Three at Tuscaloosa

In Tuscaloosa, Ala., Sheriff R. L. Shamblin hustled three Negroes into an automobile one midnight last week, sped down a lonely back road toward Birmingham. His prisoners were Dan Pippen, 18, A. T. Harden, 16, and Elmore Clark, 28, indicted for the murder of a white girl. Sheriff Shamblin had heard that a mob was planning to break into the Tuscaloosa jail and lynch them next day. As he drove along, two carloads of armed men overtook him, demanded his prisoners. Sheriff Shamblin turned them over to the lynchers who disappeared into the night. Next day the bodies of two of the Negroes were found underneath a tree near Woodstock, handcuffed together, riddled with bullets. Day later, the third Negro was found in hiding, wounded. Lynching score for the year: Alabama, 2; other States, 17.

Sheriff Shamblin blamed last week's lynchings on the interference of the International Labor Defense. Two of its New York lawyers had been sent to help defend the Negroes. They were ruled out of court fortnight ago on the grounds that the prisoners had not retained them. So high ran mob feeling against the lawyers that it took a troop of guardsmen to get them out of Alabama alive. The International Labor Defense last week made public a telegram sent to Governor Miller, holding Judge Henry B. Foster and Sheriff Shamblin directly responsible for the lynching, said they could prove that the mob had been incited by officials.

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