As Depressing as the Mass Murder Research Can Be

Some positive news wanders in from my research assistants.  The 1920s are a period of ferocious racism, lynchings, with government officials often either actively or passively involved in these barbarous crimes.  (Barbarous because lynchings were seldom as merciful or humane as a hanging: castration, mutilation, burning at the stake.)  Sometimes the government does its job.  2/10/1920 Omaha Bee:

TROOPS FIRE ON MOB AND 5 ARE KILLED

14 Others Wounded in Hot Fight Between Soldiers and Men Bent on Lynching Negro In Lexington, Ky.

CITY AND COUNTY PUT UNDER MARTIAL LAW

Rioting Starts in Morning Just After Colored Murderer Of 10-Year-0ld White Girl Admits His Crime.

Lexington, Ky., Feb. 9. J. M. Rogers, 61, a farmer of near Versailes, Woodford county, shot by the guardsmen during the fighting this morning, died tonight from his injuries, bringing the death list to five.

Lexington, Ky., Feb. 9. Martial law prevails tonight. Six hundred federal and state troops are patroling the streets to prevent further rioting, which during the day exacted a toll of five dead and 14 wounded.

Lexington and all of Fayette county was placed under martial law by Brig. Gen. F. C. Marshall upon his arrival from Camp Taylor with 300 troops of the First division. Rioting began this morning when a mcb bent on lynching William Lockett, a negro, who confessed to the murder, last week, of a 10-year-old girl, Geneva Hardman, was fired upon with rifles and machine guns by state militiamen as the mob was storming the Fayette counjy courthouse to get the negro during his trial.

It isn't clear if the troops from Camp Taylor were regular army or militia.  I think regulars because Camp Taylor was still a US Army camp in 1920.