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Today brings stories of women and mobs, both acting without conscience. Measure your knickers on…

June 17, 1921

• The New York branch of the Camp Fire Girls of America present President Harding with a “handsome beaded pair” of moccasins, size 10-D.

• Four Wellesley students have been expelled from the college after attending “a jazz party” at the Wellesley inn.

• In a seven hour shootout in Frankfort, Kentucky, John Follis shoots seven men, including three policemen, before escaping after his house is set on fire.

• The Weather: Partly cloudy today; Saturday, unsettled; moderate to fresh west and north winds.

I’m dismayed but hardly to surprised to find yet another report of a police chief unduly obsessed with women’s knees. I am truly shocked, however, to learn that Chicago’s beaches weren’t planning to open until late June! Memorial day weekend folks, at the latest! Please!

CHICAGO, June 16.—Predictions of extremely warm weather for the rest of the week caused Superintendent William Burkhardt to advance the opening date at Chicago bathing beaches, all under city control, to today.

A year ago he announced to women bathers in regard to their beach costumes, “Let your conscience be your guide.”

Today he said, “Some of them didn’t seem to have any conscience,” and ordered policemen to enforce the following regulations:

Knickers to within four inches above the knee and skirts to within two inches of the bottom of the knickers, with one-quarter sleeves.

“We’ll keep an eye on the men, too,” he said.

A grim dispatch from Southwest Georgia, which is in the midst of a week of attacks on Black communities by white mobs. We’ll have an update on this story in a few issues—be warned that it does not end happily. In the meantime, I recommend this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution about supposed justifications for racist terror.

AUTREYVILLE, Ga., June 16.—A negro church was burned here today by persons whom the authorities believe to have been members of the mob which last night applied the torch to the homes of several negroes, as well as to a lodge and church buildings. Several negroes were whipped by the mob, and one was shot when he opened fire with a shotgun.

The disturbances have resulted from the brutal murder early this week of Lorena Wilkes, a 12-year-old white girl. John Henry Williams, a negro, was arrested, charged with the murder, and in custody of officers narrowly escaped a crowd of several hundred men who pursued the officers and their prisoner in automobiles. Williams is now at Muscogee and will be brought to Moultrie tomorrow for examination before a Grand Jury.

Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, we have yet another 500 person attempting to lynch a stranger at the drop of a hat.

Five hundred men and women attacked Anatole Zelenchy, 33 years old, a Russian, of 441 Stone Avenue, Brooklyn, yesterday afternoon, when three policemen had him under arrest at Sixteenth Street and First Avenue on a charge of attempting to kidnap Virgen, the 2-year-old son of Mrs. Agona Bogradoff, a widow, of 401 East Sixteenth Street.

The tenement in which Mrs. Bogradoff lives with her three children is three blocks from the home of the parents of Giuseppe Verotta, the 5-year-old boy who was murdered by kidnappers several weeks ago. When residents of the neighborhood saw Zelenchy hustling the screaming child into a taxicab a few doors from his home they set on Zelenchy, and several in the crowd set up the cry of “Lynch him!”

Policemen Faust, Strunk and Valinsky of the east Twenty-second Street Station were attracted by the shouts, and caught Zelenchy as he was placing little Virgen and several bags of clothing in the taxicab. They were endeavoring to learn the cause of all the commotion when an excited woman urged the throng to take Zelenchy from the policemen.

Once muscularly built man struck Zelenchy in the face and knocked him down. When the policemen attempted to protect him from further harm they were set on by the angry crowd. Seeing that they were liable to lose their prisoner, Policeman Faust drew his pistol and announced he would kill the first man or woman who laid hands on Zelenchy. The other policemen, with drawn pistols, charged the crowd, and in a few minutes the street was cleared and the policemen hurried their prisoner and the child into the taxicab and took them to the police station.

Soon after their arrival there Mrs. Bogradoff appeared. She asserted that the attempt to kidnap the child was in retaliation for her refusal earlier in the day to draw her savings of $300 from a bank and elope with Zelenchy. She said she had known Zelenchy in Russia before the death of her husband, two years ago, and that he followed her and her three children to this country.

On Wednesday night, she said, Zelenchy called at her home and announced that he intended to remain there all night or until she made up her mind to comply with his request. About 11 o’clock yesterday morning, she said, she left her home to get some groceries, and in her absence Zelenchy gathered up the little boy’s clothing, placed it in two handbags, and then left the house with the child.

Later, when Zelenchy was held without bail for the action of the Grand Jury by Magistrate Sweetser, in the Yorkville Court, the policemen said that it was the struggles of the child that had drawn attention to the attempt to abduct him. They explained that the residents of tenements in the vicinity were in a highly excitable state of mind, owing to the recent murder of the Verotta boy by kidnappers. Zelenchy denied that he was attempting to kidnap the child.

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