CHAPTER 7

From Scottsboro to Decatur (1933)

We borrowed a car—a car a bit too conspicuous, perhaps, and a car with the prime error of having New York license plates—and left for Decatur. They were being tried; we wanted to see that trial.1 It was not to be read in newspapers, we thought, but something to be seen. There was no assurance that we would get in the courtroom, since our credentials could not compare in assurance with those of the New York Times. But there would be other people like ourselves down there, reporting, and anxious above all things that the Scottsboro boys be free, and the issues that had grown to immensity out of their unique case be won. However, the car we rode in had New York license plates.

The road to Decatur is lined with wide fields, with billboards, hitchhikers, and stretches of mountains and farms. In Baltimore, at five in the morning, the streets are asleep. In Washington, morning comes on the city swiftly—papers are sold on corners, decrying the move to have Negroes on the Scottsboro jury. Just south of the bridge, we come to the first railroad station marked in one corner “White Entrance” and in the other “Negro.”

From raw March in New York City, we enter the warmer South. In the back of our minds we remember the slogans: “There is terror in Alabama,” “Free the Scottsboro boys.”

Virginia is long and green, and peaceful with Spring. The fields look moist and fertile; horses stand quietly in the pastures; pale cows stretch their throats for the rich grass. It seems impossible that the stories we have heard of fear and hatred are not exaggerated. This is, for two of us, our first trip South. The other grins a bit when we go pastoral. We drive very fast and steadily, eager to reach Decatur and the trial.

The second night was long. The country seemed to rush into greenness by morning, as we crossed Tennessee into Alabama. The roads wriggled steeply down the sides of the mountain-chain, and we looked over the first plainlands of north Alabama. Wooden houses stood tentatively on posts; little dark children sat on the porches, still half-asleep. We drove down the highway into Scottsboro. Farmers were up, and deputy sheriffs. The town is built around a large square, the dark houses face the Jackson County courtroom. A soft, finely wooded hill leans over the town. It still seems hard to believe that this place is the town that has been so bitter with the trial. That Fair Day two years ago seems very far away from us. Two stony-looking tall men turn and stare after the car. One of us had been threatened with lynching three weeks ago in Scottsboro, for being in town to do newspaper work; and our car has a New York license.

Scottsboro, Huntsville, Paint Rock, are names which have become legends in the Scottsboro case. We go through, following the railroad tracks part of the way, wondering just where the fight on the train took place, just where the white boys jumped off.2 We lurch over the tracks at Paint Rock, where the train was stopped. A bus passes us, crowded with white children on their way to school. Some little Negro children, just the same age, turn and watch the bus, and continue walking in the other direction to their school. We go on. Farmers crowd herds of cows out of our way. An old man flicks his whip at a mule. Some Negroes, walking at the roadside, do not turn, as the white boys do, to ask us for a lift. They have been taught better. In the South, Negroes walk. We had taken a student at the University of Virginia down the road a way. He had not heard of the case; he said he supposed the Negroes had problems. He was a junior in a university. A homeless boy we had given a lift knew. People were talking in Chattanooga.3 He knew about Negro problems. He had had a fight with a Negro boy a while back, and had been given ten days in jail. He had been drunk. The Negro was given six weeks. We told both of these boys what we knew about Scottsboro. To the University boy we gave a copy of the “Call to Action” for the Conference on Negro Student Problems.4

But that was all different. That was in the North. We would not give copies of the “Call” to people in Decatur. We were there to report.

The signs pointing to Decatur and Scottsboro were strange to see on a roadside, after having seen the names in newsprint for so long. We had a feeling that we were entering strange land, but the fields were very peaceful. The Negro houses looked like some of the houses in the Central Park Hooverville, but they were surrounded with wet fields instead of the rubble of New York City.5 We thought that the Hooverville people might envy these, the Negroes too, who could have country and air and fishing, even when they were poor. This was our first trip South.

Decatur is approached over a concrete bridge. It is built along two streets, Bank Street, which has cafeterias and grocery stores, the post office, and a small block lined with empty stores, with a gas station on one corner and a drugstore across the street—a Negro drugstore. On the other street is the courthouse of Morgan County, which stands next to the jail, an undertaker’s establishment, more cafeterias, a picture-house—the usual array. The rest of the town includes private houses, a bungalow-model library, a few soft drink bottling factories, the building that has been recently converted into National Guard quarters, and a candy-stand slapped up across the street from the courthouse. Decatur is doing good business on the trial. We found that out soon, and completely.

The judge had called a recess that day. We looked for the newspapermen, stopping in a small colony on the outskirts of the residential district. We went across the bridge again, and were told we could find more reporters in the Magnolia Drug Store. The car had New York license plates. That was our big mistake. Standing in front of the Magnolia Drug Store, which is across the street from the filling-station, we noticed a blue roadster which approached the street corner, turned in a wide arc, and retired down the street. We drove out that afternoon to the red-and-tawny cliffs behind the town. We had not slept since we left New York, and the cliffs were sunny. The South, we thought, is very peaceful. Decatur will be quiet during the rest of the trial. We were glad of that. Disturbance would not help the Scottsboro boys at all. If the town stayed quiet, they would be surer, certainly, of a fair trial. That night we went back to the drugstore, and one of us went in, while the other two waited. A roadster came to the corner, turned its headlights on us, swung in a wide arc, and disappeared. Various cars came, separately and at intervals, trailing a bright path of light over our car, and pulled down the block.

Court opened early the next morning. National Guardsmen stood, dapper and khaki, leaning on their bayoneted guns at the head of the stairs. More Guardsmen surrounded the entrance and the path from the jail to the courthouse. We went to the jail to get press passes from the sheriff. Sheriff Bud Davis is a huge man, and looked twice as large in the confinement of the jail room. The building itself is rickety, with holes where bricks have fallen loose, and a chewed-up wall. The Sheriff’s pass took us beyond the bayonets and into the courtroom. Morgan County has come out in full force for the Scottsboro trial, but the court seats only four hundred and fifty. We approached the trial with the seriousness that most history books have failed to evoke. It was the gravest thing that had happened in a long time. Here we were to see at last Leibowitz, who had been defending the boys with skill and courage; and Attorney General Knight, a little man, darting questions; and Haywood Patterson, who was up first for trial, a tall, quiet, dark boy, sitting over in the corner, forcing himself to listen through the tedium of most of the technical work, sometimes genuinely excited by the proceedings.6 Here the history of the American Negroes was being made: the fight for jury service, for equalization of rights, and for his life, and the lives of those others.

I was down there to report the trial. I shall not report it here. You will have known about it already from the news accounts. I felt that no news articles could have reached the value of those few days I spent in Decatur. But the story developed into something different for me, and from being the article of an individual who went down to Decatur, this becomes the protest of a student, interested in student problems, and involved in Decatur because of that.

The two days at court went naturally for us. We sat in at the sessions all day every day. Sometimes we went back to the drugstore, which was a Negro drugstore, down the street, and the cars would come, and swing long headlights across us. We had a feeling we were being trailed. But then, we had New York licenses. Some of the New York people had had the sense and the money to change to Alabama tags. We had not. There was talk of a meeting in Decatur, like the one recently held in Birmingham, that broke the Jim Crow rulings to protest in favor of the Scottsboro boys. The Jim Crow laws had become a very real thing to us since we crossed the Mason-Dixon line. But nothing was done about that meeting. In court we talked to William Jones, the editor of the Afro-American, about the Conference, but we distributed none of the “Calls.”7 There is a fine white school in Decatur, but we saw no Negro high schools or colleges that could have sent delegates. Decatur believes in “keeping the niggers in their place.” But we had seen no terror, and it looked as though the Scottsboro boys would not have to fear the dreaded lynching that so many people had prophesied.

On Friday night, we sat in the car in front of the drugstore. The town was very quiet. One of us went into the store, and the other two, who were tired and had nothing to do but wait—Decatur retires at eight—gradually fell asleep. We were awakened by voices around us, very loud, very gruff and authoritative. “All right,” we were told, “you’re the people we’re looking for. Go on—drive on down to the station.” I asked where the station was, and drove the man down. It was hard to see him, in the dark of the car, and just waked from sleep. Another car, full of police, followed us.

We reached the police station, and went into the large, brown hall filled with chairs. A dais with a judge’s bench was lit by a hanging light at the far end, and we were told to sit down. “Will you open your bags?” they demanded. We wanted to know on what charge we were there. “Never mind,” they said. They were very sure of their position. Decatur is a small town, and does not have the chance to show its authority often. “Open them—if you want, we can get a search warrant.” The man was pale and fleshy, and his flat cap made him look a bit ridiculous. He was one of about six. We opened the bag. It was my bag, and there was nothing in it but clothes, and some copy paper, and about thirty “Calls” to a Negro Student Conference, to be held at MacMillan Theatre, Columbia University, New York City.8 They looked relieved. This was what they wanted. This was proof. We were in the station all that night, waiting for the “chief,” waiting for them to make some charge against us.9 A few men came up to me, one by one, and I explained what the “Calls” were. They listened. “Weren’t times hard for the white students?” Of course they were, they said, one by one—anybody would admit that. “And if white students couldn’t get employment, what was going to happen to the Negroes?” Well, whatever happened, no white woman had any right being seen in Niggertown, no, or even being in a car in those streets. Interested in niggers—what nationality was I? American! he repeated blankly, incredulous. Was this my first trip down South? Well, if that was so, I’d find out how much things were different. I’d find out that niggers weren’t to be talked to—why, he continued, he’d just as soon slap a nigger in the face as call him mister. Yes, he said, you’d better not go into Georgia. Down there they’re giving folks like you eighteen to twenty years. He turned from me. “Nigger!” he shouted, and grabbed the sleeping boy by the collar. “Nigger!” he said, “what were you doing with these?” There had been some Workers Ex-Servicemen League cards found in a suitcase.10 “And you . . .” to another Negro—“Trying to stir up more trouble . . . You’ll be trying to make laws for yourself, some of these days.” “No, sir,” said the man, very quietly, “No, sir.”

“Well,” the officer said, “now look here. We’re honest, law-abiding citizens, and we didn’t want this trial anyway. The fair name of Morgan County’s not going to be spoiled by no nigger-trial held here, and none of you thieves are going to come into Decatur and raise hell by talking to the niggers. Don’t you know better, you white folks, than to talk to niggers? You just stay out—what do you care anyhow, what happens to a lot of nigger-boys?” He was being very honest, very sincere in his feeling. He really wanted to know, behind all his feeling as a police officer that here were prisoners to be “handled properly.”

We were in the station until about four-thirty. The police were getting in touch with the Attorney General, to find out what was to be done with us—with the “chief,” to find a good charge to place against us. We asked what we were charged with. “Contempt of court,” they told us. “You’re cited for contempt.” We had been arrested for associating with Negro reporters, and for the fact that I carried in my suitcase “Calls” to a student conference to be held at Columbia University.

We left the station house and got in the car.11 Gas was running low—among the disabilities of the car was its gluttony for gas—and we didn’t want to be stuck. We drew to the curb. One of the ubiquitous police cars passed, and someone shouted, “Go on, get out of there.” It was like Decatur to catch us for a framed-up traffic violation at the end of this evening. We pulled out, and drove slowly through the town. Birmingham would be the place to go, we thought. Birmingham would be civilized and decent—and we might be able to get legal advice about our “contempt of court” charge.

But they were out for us. We drove very slowly—someone had warned us that the mobs were around. And Decatur had been restless and explosive enough during the last few days to be ready for anything. One of us had been run out of Scottsboro at a gun’s end; Decatur knows its precedents.12 Morgan County was not going to have its fair name tarnished. We stopped before a small knot of men to ask whether it was all right to park in the town, and to inquire of an officer the way to the Birmingham highway. The sky was turning peacock-green at the edges. Everything seemed quite peaceful. But we knew better, after that night in police court.

The one who had left us to ask the law came back. He grinned. “We’re under arrest,” he said. Twice in the evening. Southern hospitality. There had been hundreds of flies dead in the globe of the court-lamp, clustered blackly around the bottom. The story went that in Cullman County there were six Negroes left—the rest had been killed.13 That, of course, was a story. There is another one that Decatur stands third in the United States homicide list.14 This may be unfounded, but at five in the morning, arrested fifteen minutes after our first release, it appears very near truth. A thick man turned a flashlight in our faces, and asked about our credentials, and the ownership of the car. Another came. We could smell the whisky almost before he opened the car door. “You know what I think,” he said hoarsely, “I think this is all so much rot—where’s the other guy?” He was coming out of the court. The man went up to meet him. Together they returned to the car.

“Well,” he said, “this man is a plainclothes man who says he wants to help us.” “Yes,” said the man, and the whisky fumes leaped on the air, “I’m sick of all this chasing around, and talking about red literature.15 What have they got on you? Nothing at all. And that whole gang, ready to beat you up, ready maybe to string you up. Lookyere, I’m sick of it.” Well, we wanted to know, would he put us on the road to Birmingham? Sure he would, and he’d send us to a gas station down the road where they’d give us gas on credit, in his name. Here, he said, turn here. We turned, and he got out. The sky was almost grey at the edges.

The road to Birmingham stopped at a crossroad. To left and right was highway. How could we know this was not a trap, after the night’s events? How could we know what the plainclothes man wanted? A lynch gang could be posted outside the town with no danger at all to the fair name of Morgan County. And they had threatened violence. We turned in the road, and headed back for town. Decatur was not inviting, just then. But they had made mistakes all night—telling us we had registered at the hotel under false names, accusing us of having been in Scottsboro two years ago, putting us on the wrong road to Birmingham. We headed for the place where the reporters were staying. Cars turned corners. They had wanted to beat us up, we had been told—for carrying “Calls,” for talking to Negroes on the streets and in the shops of Decatur. There were a bad five minutes before we got to the hotel, before we left our typewriter as security for a safe night’s lodging—the sky was quite light then, and the streets empty.

By morning, the story of our arrest had got around. We were advised that the best thing to do would be not to appear to face our charges, so that the issue might have less publicity, and not interfere with the process of the case. It was true that publicity given to us might have influenced opinion about the case—but to remember that we had been held for nothing, that we were innocent of any misdemeanor, and wanted more than all things to see the Scottsboro boys freed!

The court had kept the “Calls.” They are not going to be circulated in Decatur. Decatur is a town of contented cows, and men with faces burned the color of the bright cliffs, whose foreheads are innocently white where their caps have rested, and who hate anyone, white or black, who makes the slightest move to help the Negro, to assure him protection or relief or friendliness. Decatur’s students will not have representatives at the Conference on Negro Student Problems.

We found the clear highway leading to Birmingham, which is civilized, which would mean flight from the barbarian country of green fields and wide farms. A truck followed us, suspiciously close, trailing us doggedly. Soon it passed us and seemed to lead the way. We kept it in sight. At the next town it slowed down. They might have phoned after us, we thought. We drove on, quite steadily, keeping the truck in sight. The only things we had left in Decatur were some copy paper and some “Calls.” We had taken a lot away, things we will not forget, resentments that will not heal.

The truck finally turned off into a sideroad. The drivers might have been farmers, going home. It was Farmers’ Day in Decatur. We remembered Fair Day in Scottsboro. But the truck was gone. The road ahead of us lay clear to Birmingham.

(Student Review, 1933)