Beard, The Broad Ax, July 15, 1905

The white Christians of Shelbyville, Ky., mobbed and lynched a Negro the first of the week who was simply charged with assaulting Mrs. Chester Crawford, a white lady. To prove that the white Christian gentlemen were simply savaged and not in favor of law and order, they rushed into the day coach, in which the Negro was seated while being transferred to prison, and they riddled his body with bullets as he sat in his seat. In other sections of the South 10 or 12 Afro-Americans have been unlawfully murdered in the past two weeks and yet there are many fools who claim that mob and lynch law is a thing of the past in this so-called highly civilized country.