Killer Suspect Tells Jury of Mob Lynching

Killer Suspect Tells Jury Of Mob Lynching Clark, Negro, Relates Fate of 2 Others Held for Alabama Woman’s Death Court Is Guarded Troops Surround Building as Story of Escape Told TUSCALOOSA, ALA., Aug. – IP) -Behind closed doors of the grand jury room, Elmore Clark, 28-year-old Negro, today related his experiences in the hands of a mob which wounded him and lynched two other Negroes under indictment on a charge of killing a white woman. As National Guardsman paced about the courthouse and the county jail near-by, Clark went before the 1 1 special grand jury which had been 1 charged by Judge Henry B. Foster earlier in the day to make a deter- mined effort to bring the lynchers 1 ( to justice. 1 After completing his testimony, 1 Clark was placed aboard a train, accompanied by an escort of National Guardsmen, and taken to I Birmingham where he was placed in I the Jefferson County jail. Three deputies from whom the masked band seized Clark, A. T. Harden, 16, and Dan Pippen Jr., 18, as the three were being transferred to Birmingham early Sunday, also were expected to be called before s the grand jury before it completes its work. Harden and Pippen were the Negroes lynched. “Mob violence is the greatest enemy to the orderly process of the law. e In an interview represented as having been obtained from Clark by a a reliable authority, an account of the t lynching was published by the Tuscaloosa News, E The paper said the Negro corroborated statements of the three officers t! that two carloads of men overpower- o ed them at the point of guns and took the prisoners. y Clark said he and the other two b Negroes, handcuffed together, were y driven several miles to a woods where y they were lined up and shot. 1 Clark said he fell beneath the bodies F of Harden and Pippen with bullet ? wounds in his left arm, left shoulder and right hip. He said he lay S still until the men left, then “prayed t to the Lord to tell me what to do.” d Clark said he found a rock and o knocked the handcuff from his left e arm “as the Lord told me to,” and I wandered until he came upon the 8 home of a Negro near Vance, where f he was found by officers last night. f His wounds, not considered serious, I were dressed there before the officers were notified of his whereabouts. As each member of the lynching party was masked, Clark said he would be unable to identify any of them.