‘South Carolina Daily Press Points With Pride And Views With Alarm’ - 1947

“The daily press in South Carolina is taking a justifiable pride in the dispatch with which state officers, working in cooperation with the FBI, appear to be clearing up the ‘mystery’ surrounding the lynching of one Willie Earle in Greenville County last week.  The newspapers point with pride to the arrest of 31 white men, many of whom confessed to participation in the mob murder, and the proper authorities are due for congratulations there cannot be the slightest doubt. In fact, they even go so far as to point up the contrast between this and the complete lack of progress in the investigation of Georgia’s quadruple lynching of last July. This is all well and good, of course, but the South Carolina daily press, in my opinion, completely nullifies what it is trying to do when it begins to view with alarm and raises, by innuendo, the spurious doctrine of states’ rights by advocating a hands-off policy by the Attorney General of the United States, and at the same time attacks an organization which is seriously trying to stamp out this sort of thing.

Such an editorial appeared in The State, of Columbia last week.  To add insult to injury, the writer of the editorial didn’t even get correct the name of the organization he criticized so caustically, referring to the Southern Conference for Human Welfare as ‘The Southern Conference of Human Relations’.  Said the editorial captioned: ‘No Need for Federal Interference”: We note that some fellow named Dombrowski, representing the Southern Conference of Human Relations, has demanded a federal grand jury investigation of the Greenville lynching.  He had wired Attorney General Tom Clark to that effect. ‘Evidence’, according to Doctor Dombrowski, ‘strongly suggests the violation of federal civil rights statutes.’  Therefore, he contends federal action is needed ‘to supplement the vigorous work of the state under the direction of the governor.’ If Attorney General Clark would attempt to take over this investigation, or meddle in it in any way, it would be most unfortunate—in fact, an insult to the State of South Carolina.  Action on this lynching has been prompt (even Doctor Dombrowski admits it), and any attempt to fly-blow local sincerity or effectiveness  by federal interference should be protested vigorously. Never in the history of our country—North, South, East, or West—has murder by a mob, regardless of name applied to the slaying, been more fearlessly and more promptly investigated and solved than in the case of Willie Earle’s lynching… The single warrant which was served on all of the 31 accused charges them collectively with committing ‘offense of murder in that the said defendants willfully, maliciously, feloniously and unlawfully did conspire, congregate and assemble themselves into a mob and while so assembled did by force, threats and intimidation and with the use of shotguns and other weapons, did force the jailer of Pickens County…to open the jail cell and turn over to said defendants the said Willie Earle, a prisoner within his custody, and did by force of arms, convey one Willie Earle to Greenville, South Carolina, and then and there did shoot, cut, stab, beat and bruise the said Willie Earle, thereby mortally wounding him…’. And, despite all this under the civil rights statutes of the United States of America, the civil rights of Willie Earle have not been violated yet.”

BEHIND THE HEADLINES:

"White Supremacy Is Facing Acid Test In Greenville, South Carolina Lynch Trial"

(Further evidence of my father’s earned accolades for his writings can be found in another follow-up article on the tragedy of Willie Earle.  For two reasons I include this piece: further evidence of the injustice meted upon Blacks in the South at the time, and the skill with which my father took an absolutely repulsive and disgusting subject and rendered it palatable for the everyday reader.  It is dated May 24, 1947): “Greenville, South Carolina—In the time-worn annuls of South Carolina’s archaic jurisprudence, the South’s largest and most unsavory mass murder-lynch trial will be entered into the records as the State of South Carolina versus John Doe, et al. The designation is purely academic and at best, is a misnomer. For all practical purposes, the case might just as easily be recorded as Democracy versus White Supremacy.  For the latter is indeed facing its acid test in County General Sessions Court here on Greenville’s Main Street in the heart of this northwestern South Carolina textile community. For whether Greenville, or the State of South Carolina, for that matter, likes it or not, this bailiwick has become, not only the cynosure of the world’s eyes, but a testing ground for democracy—not as it is commonly applied to America’s largest racial minority, but as the founding fathers of this the mightiest of nations envisioned it as a living reality when they affixed their signatures to the Constitution of the United States. For here thirty-one Anglo-Saxon males have been brought before the bar of justice because they-as one of them expressed it in a signed statement-decided to ‘go rabbit hunting in Georgia,’ a refined term for the particularly southern pastime of lynching. Here, thirty-one white men, the majority of them totally illiterate or semi-illiterate, according to the trial record, are being called upon to show cause why they should not be called upon to expiate the crime of murder because they decided to take the law into their own hands.

Here, these same thirty-one members of what they like to consider a super race, are before the hustings charged with either active or passive participation in the heinous lynching in which a Negro American was the victim, but in a courtroom in which the spectator-members of that victim’s race are relegated to the courtroom gallery which they must reach via a segregated side entrance, and up three flights of stairs. Here, in this Lawrenceburg, Tennessee trial in reverse, a total of twenty-six ‘statements’ signed by the accused in which they admit their participation in the lynching of a known epileptic are being ‘used in court against’ them in identically the same manner such evidence is obtained-and used-against dark-skinned Americans. Here, for the moment at least, ‘the mills of the gods are grinding slowly, but exceedingly fine,’ for three of the defendants who, according to the record, can neither read nor write, and for the alleged trigger man in the mob murder who was clever enough to lead a blood-thirsty mob of hoodlums in spite of his second-grade education. Here, in the heart of the deep South, the unprecedented lynch trial was still in progress as this was being written. But it was generally agreed that regardless of the outcome, one thing is crystal clear even at this stage: It settles, once and for all, the highly controversial question of whether or not members of this lynch mob can ply their vicious trade with impunity, or can be brought to heel. Here, in short, is being enacted one of the most dramatic courtroom dramas of this or any other century.  And here sits a judge who is obviously doing his level best within the framework of the laws of South Carolina and the United States of America, to square our democracy with our Constitution.  Here in Greenville, South Carolina, white supremacy is indeed on trial, and Democracy, for once, is in the role of prosecuting attorney. Greenville’s man in the street, if he is white and if he condescends to talk to you about the trial, will say frankly that all of the 31 defendants, including Trigger Man Roosevelt Carlos Hurd, ought to be turned loose forthwith.  Greenville’s man in the street, if he happens to be a Negro, will tell you in a hushed whisper:  ‘It’s a crying shame, that’s what it is'..."

BEHIND THE HEADLINES: "Scene Of Lynch Trial An Area Of  Complex Paradoxes"

(This May 31, 1947 article further explores the Willie Earle lynching case, but captures the reader’s attention with a most unexpected and refreshing twist.  Here, I include only the most relevant material): “Here nestled deep in the fastness of the red clay hills of the Palmetto state’s famed Piedmont section, lies an area characterized by a complexity of paradoxes. Here in a geographical subdivision, which in recent months has become anathema in the eyes of the civilized world because of a particularly atrocious lynching, artificial racial barriers have had their roots fastened deep in the hidebound traditions of a vicious segregation system for generations.  But it is here one finds the fascination of strange things and still stranger personalities. Here, the virus of racial prejudice reaches its zenith, and in days gone by, I am told, the better class of whites would not even condescend to discuss the racial problem.  That this particular state of affairs has now been somewhat abated is no particular tribute to anybody’s efforts toward an amelioration of the problem, but only serves to point up its seriousness in the light of Greenville County’s notorious Willie Earle lynching and a mass murder trial absolutely without precedent in the South… Here, in the picturesque red clay foothills of the Piedmont, I have seen a highly successful Missionary Baptist minister, pastor of two rural churches with a combined membership in excess of 2500, who, on Sunday when he packs his brief case preparatory to going to church, includes among its appurtenances a Smith & Wesson .38 calibre revolver! And this same gentleman of the cloth, a confirmed realist, makes no bones of the fact that he preaches to his members the expediency of a doctrine which calls for the possession of ‘a Bible, a hymnal, and a shotgun’; a man of God who believes that ‘the Lord will come in an emergency, but there’s no harm in being able to protect yourself until he gets there because sometimes He’s a little busy and might be delayed.’ Here in this area below the Mason-Dixon line—paradox of paradoxes—one finds white South Carolinians attending Negro churches in some of the rural areas! And here, in the county seat of Greenville County, South Carolina I found ONE white man who dared to stand up and be counted on the side of right and law and order, and thus stake the entire future of his taxicab business on the outcome of his stand in the trial of the Willie Earle lynchers. The gentleman-martyr not only let it be known to all and sundry that he thought the whole sorry mess smelled to high heaven, but backed up his opinions with action by ordering all of his cab drivers, following the lynching episode, to report to police headquarters to see if any of them could be identified as members of the lynch mob!”

BEHIND THE HEADLINES "You Never Can Tell About Testimony At A Lynch Trial"

(This follow up article dated June 7, 1947 gives further documentation of how thoroughly researched and meticulous my father was in his pursuit of a story.  Again, his sprightly style doesn’t give the story away until the very end.  And again, I found his style in writing it almost delightful for, not all stories about the Deep South need be of a stereotypically racist bent.) “The story didn’t seem particularly important at the time especially to a couple of representatives of the Negro press covering the South’s largest and most sensational mass murder trial from the vantage point of the courthouse gallery.  But then, of course, you never can tell.  It was mid-afternoon of the fifth day of the Greenville County (S.C) General Sessions Court hearing for 31 white men accused as the lynchers of a 24-year-old known epileptic: the little county courthouse was hot—insufferably hot, and the Negro spectators, perched high up in the gallery, were very restless indeed. And so, under the circumstances, the testimony didn’t seem particularly important. The obviously nervous white man on the witness stand was just another State’s witness, and a very unwilling one at that.  He had been recalled to the stand immediately after court reconvened for the afternoon session because vigorous objections to the nature of his testimony had been raised by the defense at the morning session.  The presiding judge had duly considered the defense’s objections, had looked up the law appertaining thereto, and had decided the evidence was admissible.  The witness’ name was U.G. Fowler, a driver for Greenville’s Checker Cab Company. In effect, Fowler, who was later badly beaten for his pains, testified that he had seen a group of men—three of whom he identified by name—assembled at the Yellow Cab Company office in the frosty morning hours of last February 17, carefully planning the lynching as they took turns at a bottle of whiskey.

But his testimony did not take on real meaning until he admitted under cross  examination, that he had not wanted to appear in court as a witness in the first place, but had done so at the urgent insistence of his boss, one J.C. Johnson, operator of the Checker Cab Company.   With this declaration the two representatives of the Negro press suddenly became all attention.  This ‘J.C. Johnson’, they reasoned, MUST be a white man, and if it was true that he all but forced one of his employees to testify for the State, then it naturally followed that here was ONE white man in Greenville, South Carolina, who was not in sympathy with the lynchers and moreover, was not afraid to stand up and be counted on the side of law and order. In short, here WAS a story! We found Mr. Johnson about mid-afternoon on Saturday at his place of business. He was a big man physically, standing well over six feet in height, and weighing roughly about 250 pounds.  There appeared to be considerable hustle and bustle about his place, but he, himself, was completely unruffled.  We didn’t know exactly what to say to him at first, or whether to say anything at all, under the circumstances. But there was a touch of real friendliness in his handshake and a merry twinkle in his eye which soon put us at ease.  Mr. Johnson’s pet peeve turned out to be the Willie Earle lynching and it required only the mere mention of it and the subsequent arrests of a large number of Greenville taxi drivers, to provoke an outburst from him. ‘Personally, I don’t care anything about a man’s color,’ he declared with considerable feeling.  ‘To me he is a human being and he has a soul, whether he’s white or black.’ I had heard this sort of thing before and, was just about prepared, quite frankly, to write it off as just another outburst by another racial opportunist.  But J.C. Johnson continued to speak his piece and as he continued to talk, I became more and more convinced of his utter sincerity.  Here are some of the facts he revealed:

That the Checker Cab Company was the only one in Greenville whose drivers were not involved in the Willie Earle lynching. That, when he learned of the mob murder, he ordered every one of his drivers to report to police headquarters to see if they could be identified among the participants with the provision that if they were, their employment with him was at an immediate end. That, he further told his drivers if they contributed to a defense fund for the lynchers which he characterized as ‘a racket’, they would be fired forthwith. Furthermore, we found that Mr. Johnson backs up his words with actions.  As a result of his forthright stand in this matter he now has more business than he can handle with a complete monopoly on Greenville’s colored trade. Anybody in Greenville will tell you that on Sunday, if you want to go to any church or Sunday school anywhere in the city, or within a one-mile radius of the city limits, all you have to do is call a Checker Cab and it won’t cost you a cent!  And your race or color makes absolutely no difference! We saw the Checker Cab Co. call sheet to prove it. The testimony of U.G. Fowler didn’t seem particularly important at the time.  But then, of course, you can never tell."

= Albert L. Hinton