Voices in Our Blood

by Jon Meacham

  As I stood on the porch with them, I reflected that if I were in charge of that jail and a mob came to ask me for a prisoner, I would hand him over without the smallest show of resistance. The jail is far beyond shouting distance of the center of Pickens Town. On one side of it is a large vacant lot. On the other side, beyond a tumble-down fence, a long cabin that seems to be occupied by two or three families stands in a paddock where a couple of lean cows graze. Three women were standing about on the porch with their children, all pale and dispirited. (A startling hint as to the economics of the district was given by some particulars I collected regarding the terms on which most people become inmates of this jail. In Pickens County, a man who is run in for drunkenness is usually fined twelve dollars, with the alternative of going to jail for thirty days; if he has been drunk and disorderly, he gets sixty days or twenty-four dollars; if he has driven an automobile while drunk, he gets ninety days or fifty-two dollars.) Opposite the jail there are larger houses, which may be inhabited by more vigorous people, but the highway is wide and anybody answering the jailer’s call for help would have to come a considerable distance without cover. My misgivings about the possibility of showing ideal courage in Pickens County Jail were confirmed when the jailer, Mr. Ed Gilstrap, arrived. He was a stout man in his sixties, with that passive and pliant air of geniality that is characteristic of men who hold small political appointments. He wore khaki overalls with green suspenders, and a derby. When he removed this to greet me, it was disclosed that there ran down his bald scalp a new scar, appallingly deep and about three to four inches long. He did not spontaneously mention the incident that had led to this injury, but, asked about it, he explained that on April 23rd, nine weeks after the lynching, three prisoners had tried to break out of the jail, and while he was preventing them, one had hit him over the head with an iron pipe. What had he done? He had shot at them and killed one and wounded another. The wounded one was still in the hospital. “I wish I had killed him,” said Mr. Gilstrap, not unamiably, just with simple realism, “for he was the one who hit me with the pipe.” And the third man? “He is still right here in jail,” said Mr. Gilstrap. “We try to be fair to him. We’re feeding him just the same as before.”

  The men who took Willie Earle away were in a state of mind not accurately to be defined as blood lust. They were moved by an emotion that is held high in repute everywhere and especially high in this community. All over the world friendship is regarded a sacred bond, and in South Carolina it is held that it should override nearly all other considerations. Greenville had at first felt some surprise that one of the defense attorneys, Mr. Thomas Wofford, had accepted the case. It was not easy for a stranger to understand this surprise, for the case might have been tailored to fit Mr. Wofford; but all the same, surprise was generally felt. When, however, it was realized that the group of defendants he represented included the half-brother of a dead friend of Mr. Wofford, his action was judged comprehensible and laudable. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, if in Greenville a group of very simple people, grieving over the cruel slaughter of a beloved friend, felt that they had the right to take vengeance into their own hands. They would feel it more strongly if there was one among them who believed that all is known, that final judgment is possible, that if Brown was a good man and Willie Earle was a bad man, the will of God regarding these two men was quite plain. It would, of course, be sheer nonsense to pretend that the men, whoever they were, who killed Willie Earle were not affected in their actions by the color of Willie Earle’s skin. They certainly did not believe that the law would pursue them—at least, not very far or very fast—for killing a Negro. But it is more than possible that they would have killed Willie Earle even if he had been white, provided they had been sure he had murdered Brown. The romances in statement form throw a light on the state of mind of those who later told of getting Willie Earle into a taxi and driving him to a quiet place where he was to be killed. One says that a taxi-driver sat beside him and “talked nice to him.” He does not mean that he talked in a way that Willie Earle enjoyed but that the taxi-drivers thought that what he was saying was elevating. Mr. Hurd described how Willie Earle sat in the back seat of a Yellow Cab and a taxi-driver knelt on the front seat and exhorted him, “Now you have confessed to cutting Mr. Brown, now we want to know who was the other Negro with you.” Willie Earle answered that he did not know; and it appears to be doubtful that there was another Negro with him. The taxi-driver continued, in the accents of complacent pietism, “You know we brought you out here to kill you. You don’t want to die with a lie in your heart and on your tongue.”

  Brown’s friends were in the state of bereavement that is the worst to bear. Brown was not dead. He was dying, and they could do nothing to save him. They were in that state of frustration that makes atheists at the deathbed of their loved ones curse God. “They then drug the Negro out of the car,” said Mr. Hurd in his statement. (“Drug” is certainly a better word than “dragged.”) Nobody speaks of doing anything there beside the slaughter-pen; they all speak of hearing things. One heard “the tearing of cloth and flesh,” another heard “some licks like they were pounding him with the butt end of a gun.” Some heard the Negro say, “Lord, you done killed me.” Some saw as well as heard. “I saw,” stated one, “Hurd aim the single shotgun towards the ground in the direction of where I judged the Negro was laying and pulled the trigger; I then heard the shot fired. I then heard Hurd ask someone to give him another shell.” But Mr. Hurd also is among those who heard but did not do. He did not even see. “When I seen they were going to kill the Negro,” he stated, “I just turned around, because I did not want to see it.”

  People can become accustomed to committing acts of cruelty; recent Europe proves that. But the first act of cruelty disgusts and shames far past the unimaginative man’s power of prevision. The men who had joined the lynching party in the mood of righteous men fulfilling a duty did not, according to their statements, enjoy the actual lynching. “I only heard one report from a gun because I immediately drove away,” stated one. “I have worked only one night since then,” stated another. Fat Joy, another says, was overcome by terror on the way home, and drove up to one of the taxis and said, “Let’s drive side by side; I think the law is coming.” But it was only the civilian car that had been with them all night. Of their return to the town another states, “I got out at the Southern depot and went into the Southern Café. I got a cup of coffee. The man George, a Greek, behind the counter said, ‘Did you get him?’ I said, ‘Who do you mean?’ He said, ‘You know.’ I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ ” It was so little like what they had expected that even Mr. Hurd informed the F.B.I. that he thought it had all been a mistake, and recalled that he had never been in trouble for anything before. That the deed sickened them was proved beyond a shadow of doubt in the Court House. When Sam Watt, the assistant but more conspicuous prosecuting attorney, read from the statements the details of what had been done to Willie Earle and described them as the detestable horrors that they were, the defendants were ashamed. They did not like their wives to hear them; and indeed their wives were also sickened. Mr. Hurd’s father himself, whose loyalty to Mr. Hurd will be unshakable in eternity, looked down his long nose, so might an Inquisitor look, suddenly smitten with doubt of the purging flame. That hour passed. There were those at the trial who saw to that. But in that hour the defendants surely hated evil and loved good.

  Years ago a poet in New York, babbling the indecencies of early parenthood, told a gathering that his child of two already enjoyed having poetry read to him. Someone asked what poetry he read to it. “Shelley and some of my own work,” he answered. “That,” said the false friend, “gives the kid the whole range.” This trial gave the kid the whole range. The judge, J. Robert Martin, Jr., is very local. He knows all about rhetoric and opera. His speech arouses wonder as to how the best sort of stenographer, who takes down by sounds and not by sense, is not wholly baffled in the South, where “You g
entlemen must apportion your time” is converted into “Yo’ ge’men, must appo’tion yo’ taiaime,” with a magnificent vibrato on the diphthongs and a strong melodic line to the whole. He is so good that though he is local he expands the local meaning, and recalls that the great Southerners are great men to the whole world. He has humor but hates a clown. He would have given much to have had the court fully decorous; when an important personage of the region took his seat on the dais and threw his raincoat over the law books on the Judge’s table, it irked him. His love of handsomeness, and fine manners extends to the intellectual world. His charge to the jury was both powerful and beautifully shaped. Throughout the trial he stood on the skyline, proclaiming his hostility to lawlessness and his determination to keep his court uncontaminated, with a solid and unremitting positiveness that must have made him a personal enemy of every reactionary in the state.

  The leader for the prosecution was nominally Robert T. Ashmore, the Greenville County solicitor, a gentle and courteous person. But the leading prosecuting attorney was Sam Watt, who comes from the neighboring town of Spartanburg, a lawyer of high reputation throughout the South, a much more dynamic person. He was assigned to the case by the Attorney General of the State of South Carolina at the suggestion of the Governor, about ten days after the F.B.I. men had gone in. When he arrived, the preliminaries of the case were over; and they had been conducted in a disastrous fashion. The taking of statements from accused persons is one of the most delicate processes of police work. All over the world, police forces are likely to become corrupt and tyrannous, and are then apt to coerce accused persons into making confessions. This is generally recognized. It is very hard to examine accused persons in places that are not more or less private, and therefore it is very hard to know when they have or have not been coerced. While there is no reason to believe that the F.B.I. men used any illegitimate methods, it is true that they took these statements in circumstances that did not protect them from the charge that the defendants gave them under duress. It is also true that the statements amounted to frank confessions of participation in a capital crime. It is actually not at all uncommon for criminals who have committed acts which touch them deeply to make such confessions. But this is not so generally recognized. So this was very dubious material to bring before a jury, and indeed at least one of the defense attorneys flatly declared that they would be fools to believe that twenty-six men would incriminate themselves unless under compulsion. But the mishandling went a great deal farther than that. The statements, which were not sworn, might have been supplemented when the defendants applied to be released under bond, for it was perfectly possible to demand that the applicants should again recite their connection with the crime in the form of sworn affidavits prepared by their own attorneys. This had not been done. The defendants had been turned loose unconditionally, and most of them, by the time Sam Watt came into the case, had returned to their duties as taxi-drivers. Any stranger visiting the town of Greenville during late February, March, April, or early May of this year was as likely as not to be driven from the station by a person awaiting trial for murder and conspiracy to murder. But it is not necessary to bring the stranger into it. The citizens of Greenville also used these taxis, and it would be interesting to know how they liked the idea.

  A prosecutor who introduced these statements in court would be a very lucky man if he could support them by strong corroborative evidence, and a very unlucky one if he could not. Mr. Watt and Mr. Ashmore had at their disposal nothing like the evidence that might convince a jury that these statements had not been obtained by duress, or, rather, prevent the jury from using a suspicion of duress as an excuse for an acquittal. It was true that one of the defendants had handed over to the police a gun that was damaged, and that the gun was of the same make as a gun that several men had described in their statements as being used by one of their number to beat the dying Negro until it broke under the force of his blows. This, however, was not such satisfactory evidence as it appears, because the man who was supposed to have broken the gun on the Negro’s body did not himself admit in his statement that he had used it to beat the Negro, and each of the statements was evidence only against the man who made it and not against the men mentioned in it. This is not mere legal fussiness but a sensible provision, as the statements were not sworn and could not have been subjected to cross-examination by the attorneys of the mentioned persons unless the makers of the statements went into the witness box, which they did not do. There was also the testimony of one Roy Stansell, proprietor of a tourist camp on the Pickens Highway, at which some of the taxis had stopped. This merely proved that the expedition had been on the road; it did not connect the men with the jail break or the murder. There was also the unfortunate U. G. Fowler, a taxi-driver who gave evidence that he had been asked to join the party and had refused. But even he had heard the purpose of the expedition announced only by a voice to which he could not pin a name. There must have been a great many taxi-drivers who could have given much more pointed evidence along these lines. Why they did not do so was revealed before the end of the trial. U. G. Fowler was set upon as he was driving along a country road, beaten, and threatened with death. He appeared before a local judge and made complaint, but the judge refused to swear out a warrant for the arrest of the men who had beaten him. So Mr. Fowler left town.

  It cannot be said, therefore, that the prosecution had put together a valid argument for a conviction. Timid muddling by someone or by some people who were not only muddlers but had an eye on the political weather had drawn most of its claws. As the case was handled, the jury cannot be blamed for returning an acquittal. If it had convicted on any of the indictments, even on the least, which related to conspiracy, either the verdict would have been reversed by a superior court or a very dangerous precedent would have been established. The trial had not the pleasing pattern, the agreeable harmony and counterpoint, of good legal process, however much the Judge tried to redeem it. But whether the jury returned their verdict of not guilty because they recognized the weakness of the State’s case, it was hard to guess. It was the habit of certain people connected with the case to refer to the jury with deep contempt, as a parcel of boobs who could be seduced into swallowing anything by anybody who knew how to tickle them up by the right mixture of brutish prejudice and corny sentimentality; and it was odd to notice that the people who most despised the jury were those who most despised the Negroes. To me, the jurymen looked well built and well groomed; and they stayed awake, which is the first and most difficult task of a juror, although they, like the attorneys, kept their coats on when the heat was a damp, embracing fever. I marvelled at nothing about this jury except its constitution. As Greenville is a town with, it is said, twenty-five millionaires and a large number of prosperous and well-educated people, it may have seemed peculiar that the jury should consist of two salesmen, a farmer, a mechanic, a truck driver, and seven textile workers. Some of the prosperous citizens had indeed appeared on the list of the veniremen from which the jurors were selected, but they had been singularly fortunate in being challenged by the attorneys. The unpopular task of deciding a lynching case therefore fell to an unfavored group who had not the money to hire a bodyguard or to leave the town. They would, let us remember, have been in a most difficult position if they had returned a verdict of guilty. They might not have been murdered, like Willie Earle, or beaten up, like U. G. Fowler, but they would never have been able to take a taxi again with an easy mind, and that would be a considerable inconvenience in Greenville. It is one of the mysteries of this case that the trial was not shifted to another town.

  Of the prosecuting attorneys, Mr. Ashmore made a speech that was not very spirited but was conscientious and accepted the moral values common to civilized people without making any compromise. Sam Watt, who has a deep and passionate loathing of violence and disorder, and who is such a good attorney that the imperfections of the case must have vexed him to his soul, handled the situation in his own way by using the
statements to build up a picture of the lynching in all its vileness. It was while the defendants were listening to this speech that they hated evil and that they desired to renounce it. It was a great, if highly local, speech, and it is possible that some of its effect will survive, though the close of the case cancelled it for the moment. That cancellation was due to the remarkable freedom of two of the defense attorneys from the moral values accepted by Mr. Ashmore and Mr. Watt. The two other defense attorneys accepted them, one wholly, the other partly. Mr. Bradley Morrah, Jr., accepted them wholly, Mr. Ben Bolt partly.

  Mr. Bradley Morrah, Jr., is a young man who is a member of the State Legislature. He was representing a strange defendant, his cousin, Mr. John B. Marchant, who is twenty-eight and the son of a widow of good family who is greatly loved in the town. Mr. Marchant was the driver of the “civilian car” that accompanied the string of taxicabs to the lynching. According to his story, he was leading the contemplative life in a café opposite the Yellow Cab office in the early hours of February 17th when he saw the expedition forming and joined it out of sheer curiosity. He was extremely disconcerted when he discovered its object, and though he did not dare leave the party, he did not approach the scene of action but waited some distance away. Mr. Marchant apparently spends much of his time accompanying the sheriff’s men on their night work just as a hobby, and he certainly visited the sheriff’s office next day and volunteered a statement before there was any need. There is no reason to disbelieve his account.