Walter White and the Crisis...
Walter White served as a link between the persecutors and the victims. With his advantage of light skin, he was able to pass as a white man when needed, and refer information back to his association of the NAACP. He would investigate torturous death accounts and report them later on in the Crisis. These reports in the Crisis would provide the names the men so willingly gave up in casual conversation with White. Along with roles they each took in it. Important information like this was always provided by Walter White. It would be used to exhibit the wrongdoings of those who would lynch the Negroes. This is an actual excerpt from The Crisis, which Walter White wrote about a Negro farmers torture-death in Estill Springs, Tennessee:
"Jim McIlherron was prosperous in a small way. He was a negro who resented the slights and insults of white men. He went armed and the sheriff feared him. On February 8, 1918, he got into a quarrel with three young white men who insulted him. Threats were made and McIlherron fired six shots killing two of the men. He fled to the home of a colored clergymen who aided him to escape and was afterwards shot and killed by a mob. McIlherron was captured and full arrangements made for his lynching. Men, women and children started into the town of Estill Springs from a radius of fifty miles. A spot was chosen for the burning. McIlherron was chained to a hickory tree while the mob howled at him. A fire was built a few feet away and the torture began. Bars of iron were heated and the mob amused itself by putting them close to the victim, at first without touching him. One bar he grasped and as it was jerked from his grasp all the inside came along with it. Then the real torture began, lasting for twenty minutes. During that time, while his flesh was slowly roasting, the Negro never lost his nerve. He cursed those who tortured him and almost to the last breath derided the attempts of the mob to break his spirit." (Crisis)
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