he would call out the militia, florid Governor James Rolph Jr. snorted: "What! Call out the troops to protect those two guys?" By nightfall some 6,000 infuriated...
Lynching is murder in its most brutal form. You, who are under oath to uphold the law, have given this worst of crimes your complete sanction. You cannot expect such men as Holmes and Thurmond to obey the law if the governor of the state of California does...