The Marrow of Tradition

The next morning, Mrs. Ochiltree’s cook, Dinah, finds her employer murdered. Before the police arrive, Olivia arrives and goes through her belongings searching for the papers that would give Janet the Carteret home. As news gets out, “[s]uspicion [is] at once directed toward the negroes, as it always is when an unexplained crime is committed in a Southern community” (116). The Black population goes into hiding, knowing that a lynching is likely to take place.

After Mrs. Ochiltree’s murder, McBane, Belmont, and Carteret meet to strategize. Jerry has identified Sandy as the murderer, and they know a lynching is already near-inevitable: The crime is “a fatal assault upon a woman of [their] race” (119). McBane believes Sandy should be burned alive. Belmont councils him not to intervene directly and urges Carteret to put out a special edition of the paper detailing the crime and hinting that “drastic efforts to protect the white women” are necessary (121).

Josh tells Dr. Miller that he was with Sandy the night before—there was no way Sandy could have committed the crime. Together with Mr. Watson, the town’s Black lawyer, they discuss the injustice of lynching. Miller is determined to act, but Dr. Watson reveals that the mayor is out of his office and that Judge Everton has already expressed that although lynching is “as a rule unjustifiable […] there [are] exceptions to all rules” (125).