§ 295 Obstructing the Highway
There is a corner in a Southern state, down near the Mississippi River, where formerly lynchings occurred more frequently than they do these times. In the days before the rural-free-delivery system was adopted, Uncle Gip Thomas held the contract for delivering the mail in this neighborhood. So regular was he that the residents almost could set their clocks by him.
But one day he was nearly two hours late in reaching the end of the line, where there was a tiny cross-roads hamlet. Just as the citizens were forming a posse to set out in search of him, in fear that some mishap had befallen him, Uncle Gip ambled into view.
“What delayed you, Uncle Gip?” asked the postmaster. “Did you happen to an accident or did an accident happen to you?”
“Nary one, nor both,” stated Uncle Gip. “But about ten o’clock this mornin’, jest before I crossed the creek, I come to where some of the boys had done left a nigger hangin’ right thar in the public road. Well, suh, my mare she got skeered and shied back, and I jest natchelly couldn’t make her go past him noways; so finally I had to tear down a panel of rail fence and lead her through the gap and lay the fence back up again and go through the woods down into the hollow and ford the creek and then tear another gap in the fence before I could get back again on the turnpike—and that was what kept me so late.” Uncle Gip paused a moment and then went on again in an aggrieved tone:
“Honest, boys, it does look to me like there oughter be a law against leavin’ a nigger hangin’ in the public road.”