“It’s not because the jurors hate the Nigra, and I don’t want to ever hear of you making that as an excuse. Decent Southern white men don’t hate Negroes. You’ll lose because decent Southern white men don’t like one of their own coming in pious and trying to change things overnight.” Mr. M. L. put aside his pipe and strained to lift himself from his rocker. Foster did not remember him having had so much trouble getting up, but knew better than to offer a hand. Mr. M. L. gained his footing, turned around slowly, and lumbered into his office. He returned moments later with a bottle and an opaque coffee cup—to passers-by, he was just having coffee—and poured himself about three inches of Four Roses, not offering any to Foster.
“Daddy, I agree with all that but—”
His father waved him to silence, frowned, drained off an inch or more of his bourbon. “I’ve made a study of this. The whites, the good ones your age, are ashamed these days about slavery. But you see, they don’t know how to make up for it without causing trouble. And they may be right to worry about what would happen if things changed too quick.”
“They ought to be ashamed of slavery. But, Daddy—”
“The ones your age are just now figuring out their granddaddies fought on the wrong side of the War.” Mr. M. L. hesitated for a moment to tilt and peer into his cup. “Our unique sin,” he said.
Foster smiled at his father’s sarcasm. “We learned in school the Yankees had slaves too.”
“Foster.” His father rarely called him by his given name, and when he did, it was usually because he was impatient about something. “At first, North and South alike thought it was fine and dandy to have slaves, everybody knows that. Then it changed.” Mr. M. L. finished the last of the Four Roses, stared at the empty cup. “The Yankees let theirs go before the middle of the last century. The Southerners didn’t, and these days their grandsons are a little bit embarrassed—they won’t admit it, but I know this—not just because their grandfathers didn’t figure it out as quick as the Yankees, but for fighting the War over it, then losing the damn War to boot. It would have been different if we’d won the War, then we could have freed the slaves on our own and felt good about it, but no, we lost the War and the pious Yankees freed the slaves.”
“I have never before heard a single Southerner say any of that,” Foster said. He respected his father but lost patience with him when he was drinking. The conversation, he thought, had gone far afield.
“You see, son,” his father continued, “the weight of that shame is bearable so long as it’s only the Negro and the Yankee doing the condemning. As for a Negro’s condemnation, well, the Nigra in Alabama pretty much keeps quiet, but only so long as we take our foot off his neck gradually. An Alabama Negro allowed to stand tall too fast will want vengeance. We all know that, and I for one know it’s understandable he would. I would too. But we can’t have a race war either, so we have to change gradually.”
Mr. M. L. paused to nod at two white men coming out of the post office. “As for the Yankee’s condemnation, there’s not any weight to a Yankee’s condemnation, all hypocrisy and lies. Alabama Nigras learn all they need to know about the Yankee from their cousins who move up North. As for Alabama whites, most don’t like the Yankee to begin with, and they’re damn sure he would do the same as we’ve done if he lived in a county with a Nigra majority. So we don’t pay the Yankee’s condemnation any mind, and that includes a Yankee lawyer appointed for this kind of case. A Yankee lawyer might even win this case of yours because a jury won’t pay his condemnation any mind. But that jury’ll see you as one of their own, a white Southerner. Just who the hell do you think you are, coming to Troy, trying to change things too fast? That’s how the jury’ll see you and that’s why you’ll lose and send your Negro to the grave.”
“Only I’m not condemning anybody, Daddy.” Foster’s patience was exhausted. He wanted to drive back to Enterprise before the sun went down. “I’m just defending a Negro who has a right to a lawyer. And he’s an innocent Negro. And before it’s over, Daddy, I’m going to prove it.”
And so it went, his father bullying him, yet also, he suspected, envying him. And there were new emotions to sort out. Part of it was the two of them for the first time trying to compete; part of it was his father still trying to protect him.
Chapter 16
FAMED CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER John Lewis was born on a farm a few miles outside of Troy in February 1940, barely a year and a half after the trial of Charles White ended, and has less than favorable memories of the town. In his magisterial memoir Walking with the Wind, Congressman Lewis recalled wondering, as a little boy, why his mother said, “You must be very, very careful not to get out of line with a white person.” By the time he was ready for elementary school, however, he could see for himself why she warned him, because “by then, I had been to Troy.”
“The place looks today,” Congressman Lewis wrote in 1998, “much as it did back then. There’s the town square . . . dominated by its statue of a Civil War soldier. LEST WE FORGET reads the inscription on the statue’s base, beside a brass plate inscribed with the names of dozens of Confederate dead.”
“Troy was always a town that knew how to fight,” Congressman Lewis recalled. “The major form of entertainment on weekends was outdoor, all-comers wrestling matches on the town square. When it came time to send its sons off to fight for the South in the Civil War, the boys from Troy went,” returning years later, “beaten and wounded, many of their best friends dead,” but still refusing to surrender.
I don’t dispute the description of Troy by Congressman Lewis, but merely point out the obvious—that his memories as an African American growing up there and those of my own family were so far apart that they might as well have been recalling different worlds. Troy was regarded by the Becks of Glenwood, privileged white people, as a pleasant, cultured place to visit, a town, in my grandmother’s view, well worth a train trip to shop for her own and her children’s clothes. The predictably different perceptions by blacks and whites sadly illustrates one of the many gaps between the races that existed then, and that in some respects continues to this day—and not only in the Deep South.
Although there are differences in the dates reported by the Troy and Montgomery press, the prosecution of Charles White appears to have moved swiftly from arrest to indictment. According to the Montgomery Advertiser, “C. W. White, transient negro fortune teller,” was indicted on June 24. The Troy Messenger places the indictment on June 22. While the Advertiser wrote that the crime occurred on June 8, when “the victim” was “lured” to the home of Mary Etta Gray, the Troy Messenger reported that the attack was on June 6.
There is no dispute, however about the date of the trial, which commenced with the summoning of jurors on Wednesday, July 13, 1938. As reported by the Messenger, “The negro was brought to Troy Wednesday morning by a seven-member detachment” from the Alabama Highway Patrol; these men were joined by additional officers stationed in Troy. According to the Messenger, there was “no outward display of proposed violence” that Wednesday afternoon during jury selection, but as a precaution, Charles White was escorted back to Kilby prison in Montgomery on Wednesday evening by the Alabama Highway Patrolmen.
Judge Parks was prudent to insist that Charles White be escorted to and from Montgomery and that the Alabama Highway Patrol be present during jury selection. There was high talk in the crowd surrounding the courthouse when the word got out that two Negroes had been called for jury service in compliance with the Scottsboro ruling. But the talk subsided and a cheer went up when it was reported that both Negroes had been struck by the State of Alabama.
Judge Parks finally succeeded in impaneling a jury of twelve white men—each of whom swore he could render a fair and impartial verdict in a black-on-white rape case. The judge ordered the jurors kept together for the evening “under the direction of Special Bailiff Henry Bower,” the Messenger reported, so as to avoid any taint of outside influence. The precaution turned out to be a wise one.
That night, darkness and liquor emboldened some of the rough element to slip the leash and prowl the streets of Troy, looking for stray Negroes to bully and assault.
Foster would stay at the best hotel in Troy thanks to Judge Parks, a hotel that featured an elegant dining room, a spacious lobby, and an electric elevator. White-coated Negro porters served sweet iced tea to well-dressed white ladies and gentlemen who relaxed in rocking chairs. Guests could peruse the Troy Messenger or the Saturday Evening Post beneath an electric chandelier. To save on the expense, Foster had planned to drive back to Enterprise after jury selection and return early the next morning for the trial, but Judge Parks had arranged a room for him, free of charge. The owner owed him a couple of favors, the judge said, and he was cashing one in. Foster did not protest.
The nice Troy hotel must have seemed to my father quite an upgrade from some of the places he and his mother, father, brothers, and sisters stayed when not at home in Glenwood. In our family history, he recalled that on one of those occasions, in 1915, Mr. M. L., “a great one for making trips,” loaded up the family in their Model T and set out for Yellow River in Florida, an all-day trip of 125 miles. “R. J., a young Negro who had been up North a while and was supposed to be able to drive and cook was the chauffeur,” according to the history, but R. J. “knew little about driving and less about cooking,” and so the family got only about halfway to Florida before getting stuck in a sandbed. “Fortunately, we had been told to take along a shovel for such incidents and were able to dig out. We got stuck [again] in a sandy creek . . . about four miles from the destination on the banks of the river. Our bedding and tent were to come by freight to a nearby town, but after a week had not arrived. We slept in a logger’s shack until we all got sick with dysentery and went back home.” The history records that “My family made quite a few trips to Florida in the Ford, but my mother finally rebelled at the work and hardship of cooking and looking after five children in camping conditions.”
If my father’s Troy hotel was a far cry from that Florida logger’s shack, it was not unlike some of the hotels where he and Mr. M. L. stayed years later, in better times, for example during a well-remembered and frequently described trip to East Texas. My father had come home from college, eager to spend a week on his beloved Choctawhatchee Bay, fishing and camping before taking a summer job. My grandfather had other plans.
“You need to see some of this country of ours, my boy,” Mr. M. L. had informed Foster the first day he got home. “Mr. P. B. and I will be your guides.”
And so, after Tump Garner gave the Dodge sedan (the successor to the Model T) a thorough inspection, the three of them set out on a sweat-soaked, dust-caking trip in the middle of the summer across the largely unpaved roads of southern Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Foster did the driving when he was not patching and pumping up the twenty-one flat tires they experienced on the trip. Mr. M. L., who rode shotgun, did the talking. And Mr. P. B.—who was invited because he read books and was a good listener—sat in the back, spitting black streams of tobacco that coated his side of the car.
The journey took more than twice as long as it should have because Mr. M. L. refused to buy more than three gallons of gas at a time and insisted on stopping at every filling station in Mississippi, Louisiana, and East Texas to discuss politics, the timber business, possible kinships, or just the weather. Always, Mr. M. L. took a suite in the finest hotel in whatever town the three of them reached by sunset, with beds for himself and Mr. P. B. and the whores they invited up.
But if the Troy hotel reminded my father of those grand hotels along the road to East Texas, the mood inside was different. During the trip to East Texas, the personable Mr. M. L. could always charm the concierge into finding him whiskey, sandwiches, tobacco, whores, whatever his needs and no matter the hour; but at the Troy hotel, the stern-looking young white clerk just glared when Foster Beck of Enterprise signed the guest register and did not wish him a pleasant stay, and the white maître d’ ignored him when he asked what was included with the entrees. When finally he was directed to a poorly located table—the jurors were being fed separately in a private banquet hall—the other diners frowned and whispered as the word got around that this was “the lawyer for the nigger rapist of a local white girl.” My father finished his supper alone, not staying for dessert even though it was included in the price, and removed to his room to study his case file, without a single fellow diner saying so much as “howdy” or even nodding in his direction.
Chapter 17
ACCORDING TO One Hundred Fifty Years of Pike County History, supplemented by photographs offered by the Troy Public Library, the core of the Pike County courthouse was constructed of brick in 1881, replacing the original wooden building. In 1898, large, brick rectangular wings were added to each corner and white stucco was affixed to the entire building. The new front entrance—at the time of the Charles White trial in 1938, as when it was constructed forty years earlier—featured three arched doors beneath a four-columned second-story portico. Tall windows were spaced evenly on each side and on both floors, and four clocks facing north, south, east, and west, along with a weather vane, were mounted on an open, eight-columned cupola. The courthouse sat in the middle of the town square, bordered by watering troughs and hitching posts for horses and parking spaces for the growing number of automobiles, and it dwarfed the shops on the square where farm tools, fresh meat, guns, and dry goods were sold.
Early on the morning of July 14, 1938, Charles White arrived back in Troy, escorted from Montgomery’s Kilby prison, the newspapers reported, by fourteen members of the Alabama Highway Patrol. This group was met just outside of town by two more state patrolmen stationed in Troy, bringing the grand total to sixteen. Pike County Sheriff B. R. Reeves and two deputies drove out to meet the state officers, bringing chains that turned out to be unnecessary, as Charles White had been shackled ever since he was removed from his cell in Montgomery. Owing to the intervention of Judge Parks with the Patrol commandant in Montgomery, all sixteen of the patrolmen would remain at the courthouse throughout the trial to ensure perfect order.
By 8 a.m., more than two hundred white men—a mix of well-barbered Troy shop owners in short-sleeved shirts and sun-browned Pike County farmers wearing brogans and overalls—had surrounded the courthouse. Plumes of dry dust raised by their Model Ts and mule-drawn wagons hung in the air as the men milled about, quietly shaking hands, exchanging greetings, speaking in low tones. A knot of teenaged white boys, members of the high school football team, joked, jostled, and swapped licks until warned by a deputy sheriff. Three elderly Pike County Negro men, dressed in their Sunday suits, had come to the courthouse at the invitation of Judge Parks, and they stood together, outside but near the front doors.
At 8:30 a.m. on the dot, Sheriff Reeves threw open the doors, and close to half of the white men who had been waiting pushed into the courtroom, taking with them the free fans imprinted with information about local merchants that were handed out at the door, and quickly filled the benches. A teenaged white boy was assigned to stand in the back of the courtroom, pay close attention, and run out to report, as developments warranted, to more than one hundred white men who could not find a seat and would have to wait in the foyer or outside on the square. Through prearrangement by Judge Parks, the three elderly Negroes were ushered inside separately by Sheriff Reeves and directed to an area in the back where they could stand out of the way and observe. To everyone’s relief, the Negroes politely declined the offer of chairs.
Next to make an entrance were a number of middle-aged white women, dressed in long, plain skirts, simple blouses, and floppy bonnets. The women entered as a group but quickly separated as they found the seats they had ordered their husbands to save for them. It was understood that the women would be permitted to stay for a while but might have to be excused should the testimony become inappropriate for their ears.
The Pike County courtroom of Judge Parks was now filled to capacity. By order of the judge,
the tall windows on each side had been left fully raised throughout the night of July 13, in hopes that the evening air would cool the courtroom. While this measure had been effective to a point, it had let in a small owl and lots of gnats and other insects. The owl was chased out by Sheriff Reeves’s deputies, but many of the insects would remain in the courtroom and torment those in attendance throughout the day. The open windows also gave some the impression that sitting on the windowsills would be permitted. Judge Parks had anticipated such an infraction and a deputy quickly dislodged the offenders, who were forced to watch through the windows from outside.
The mood abruptly tensed and hushed moments later as Court Reporter Clarence McCartha, the clerks, and the lawyers entered, the lawyers solemnly taking their places at their respective tables and commencing to rustle papers. Next came the twelve jurors, solemnly nodding, occasionally smiling to their friends and neighbors in the packed courtroom, but avoiding eye contact with the lawyers as they had been instructed to do by Judge Parks.
It was time for the defendant to be brought in. At Foster Beck’s insistence, Charles White’s face had been shaved and his hair neatly trimmed, and he had been loaned a set of civilian clothes before leaving Kilby prison, but there had been a question about whether he would have to wear his shackles in the courtroom. “As Blackstone wrote as long ago as 1769, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England,” Foster had argued to Judge Parks in chambers, “unless there is a danger, a defendant must be brought to bar without irons or any manner of shackles. The State of Alabama has not shown there to be any danger.”
Judge Parks agreed. The defendant would not wear shackles when in the presence of the jury. As a result, Charles White was able to walk in with only a deputy holding his arm and to make his way unassisted to his counsel’s table.
“All rise,” an assistant clerk commanded the moment Charles was seated. The assistant clerk had moved to Troy from Boston. Despite having lived in Alabama for ten years, he had retained a stentorian Boston accent, which gave a martial tone to the words “All rise,” the signal for Judge W. L. Parks to enter the courtroom.
My Father and Atticus Finch Page 7