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skepticism. He claimed that he did not even know that Armwood had been
removed from Baltimore until after the fact, despite announcements of the
prisoners pending return in the daily papers. Once Armwood was in Princess Anne,
Ritchie asserted that he refused to move the prisoner only because Judge Duer and
Robins mislead him. Shifting the blame to Duer and Robins did not, however,
prevent Ritchie from assigning them key roles in the investigation of the lynching
that followed.
Perhaps the most remarkable element in the whole de facto collusion
between the lynchers, local officials, and state officials was the common
justification for the lynching that emerged: the Communists were responsible. The
Communists, the argument went, had for nearly two years frustrated justice through
their courtroom shenanigans in the case of alleged Black murderer Euel Lee, and
the white community had to take justice into its own hands to prevent the same
from happening with George Armwood. This justification was very popular.
Denunciations of the Euel Lee case were heard during the lynching, and the next
day the lynchers who talked to the Evening Sun reporter mentioned it as a
motivation: "'If it hadn't been for the Lee affair/ said one man, This would never
have happened." Similar sentiments were expressed by local officials.
Governor Ritchie, while rhetorically condemning the mob violence, also
publicly stated that sluggishness in the justice system was a major cause of the
lynching, thereby echoing the favorite rationalization of the lynchers. The governor
quickly to set up a judicial committee to study ways of speeding up trials. One of
the first recommendations of this committee was to prohibit "outside" organizations
such as the International Labor Defense (ILD) from involving themselves in cases
like Euel Lee's. It is not surprising that the head of this committee, State's
Attorney Herbert O'Conor, had filed a complaint against Bernard Ades of the ILD
months previously, setting off a campaign to drive Ades out of the legal profession.
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