Grenville. N. C.. Oct. 12 (Preston News Service) —Acting upon instructions from Governor A. W. McLean, Solicitor Jesse Davis was in Greenville Tuesday afternoon en route to Farmville to make a rigid investigation of the recent flogging administered to Dr. S. J. B. Collins, a physician at that place, by a hooded gang.
Dr. Collins, who is a British subject, was said to have been instructed by his assailants to leave the town but instead he appealed to the British consulate in this country and on Wednesday Solicitor Davis received a message from the vice consulate in Wilmington urging a thorough investigation.
According to rumors dropped here and there by whites, known to be members of the Ku Klux Klan, it is claimed that Dr. Collins goes about among his Negro friends and in fact wherever possible and makes many expressions of an insulting nature with reference to the recent Ku Klux Klan demonstrations staged at Farmville. The whites claim that on several occasions Dr. Collins has made public speeches in Negro schools and else where made efforts to fill the minds of Negroes here with ideas against the Klan and of social equality between the white and Negro races. It is said that the whites here declare that they will not stand for such impudence on the part of any Negro, who is not even a citizen of this country. trying to put such foolish notions In the heads of the good Negroes of this vicinity. Such foolishness will bring on disgraceful clashes between the races. It is for the good of the community that such agitators as Dr. Collins be gotten rid of.
The Savannah Tribune, Savannah, GA, October 15, 1925