Evening Post Co. v. Richardson

• Decision Date: 06 June 1902
• Citation: 113 Ky. 641,68 S.W. 665
• Parties: EVENING POST CO. v. RICHARDSON. [1]
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

68 S.W. 665

113 Ky. 641

EVENING POST CO. v. RICHARDSON. ^[1]

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

June 6, 1902

Appeal from circuit court, Boyle county.

"To be officially reported."

Action by Vernon Richardson against the Evening Post Company for libel. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Reversed.

Helm Bruce & Helm, for appellant.

Robt. Harding, W. J. Price, and E. V. Puryear, for appellee.

BURNAM J.

This is an appeal from a judgment of the Boyle circuit court. The suit was brought by the appellee, Vernon Richardson, against the appellant, the Evening Post Company, to recover damages for having falsely and maliciously published in the Evening Post, a newspaper owned and published by the appellant, a communication from Thomas M. Green which contained the following words:

"It was in the Fourth precinct in Danville that the effulgent luminary, Vernon Richardson, discovered that Taylor's majority could be reduced twenty-four votes by throwing out the ballots on which the preference of the voter was indicated with the wrong end of the stencil, and thus a small contribution could be made from Boyle to the gigantic fraud by which it was intended to steal the entire state for Goebel; and it was his brilliant scheme to which the Goebelite county commissioners, Baughman and Surber, gave effect. Had the same nefarious violation of the law been impartially perpetrated all over the county, Taylor would have carried it by a good majority, and Boyle would have a Republican representative.

"A colored man named Owsley was refused registration because he, while claiming Danville as his home, where for years he had been a voter, had obtained temporary employment in Nicholasville several months before the registration day. His right to be registered and vote was indubitable, and his disfranchisement was a wrong which those who did it thought could be done with impunity. A respectable colored man, named Frank Williams, who had been a voter in Danville for a score of years, applied for registration, and was registered; the Goebelite clerk of the registration recording him as Ike Williams. He offered to vote at No. 4 precinct, but this right was denied him by Vernon Richardson. He proved that he was a legal voter in that precinct; that he applied for registration, and had been registered. He established his identity with the man who was registered as Ike Williams. He proved by the Goebelite clerk, Tom Nins, that the error was that of the clerk, and not that of the voter. But Richardson had been appointed for a purpose, and was a case whom circumstances could not alter. The man's unquestionable right to vote was fraudulently trampled upon by Richardson.

"A young colored man, named John Green, Jr., was refused the right to vote by the same man on the same shabby and shallow and fraudulent pretext that the Goebeite clerk had misspelled his given name. The colored family of which young Green was a member had come to Kentucky with his master more than 115 years ago, when it was still a wilderness, and had helped to clear the canebrakes, to fell the forest, and to man the forts. As slaves, they were industrious, trustworthy, faithful, and obedient. His master, discerning capacity in this young man's grandfather, Henry Green, had him educated as well as the then existing environments admitted, and provided for his emancipation. Henry Green became a minister of the gospel, and went as a missionary to Liberia, and, after creditable service there for some years, returning to Kentucky, labored until his death to lead the people of his race in the way of righteousness. The young man's father and himself were both born in freedom, and have lived in Danville all their lives. I do not know the young man whose legal vote was rejected, but I did know his grandfather, and know his father, and out of that knowledge I now says this: That if the life of the man who did him this wrong, had, prior to that act, been cleanly self-respectful, as free from blame, as were their lives, then his conduct on that day was most unaccountably inconsistent with such life, and the gross wrong he did the young colored man was passed, but a rank injustice he did to his own character.

"These instances are but specimens of other wrong that were done by the Goebelites in Boyle, and in almost every county in the state. The poor tools who perpetrated them would have hesitated long before venturing like trespass upon any white man who, knowing his rights, had courage to defend, and who possessed the ability and skill to maintain, them. Such creatures will flaunt as guady feathers in their caps these successful aggressions upon the right of man, the unhappy conditions environing whose race rendered gentlemen the more scrupulous in respecting those rights. These men strut around like so many little cock sparrows over their magnificent triumph in trampling upon the weak and friendless, apparently all oblivious to the fact that these wrongs were equally a trespass upon every white man who voted as those colored voted, some of whom they will never attempt to bully, and all of whom may in time be aroused by such villainies to discharge obligations that they owe to the lowly, whose cause is their own, and who kneel to the same God, who holds all men in the hollow of his hand.

"It is more than probable that the fit tools of men even worse than themselves will be applauded by those who set them on; by men with minds so warped by partisan prejudice and passion, minds so naturally and essentially mean and dishonest in all their operation that it is impossible for them to tell the truth, or even see it, as impossible for them to refrain from any infamy by which political oponents may be defrauded and robbed, and the real will of the people defeated, as it would be for a mulley cow to climb a tree and have a calf in a crow's nest. But by every Kentuckyian, who loves truth and honor, who values justice and fair play among men, wherever he may live, and under whatsoever banner he may array himself, such acts of fraud or unblushing wrong or mean aggression as were perpetrated by slavish tools of Goebel in Boyle and all the state are now, and will ever be, execrated as they deserve to be. In the unbiased judgment of every such man, the mangiest negro shooter in Danville workhouse was put there for offenses less grave, far less threatening to the peace and good order of society, far less demoralizing to the youth of the state, far less dangerous to the public weal, infinitely less pernicious in every tendency and result than were the crimes against the elective franchise which were perpetrated at the election, and are still meditated by myrmidons of men who, having failed to secure the state, are scheming to seize upon it by violence and now promise a siege of fire and blood unless their demands are met with a surrender at once base and cringing; men who seemingly act upon the belief that all their own friends are the vilest of scoundrels, and all of their opponents are the most abject and truckling cowards. Events have shown that they have been slightly deceived in the one, and rapidly approaching results will assuredly prove, to their confusion, that they are most egregiously mistaken in the other."

Upon motion of the defendant all that part of the article beginning with the words "and it was his brilliant scheme," and ending with the words "with impunity," were stricken out, as were the words beginning "These instances are but," and ending with the words "egregiously mistaken...