We Believe All Members of a Mob, Which Commits Murder, Should Receive the Full Penalty of the Law for First Degree Murder. That the County Wherein the Crime is Committed Should Justly Pay the Heirs of the Deceased.
Again I wish to say, we believe that it should be a law to prohibit all mob violence, that is true. All mob violence from every angle - not only in one state or one part of the country alone, but in all parts of the country - we should not tolerate mob violence in New York City and in any other place! Justice in the name of the law should have its course. Even with a criminal, it should take its course and not that the lawless should take the law in their own hands, even if a man commits a crime. The law should take its course. That is what I AM speaking of!
Therefore we do not endorse nor encourage mob violence or anything being done by violence; for, as I have often said, We shall have a Righteous Government! We shall have it by the ballot or by MY SPIRIT, but it shall not be by the bullet, neither by violence! You see, I usually accomplish whatsoever I will by MY Spirit and not by violence!
What we want is something to curb the spirit of violence in the way of lynching and rioting, etc. This can only be accomplished by getting out a bill that would bring pressure to bear on all of the inhabitants of any and all such states where lynchings and such crimes occur - in other words, on all of the inhabitants of all such states and counties where lynchings and rioting, etc. are committed. . . As it was, why the person lynched and his relatives would get nothing, and those who committed the crime, would go unpunished, according to this bill. The officers who would agree to it in a way, they would go unpunished, because it would not be possible to apprehend them, or convict them under such laws, but this main point, if we can get that bill through whereby the county will be responsible, according to the civil act of the bill, regardless to whether the person is apprehended or not.
This is the main issue, and the next thing in this proposed bill, we must stress, is to see that all who participate in a murder, - in murdering a man, everyone is equally guilty-if it is one person, twenty persons or a thousand, they are all guilty of first degree murder, because it is worse to organize and federate to bring about, or commit murder than it would be if one would do it himself. . There is more wickedness in it. It is indeed Wonderful. . . You would not know definitely who was the one who fired the final shot, even though all may not be guilty of actually, personally committing the crime, but they all would be guilty of organizing together - federating.
It stands to reason that two such elite individuals with the stature of FATHER and MOTHER DIVINE are destined to greatness and to positions of Power in the eyes of the world. FATHER DIVINE'S sacrifice at the end of the 19th century, HIS masterful Work in the dregs of New York City's Harlem during the great depression HIS desegregation of Philadelphia and the establishment of the Mount of the House of the Lord in Gladwyne , Pennsylvania are ample justification.
No one without Power could be manhandled by thirty two lynch mobs in Jim Crow days and live to carry on His Work as FATHER DIVINE has done.
FATHER DIVINE and MOTHER DIVINE stand together as Head of the Peace Mission Movement. When FATHER DIVINE wilfully laid His Body down in 1965, MOTHER DIVINE lost no momentum, but forged straight ahead with His Mission and Hers. SHE has been the target of barbs and threats to Her Life, physically, mentally and spiritually, just as FATHER was. But withal, SHE has stood to Her mettle by intensely upholding the Standards that FATHER DIVINE established.