RALEIGH, N. C., May 30 (₹)— Godwin (Buddy) Bush, of Rich Square, NC, the almost illiterate 22-year-old Negro, talked freely early today of his break- away from an armed and masked mob at Jackson a week ago, and his escape from the threat of a lynching.

Locking and unlocking his fin- gers nervously, the strongly-built six-foot lumberman's helper an- swered without hesitation ques- tions put to him by a group of reporters in an interview last mid- night in his cell in the State's Central Prison here.

It was the first interview the authorities had permitted to him. Bush was em- phatic on one point-he did not want to go back to Rich Square, the Northampton County village where he was arrested on a charge of attempted rape of a white wo- man. And he made a flat denial of guilt.

He then told as follows, how he was taken from the county jail at Jackson at 2 A. M. last Friday at pistol point. "Three white men, all wearing masks of red-and-white handker- chiefs, came and woke me up. They told me to put on my clothes and come along."

Outside the jail he saw two other men. At least two of the five, he declared, had pistols. He was or- dered to get into a four-door sedan. "They put me in the back seat, but I got right out on the other side of the car. i fell getting out. I got up and ran, but I fell again.".

He heard one pistol shot. "I don't know how close it [the bullet] came and I never looked back. I didn't know where I was running or what I ran into. [Offi- cers said he ran into a chicken wire.] I climbed two or three fences and just kept on running until I got lost about [day] light in some woods.”

The interview was approved late last night by Ernest Tyler, Solici- tor of Northampton County, and was arranged just before mid- night. Bush said one of the men was Joe Cunningham, an assistant the- atre manager at Rich Square.

Cunningham and six other white men have been charged with kid- napping, breaking and entering jail with intent to injure or kill Bush and of conspiracy to break and enter the jail with such intent. They are free under $2,500 bond each.

The prisoner said he was lost on Friday in the unfamiliar woods and that he had nothing to eat or drink that day or Saturday. He hid in the fields. About daylight Sunday he found his way to the home of a Negro he knew. The man got a breakfast for him, hid him and got in contact with Bush's father.
After talking with his father and a Negro minister, Bush said he decided to surrender.
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Atlanta daily world. (Atlanta, Ga.) August 17, 1947, City Edition,

Baptists Laud N. C. Liberals On Lynch Stand

RALEIGH, N. C—(ANP)—Two of three resolutions adopted last week by the 66th annual session of the Sunday Schoo! and Baptist Training union of North Carolina, representing more than 100,000 young Negro Baptists of this state, lauded Gov. Gregg Cherry and the Raleigh News and Observer, a local white daily newspaper, for anti-lynch action in the case of 24-year-old Buddy Bush, who escaped from a prospective lynch mob a few months ago.

Gov. Cherry was praised for ordering a re-hearing of Bush’s seven white abductors, who were freed in Northampton county of mob violence charges. The resolution called Cherry’s action “a magnificent example in an attempt to administer justice and to guarantee to every citizen the inalienable rights of life and liberty.”

Cherry was also praised for “his outstanding legal ability in bringing to the attention of the citizenry of North Carolina the fact of the enactment of law in 1893, by the yorth Carolina General assembly, against mob violence.”

The resolution lauded the white newspaper, the Raleigh News and Observer.
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