Colored Boy Ought Not to Make Sling Shots

A “small sized, one horse character-builder” presiding elder of the Danville district of the Methodist Episcopal Church South fired his gun at boys who had climbed a tree on his property. He kept firing at them even after they ran away. A bullet entered the brain of black 12 year old Mitchell Bailey, and blinded him for life.  The shooter knows “a little twelve-year old colored boy ought not to make sling shots”. And besides, says the writer, “why have a gun if you never use it?”

-Download Golden Age, November 21, 1934