On the Laps of Gods

March 10, 2008
On September 30, 1919, a group of white planters tried to shut down a black sharecroppers’ meeting in Arkansas; a sheriff was killed in the melee, and the next day hordes of whites traveled to the county. Thus began the Elaine Massacre, the “indiscriminate hunting down, shooting and killing of Negroes,” as one white witness described it. Whitaker (The Mapmaker’s Wife
) reconstructs the “killing fields” where by October 3, five white men and over 100 black men, women and children were killed. Hundreds of black sharecroppers were arrested; after torture-obtained confessions, 74 men were convicted and 12 received the death penalty. Whitaker examines the trial, the ensuing appeals and the heroic—ultimately successful—efforts of the lawyer and former slave, Scipio Africanus Jones and the 12 defendants who were finally set free in 1925. His research is thorough, particularly in his use of Arkansas resources; the arrangement of his documentation, however, makes tracking his sources a put-the-jigsaw-together exercise for the reader. Whitaker’s balanced report of what are, at times, diametrically opposed versions of events illuminates a dismal corner of American history.

July 15, 2008
Whitaker ("The Mapmaker's Wife"), a journalist who usually writes on topics in popular science and medicine, plunges full force into the legal and historical significance of a U.S. Supreme Court decision overlooked by many historians. "Moore v. Dempsey" (1923) concerned an appeal from five blacks convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death by the Court of the State of Arkansas. The convictions stemmed from a 1919 Arkansas race riot in which a white man was killed and several people of both races were injured. Whitaker shows how NAACP attorneys struggled to defend the accused in the face of an all-white jury, prosecution witnesses who were whipped if they didn't lie, a mob outside the courthouse threatening violence if there were no convictions, court-appointed defense attorneys who refused to call any witnesses, and a trial and deliberation that took less than an hour. Whitaker carefully traces the progress of the defendants' federal appeal all the way up to a Supreme Court dominated by a group of crusty old men, a few of whom had the heart and mind to see through the sham of Arkansas justice, overturn the state court ruling, and set the men free. He praises Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, noting in particular the influence of that Boston Brahmin on the other justices, who finally agreed with Holmes that "counsel, jury and judge were swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion." Whitaker also notes the exemplary work of Scipio Africanus Jones, the NAACP attorney, born a slave, whose effective constitutional arguments turned the tide in favor of the defendants. Highly recommended for academic and law libraries.Philip Y. Blue, New York State Supreme Court Criminal Branch Law Lib., New York

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