Alexander Manly's editorial response in The Daily Record to a pro-lynching speech delivered by a Georgia woman seemed heaven-sent to Democratic leaders. Though the African-American editor articulated painful truths, his adversaries used it to support their anti-black scare tactics.

"The papers are filled often with reports of rapes of white women, and the subsequent lynching of the alleged rapist. The editors pour forth volumes of aspersions against all Negroes because of the few who may be guilty. If the papers and speakers of the other race would condemn the commission of crime because it is crime and not try to make it appear that the Negroes were the only criminals, they would find their strongest allies in the intelligent Negroes themselves ...

"Our experience among poor white people in the country teaches us that the women of that race are not any more particular in the matter of clandestine meetings with colored men than are the white men with colored women. Meetings of this kind go on for some time until the woman's infatuation or the man's boldness bring attention to them and the man is lynched for rape. ... Tell your men that it is no worse for a black man to be intimate with a white woman, than for a white man to be intimate with a colored woman. You set yourselves down as a lot of carping hypocrites in that you cry aloud for the virtue of your women while you seek to destroy the morality of ours. Don't think ever that your women will remain pure while you are debauching ours. You sow the seed -- the harvest will come in due time."