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This 1905 article from the Aspen Times suggests that Aspen wasn’t always as nice to wealthy people busted for drugs as it’s been in more recent times.
Ouch.
We know what you’re thinking: This has nothing to do with the racist past of cannabis or the depiction of minorities in the early newspapers as perpetual criminals here to make the lives of white people difficult. Isn’t that the point of this column?
You’re right. The Times writer seems to have written a drug story without blaming minorities (for once).
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But the unrelated article printed directly below makes up for the lack of racial bias. It is a sickeningly joyous account of a Texas lynch mob hanging a sixteen-year-old black kid in what the paper dubbed a “necktie party” that we just couldn’t go without running:
