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| PHONE, WALNUT 8181 OFFICIAL ORGAN "LABOR DEFENDER" INTERNATIONAL LABOR DEFENSE Philadelphia District WASHINGTON SQUARE BLDG. - Room 315 Seventh & Chestnut Streets PHILADELPHIA, PENNA. 1630 E.Baltimore st. Baltimore, Maryland. December 5, 1931. Governor Albert C. Ritchie, Hotel Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland. Sir: The International Labor Defense protests against any whitewashing of the Eastern Shore officials in the lynching of Mathew Will&ims. The outrageous capitulation of the Circuit Court for Worcester County to the demands of the rich white farmers who were determined to terrorize their Negro employees by a lynching— either legal or otherwise — shows that the whole Eastern Shore ruling class was a party to this lynching. Nor can v/e forget that in spite of our repeated demands on you that you stop the reign of terror on the Eastern Shore you did nothing. The whitewashing process has already started. The newspapers, in order to minimize the affair, feature the Hnev/sH that Mathews was a murderer. There is no evidence of this. Mathew Williams and Collins were alone in a room and both were shot. There is no justification for accusing Williams. The real purpose of this lynching was to terrorize the Negro workers as is very well shown by the act of the mob in taking the body to the Negro section of Salisbury and there burning it. The workers of Maryland will not accept investigators such as Godfrey Child who now openly threatens more outrages or State's attorney Collins who sees no crime in attempted lynchings, or State's attorney McAllister and Chief Judge John R. Pattison who on the morning of the lynching day could find no evidence of mob spirit on the Eastern Shore. We demand that your investigating committee include Negro as well as white workers, members of the International Labor Defense and members of the Orphan Jones-George Davis Defense Conference. V/e demand the arrest and prosecution, not only of the lynchers of Mathew Williams, but also of the mob that searched the Chestertown and Easton jails for George Davis and of the Snow Hill mobs including Mayor Byrd. We demand that George Davis be tried in Baltimore and that our representative (illegally barred up until now ) be allowed to see him. Yours very truly, International Labor Defense Secretary |