Two for Florida

Sometime after one midnight last week Policeman Vernon Kelly paced his accustomed rounds on the quiet streets of Tallahassee, Fla. (pop. 12,000). At George Demetree's beer parlor he found the door suspiciously unlocked. Drawing his revolver and pushing inside, he flicked his flashlight, spotted a skinny, dark-brown Negro behind the counter, a taller yellow Negro nearby.

No coward, Policeman Kelly shoved his gun into its holster and grabbed the two blackamoors by their belts. Something struck him--a knife, he thought--jab, jab, jab, seven times in the left side. Something cut gash after gash in his face. He staggered outside, managed to make it around the corner to the police station.

Few hours later Policeman Kelly's fellow officers picked up skinny, dark-brown Richard Hawkins on the southwestern edge of town. Yes, said Negro Hawkins, he was one of those in George Demetree's but the other boy, Ernest Ponder, had done the stabbing.

Some 48 hours after Policeman Kelly's stabbing, Sergeant Harry Fairbanks nodded in the Tallahassee police station. A gun in his ribs roused him. He saw "two short men and two stout men" wearing flour sacks over their heads a la Ku Klux Klan. Ordered to the county jail, Sergeant Fairbanks knew what was expected of him. He had the keys which would lead through six locked but unguarded cell doors to Richard Hawkins and Ernest Ponder. . . .

Their bodies were found next morning-- near the main highway, the one to Jack-sonville--five miles out. "THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO ALL NEGROES WHO HARM WHITE PEOPLE," was one epitaph inscribed on a piece of cardboard beside the bullet-ridden Richard Hawkins and Ernest Ponder.

Roused by a crime in the shadow of the State Capitol, Governor Fred Cone screamed: "This was not a lynching;it was murder."

-It was Nos. 5 and 6 this year.

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