HISTORICAL NOTES: A Solemn Occasion

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One day in 1936, George Parke, a retired printer in Farmhaven, Miss., sat down to write a piece of all-but-forgotten history. In 1,628 words, he told a closely detailed story of the New Orleans Mafia lynching of 1891. A mob, led by a band of riflemen, broke into jail and murdered eleven Italians, some of whom had been tried and acquitted in the death of New Orleans' police chief. The lynching had become an international incident: U.S. and Italian relations were broken off. When Parke finished his story, he sent it off to TIME's supplement, LETTERS, where it was published Nov. 9, 1936. While he did not name any of the lynchers, Parke said of the two who were still alive: "They are considered heroes by their friends of the Crescent City."

George Parke obviously had not told the whole story. After his funeral last week in Tampa, Fla., his omission was revealed. In another account, left to be published after his death, gentle old (87) George Parke admitted that he was one of the riflemen, probably the youngest, and the last to die. In his last account, he still defended the mob of which he was part. Wrote he: "It was a solemn occasion to all of them, not a lynching, but a public execution."