by John Hersey
27. On Money and Justice
In the country where Auburey and his friends and brothers lived, there were (and there still are) two perceptions, black and white, of justice. This is such a crucial fact—crucial to all racial violence, central to the Algiers Motel incident—that I shall ask you to get acquainted, at some length, with the most wounded and bitter spirit in the Pollard family, Auburey’s “Little Brother,” Robert, who articulated to me all that need be said about the black perception. I visited Robert in prison; we sat in a pew in the prison chapel, and he talked.
Things had gone badly for Robert for a long, long time. He was in a hurting place in the family: at the bottom of a totem pole of brothers, and with a baby sister who was the cynosure of all.
School authorities had reported him as “uncooperative.” The B. and E. with Auburey took place when Robert was nine. Two years later he was taken in for another breaking-in; two years after that, for Robbery Not Armed. When he was fourteen, he was arrested for violation of a knife ordinance, for larceny from the mails, and for theft. At fifteen, he was taken for breaking a bus window, and for halting traffic in a residential street and shouting obscenities. Once he was found unconscious on a street—drugged, his mother thought, and “in the hospital he woke up abusive,” she told me, “called the nurses ‘white bitches’ and the doctors all kinds of ‘bastards.’ ”
Robert had just turned sixteen when, one May evening, he was charged with stealing seven dollars from a twelve-year-old newsboy. He was found guilty and sentenced to from three to ten years in the Michigan State Reformatory, which is really a prison.
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“Robert was beat up so bad when they took him in,” Mrs. Pollard told me, “that the polices told me he tried to commit suicide. When I saw Robert, he told me, he said, ‘Momma, I didn’t try to kill myself. They tried to kill me.’ ”
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“Justice,” Robert Pollard said to me in the prison chapel, “is a way of keeping a person from getting any more than he’s got. Railroading is just sending a person to prison, it’s taking advantage of a person. They take advantage of a person when a person knows that he don’t have anything. This is what they take advantage of, see.”
Perhaps I should say here that Robert, a short, stocky youth, the blackest-skinned of the Pollard brothers, talked to me in the presence of Tanner, who, with their mother, had vouched for me, and he spoke in a low but strong voice with sustained and absolute conviction. By the time I saw Robert, I had had quite a little experience both of being put on and of being trusted; I was convinced that Robert was telling me things as he saw them.
“Actually the crime they got me for, actually I didn’t do it, see. First they had me on another charge, something that I didn’t do, one of my friends did it, but the man said I did it; this was a larceny from a house. So then I went to court on it, and while I was in court on that one, they arrested me in court on this other one. They said I had robbed somebody. They arrested me, the man jumped on me up there in 1300 Beaubien, when I was in Recorder’s Court. They took me out of court and took me upstairs and jumped me.
“My lawyer, he tricked me, see. He told me to cop out, told me to tell them that I did it, and he’d get me a probation. And I did this, and I ended up with three to ten. I plan on getting my money back from him when I get out, anyway. He owes me two hundred and forty-some dollars. The judge asked me did anybody promise me anything, I told him no. And that was wrong of me to tell a lie to the judge, because that just made my time more harder. They didn’t find no knife on me, they didn’t catch me with no money on me, they didn’t catch me on the scene, or nothing. They just arrested me in court and put it on me.”
28. Paying Off
“They don’t have no type of justice in court,” Robert said, “because there’s a whole lot of peoples up here that’s railroaded. They’re railroaded paying off the judges with money. If you can pay off so much money, they get your time cut, see. Every judge down there would do that. Money, it sings. If you got enough money you can do just about anything you want to do in the world. You can buy the judge, you can buy the lawyer, you can buy the prosecutor. This is happening every day. Railroading people. They give them so much time for something that ain’t worth it. Like this guy, he was sitting in a car with a white broad. Now, he wasn’t doing nothing wrong, and they give him three to ten. But he had a state lawyer, they throwed a state lawyer on him, see, and state lawyers, they get paid sixty dollars, see, that’s in court costs, see, there’s a whole lot to it, see. It actually ain’t nothing but a racket, you know, just like I go out there and I steal a whole truckful of TV’s, and I sell them, all, every one of them I got, and I get good prices for them—it’s the same way as down there in court, see. You got the money, you can buy your time. But all I had was two hundred and forty-some dollars, and court costs cost some sixty dollars, I think. Justice is all connected with money. I don’t think it. I know it. If you talk with any convict in here, he can tell you, he done paid off. There’s some convicts in here done paid out five thousand dollars to just get two years, but they could have had life. It’s many convicts in here would tell you that.”
Then he added: “The railroading, it’s worse for colored, because there’s a lot of prejudice. Mostly be down to the court they’s white.”
29. Prejudice
“If it had been the other way around down there at the Algiers,” he said to me, “colored policemen killing white boys, I don’t think they’d get off! Because there’s so many white peoples that’s prejudiced. I would say the policemens are prejudiced. Because they have called me names. I have been in McGraw Station, and a man throwed a sandwich on the floor, throwed it down there and say, ‘Git it, Dirt.’ They have called me all types of names. ‘Black boy.’ They have throwed black coffee on me. I was cussing at them, and stuff; I was calling him names—‘Peckerwood,’ like that, and one of them come and throwed black coffee on me, partly in my face and partly on my shirt, and he say, ‘Shut up, black boy,’ just like that. McGraw Station.
“They were questioning me about a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar mink hat, it come off a J. L. Hudson truck. I don’t actually know who took it off the truck. The man say I had taken it off, but he had me mistaken. I was talking about, ‘You all are always trying to get somebody.’ They been after me a long time, too. Since I was eight. Because I used to get in a whole lot of trouble. They knew my name, because I’d been down there so many times. One detective, he was questioning me down there, he was kind of fat and heavy-set, he told me that he wish he could have caught me breaking in that house, he would have shot me. This was when I was sixteen. I used to come down to the station on little misdemeanors, he used to read off my record to me, tell me what I had been doing and all like that. It says in the law book that they’re not supposed to look back on your juvenile record.
“I could be waltzing down the street, and the guy, he’ll pick me up and take me down to the station, trying to say I snatched somebody’s purse or trying to say I B.-and-E.’d some place, and tell me, ‘Bobby, you want to tell us about it, you know you pulled that B. and E.’ So I say, ‘What you talking about, man, I ain’t pulled no B. and E.’ He say, ‘Aw, come on! You know, kid, you pulled that B. and E.’
“You know, they pass out sandwiches in the morning before you go to court, and they passed out some baloney sandwiches, and they supposed to set them up in the bars, or other than that down on the bench, and he throwed it, and he said, ‘Git it, Dirt.’ I was waiting to go to court about a knife.”
30. You Don’t Actually Have No Freedom
“Money, that’s what makes the world keep going,” Robert said to me. “Money. Without no money, wouldn’t nobody—if you didn’t know nothing about no money or wonderful things to have or anything, you wouldn’t care nothing about no money; you wouldn’t want nothing. You’d be doing just like peoples in Africa, or somewhere, sitting up and eating dead things and going round, don’t want nothing but a old house
or something, just a shelter to keep the rain off of you. Go round and kill wild animals and eat them, you know; you’re free to kill what animals you want.
“But here, it’s against the law to kill animals. You kill a animal and eat him, you’ll go to jail for serving that kind of animal.
“Everything have a law to it, see. Every time you walk out a door, anywhere you walk, you breaks a law. See, because they got so many laws. Actually if people really look at it you don’t actually have no freedom. Because anything you do, you’ve broken a law. I mean the least little thing, you know. You can’t even spit on the sidewalk; if you spit on the sidewalk, that’s a ticket. They done covered the earth with cement and you can’t spit on it.
“If people got a better job and was making more money, and they got in trouble or something, then they’ll worry about something like spitting on the sidewalk, see, but a person that never had anything, they don’t even let it bother them. I mean, he cares that he’s in jail, he cares about his freedom, see, just like a wild animal running out there in the woods or something, you know, you lock him up, he’s going to want to get out, although he don’t have anything, he still want to get out.
“Something that you were never taught and raised up to, you know—what I’m trying to say: What you want to know won’t hurt you. What you don’t know, you don’t want it.”
31. Anti-poverty Programs
“As long as there’s money in the world,” Robert said, “won’t hardly anything will change. The people won’t change. The buildings and the cars and the clothes and stuff, and shoes would change, and different products, and trucks and boats and stuff like that would change, but the people wouldn’t change. If you can bring them more money, they’ll take it.
“In a certain extent, there’s always going to be somebody over you. All peoples are not the same. Somebody’s always going to have a little bit more than you. Somebody else is always going to have a little bit more than that person, and over and over and over, see. Like it might be this little boy’s got a penny right here, and this other boy might be a little bigger, he’s got two cents, or they might be the same size, two cents, and three and four and five and six, and all up to a thousand dollars.
“People is very evil against other people. It’s just like your next-door neighbor. Okay, you got a ’65 Cadillac, and you been living good all the time, and your next-door neighbor, he sees, and you been having yours about two or three years, and he’s going to try and do better than you is, see, he going to get him a ’67 or ’68. Because he have always been better than you, and he want to keep on.
“Just read history. You can see this, see, because ever since the world has been here, ever since money has been discovered, people always had more money than other peoples, see.”
32. How It Works
“What would be the best thing to do is to see if I’m really telling the truth. Just have a person picked up for a certain thing and tell him to just sit in the bullpen with a whole lot of prisoners downtown and watch lawyers come by and say, ‘Will you cop out to a certain sentence? Would you cop out to ten years? I can get you two to ten.’ And a guy, he’ll say, ‘Well, yes, how much would this cost me?’ And he’ll say, ‘Well, it might cost you four hundred dollars.’ And the guy say, ‘Well, okay,’ he’ll say, ‘you get me off and I’ll give you the money. Okay.’ The lawyer takes the money, he’ll go to the judge, he’ll pay the judge maybe two hundred in cash right there, and he’ll pay the prosecutor a hundred, and then he’ll keep the rest; a lawyer’s always going to keep something for hisself. And then you go in court. Now sometimes they pay the jury off, too, see. The jury gets paid, too. This is just a front to make society, sitting out there, you know, make this man seem like he’s not guilty. That’s if he’s got money. But if you don’t have no money, they’ll just railroad you.”
33. Prospects for the Future
“This is not me. I’m just saying what happens to some people, and, I know, most people. They are very cold-hearted after they been here. Some people get out there, and they don’t care about nobody. And sometimes when they do come back, they come back with a real sentence. Maybe like the first time they been up here, maybe they got two years, maybe one, or three or something; then they’ll come back with maybe life or something like that, or twenty-five, or fifty, or natural life, or something like that. There are quite a few lifers here. Quite a few guys with twenty-five to fifty, ten to twenty. I know some guys got the same time I got, and they just thinking, most of them say, when they do come back, they’ll be doing life or twenty-five years or something. That’s what just about all of them say when they’re leaving. They say if they do go out there and do wrong, they’re going to do something big, and bring them back lifers, because it ain’t worth it for that little stuff.”
34. Laid Off
During the winter, early in 1967, Auburey was shifted from welding to laboring at Ford. “He had to do labor work,” Mrs. Pollard told me. “They change him up, you know. When he started doing the laboring part, it gave him sinus from the dust, so he got sick for a while.” Ford records show that he took a medical leave, beginning March 1, 1967; his employment was terminated on April 12, 1967, because he had not notified the company of his whereabouts or of his intention to return to work.
Thelma was a bit disenchanted about his quitting. “You know how boys get,” she said, “after they work for a while. They don’t want to work any more. Especially Ford’s—they give you a lot of compensation and stuff.”
But something more complicated was at work. “When he was at Ford’s,” Mrs. Pollard told me, “Auburey gave his father money to put down the payments on Chaney’s car; it was a ’63 Catalina. Sixty-seven dollars a week, but for some reason his father didn’t make the payments. This was a big hurt to Auburey. A big change took place in him after that.”
35. The Last Family Party
“Thelma,” Mrs. Pollard told me, “works for a lawyer. He taught her how to file his cases for him, and she types for him, and he’s very nice to her. Because she’s awful young, because he give her the job when she was fifteen years old, because she was coming out of high school.”
One evening after supper Thelma gave me some of her views.
On the Vietnam war: “That’s foolishness. I think the United States should take care of their own. They’re having a war between themselves. I think they should take care of themselves first.”
On what should be done at home: “Let everybody be equal. Let everybody get justice, you know. Like policemen, they do something to somebody and won’t get any time for it, but let somebody do something to them! I think the police force is prejudiced—against people altogether. They think they know everything, that everything they say is right. They could have made a mistake, too. Some of them just get on there because they like to shoot. Most of them just like to wear that uniform, make them think they’re big. Lots of times they just stop you for the fun of it. I try to stay out of their way. And a lot of time white policemen, they’ll stop colored people for the fun of it. If they see a white person doing something wrong, they let them go. It’s more colored people that’s got criminal records than white people, and white people do just as much dirt as the colored people do.”
On integration as against separation: “I think everybody is equal, you know. Shouldn’t nobody be better than anybody else. All the schools should be the same, and I think all the neighborhoods should be the same, too. If people have got enough money to buy a certain house, they should be able to buy it. All the schools should be integrated. I think the races should have more social experience and everything together, they should communicate more, you know.”
Thelma’s graduation was the occasion for the Pollards’ last family party. Chaney sent money from Vietnam for a new dress and a tiara with rhinestones in it. Auburey cleaned up the house from top to bottom.
36. Away from Home
Early in June, Carl, Lee, and Michael all took rooms at the Algiers. Carl was in A
-14 on the third floor, Michael next to him in A-13, and Lee was downstairs in A-5. “We just decided we wanted to stay around down there,” Sortor, who, with Auburey, often slept in one or another of these rooms at the motel, told me. “You know, we’d go to the Twenty Grand, pick up a lot of girls, you know, didn’t want to bring them to our house, you know, so we went on down there.” “Maybe,” Mr. Gill said to me one day, “they figured they could do more away from home.”
37. The Only One
Report on 1 ARREST V.S.N.L. [Violation State Narcotics Laws], 1:00 AM, 7-11-67, MICHAEL CLARK, N/18 . . . :
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“Rec. r. r. to above place man with a gun. Talked to the guard Norwood Jackson n/48 . . . Stated that four Negros had gun. At this point the males came down and we talked to them and they stated that they were visiting the def in room A-13. The def came up to us and stated that these men were visiting him and then he turned and went back into the building. I & Patr. St. Onge followed him and as I approached the third floor I heard the trash recepticle being pushed then the def entered apt A-13. I looked in the recipticle and found a piece of foil paper containing suspected marijuana held on evidence tag #681042. The def denise putting it in there but he was the only one in the hall way.