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Authors: Joseph Madison Beck

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“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

F
AMED 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

A
CCORDING 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.

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