A Death in Live Oak
Page 33
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although A Death in Live Oak is a work of fiction, some scenes are based on the historical record of the lynching of fifteen-year-old Willie James Howard in Live Oak, Florida, on January 2, 1944. The principal documentation I relied on are the written, unsworn statement of Alexander Phillip Goff and the sworn affidavits of Willie James’ parents, James and Lula Howard. These documents are part of what historians refer to as the “Lanier Report,” prepared by David Lanier, the acting state attorney appointed by Florida governor Spessard Holland in 1944.
Certain facts are undisputed. Cynthia Goff was the daughter of former state legislator Alexander Phillip Goff and a sophomore at the all-white Suwannee High School. Fifteen-year-old Willie James attended the separate Douglass High School and worked at the white-owned dime store where Cynthia also worked. In December 1943, Willie James gave Christmas cards to his coworkers. He signed his card to Cynthia “with L.” In a letter of apology dated January 1, he again expressed his affection for Cynthia. On January 2, 1944, Mr. Goff and two other men, Reginald Scott Sr., a local white farmer, and S. B. “Mack” McCullers, a local white salesman, drove to the Howard house. They left with Willie James and took him to the sawmill where James Howard worked. The men then drove Willie James and his father to the Suwannee River, just east of Suwannee Springs. On January 3, 1944, the body of Willie James was found and removed from the river. His wrists and ankles were bound. In a matter of days, James and Lula Howard sold their house and moved to Orlando.
There are conflicting accounts of what happened between Mr. Goff’s arrival at the Howard residence and the recovery of Willie James’ body the following day. According to Lula and James Howard, the men took their son at gunpoint, picked up James Howard from his place of work at the Bond-Howell Lumber Company, and then forced Mr. Howard to watch as they hog-tied Willie James and then gave him a choice: roll into the river or be shot. He chose the river. According to Goff, he showed Mr. Howard the letter that Willie James had written to his daughter, and Mr. Howard willingly went with them to the river, where the plan was for Mr. Howard to “chastise the boy himself for his misdeed.” Goff admitted that he tied Willie James’ hands and feet but stated that he did so only “to keep him from running so that his father could whip him” with a switch. Willie James became “defiant,” stated Goff, and shouted that “he would die before letting any man dady [sic] or white man put a licking on him.” Despite Goff’s professed efforts to stop him, Willie James jumped into the river and drowned. Willie James’ father, Goff stated, “stood by and viewed the son without attempting to prevent this happening.”
As news spread, Thurgood Marshall, special counsel to the NAACP and later a Supreme Court justice, demanded that Governor Holland call for a full investigation. In a letter, Governor Holland sent Goff’s written statement to Marshall and promised protection for James Howard to come to Live Oak and testify before a grand jury. But the governor cautioned Marshall about the “particular difficulties involved where there will be testimony of three white men and probably the girl against the testimony of one Negro man.”
A grand jury was convened in Live Oak in May 1944. James Howard appeared as the only witness. No indictment was returned. Harry T. Moore, a courageous activist who later lost his life in the civil rights movement (Moore and his wife were killed when their home was bombed on Christmas Day in 1951), made it his mission to persuade the U.S. Department of Justice to take up the case. He was unsuccessful.
James Howard died a few years after the death of his son. Lula Howard died in 2004, her last known public statement about the incident having been to the NAACP Board of Directors at their Orlando meeting on March 12, 1944. Goff and his two cohorts are also deceased, buried in a Live Oak cemetery. No one was ever held accountable.
The body of Willie James Howard lay in an unmarked grave for sixty years, until a local funeral director found a log of the death with the notation “lynched.” The director, who was also a Suwannee County commissioner, organized a memorial service for Willie James at the Springfield Baptist Church, and on January 2, 2005, exactly sixty-one years after his death, a headstone was laid on the grave. It reads:
WILLIE J. HOWARD
BORN 7-13-28
DIED 1-2-44
MURDERED BY 3 RACIST [SIC]
This novel is faithful to the verifiable facts. Certain holes in the historical record were filled by the writer’s imagination. My research was inconclusive as to whether Cynthia Goff knew what her father had done and, if so, how she felt about it. Her level of awareness, her true feelings, and all other details of her adult life are unknown to this author, except for the fact that she died in 2011 at the age of eighty-two. The character “Cynthia Porter” is purely fictional.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Rule No. 1 in my creative writing process is “keep it fun,” and I’m grateful to the talented group of friends who help me honor that rule. My longtime editor, Carolyn Marino, knows Jack Swyteck better than I do; and my agent, Richard Pine, and I are now officially entering our second quarter century of teamwork—which blows my mind.
You often hear it said that words matter. Well, grammar matters, too. I make plenty of mistakes, to be sure, but I’m grateful to my beta readers, who do their best to clean up the mess. Gloria Villa is like family. Janis Koch has that rare gift of the proverbial favorite teacher—tough when she has to be, but still makes you laugh at your mistakes and learn from them. Every writer should be so lucky.
Finally, to my wife, Tiffany. The publishing world could hardly have changed more since you told me to “go for it”—to follow my dream and be a writer. Your love and support have never wavered. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
A final note. Jack and Andie have had a daughter since Gone Again, and some readers may have noticed that the spelling of her name has changed from Riley to Righley. That’s because the parents of Righley Jimenez won the right to name a character in a Jack Swyteck novel at silent auction. Over the years, Jack Swyteck “character auctions” have raised more than $100,000 for a wide range of charitable causes. I’m happy to add the Florida Council Against Domestic Violence Foundation to that list, compliments of Debbie and Frank Jimenez. The foundation was established to ensure the long-term sustainability of lifesaving services for domestic violence survivors and their children by supporting Florida’s forty-two certified domestic violence centers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JAMES GRIPPANDO is a New York Times bestselling author of suspense. A Death in Live Oak is his twenty-sixth novel, and the fourteenth in the Jack Swyteck series. He was a trial lawyer for twelve years before the publication of his first novel, The Pardon, in 1994. He now practices law as counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP and is also an adjunct professor of law and modern literature at the University of Miami School of Law. His novels are enjoyed worldwide in twenty-eight languages, and in 2017 he was the winner of the Harper Lee Prize in legal fiction. He lives in South Florida.
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ALSO BY JAMES GRIPPANDO
Most Dangerous Place*
Gone Again*
Cash Landing
Cane and Abe
Black Horizon*
Blood Money*
Need You Now
Afraid of the Dark*
Money to Burn
Intent to Kill
Born to Run*
Last Call*
Lying with Strangers
When Darkness Falls*
Got the Look*
Hear No Evil*
Last to Die*
Beyond Suspicion*
A King’s Ransom
Under Cover of Darkness
Found Money
The Abduction
The Informant
The Pardon*
OTHER FICTION
The Penny Jumper
Leapholes
*A JACK SWYTECK NOVEL
COPYRIGHT
This is
a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A DEATH IN LIVE OAK. Copyright © 2018 by James Grippando, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Grippando, James.
A death in Live Oak / James Grippando.
p. cm.
Digital Edition FEBRUARY 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-265782-4
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-265780-0
1. Swyteck, Jack (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Legal stories. 3. Suspense fiction.
PS3557.R534 D43 2018
813’.54—dc23 2017022885
18 19 20 21 22 LSC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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