All God's Dangers (58 page)

What more did they ask me? Not much, not much. They didn't mention the union. They talked about that as much as they wanted outside the courtroom, but inside, it weren't spoken of. They all knowed what it was, and that it
might
have been involved, but they didn't want to consider that
their
niggers would have anything to do with a union. They wanted that thing to perish—so they didn't ask me. Just a matter of a nigger done got into trouble tryin to destroy their way of life.

T
RIAL
didn't last but one day. Started one mornin in May and it was over when they took a notion some hour before dark; quit it and left the thing open. And the next day, mornin, didn't have nothin to do but put the sentence on me. Jury come in to the courtroom first thing that mornin and pronounced me guilty. They'd separated me from the other boys when it come to the trial, but we all stood up there together at the sentencin—me, Leroy Roberts, Ches Todd, Wat Smith. And they tried Sam Todd and Willy Turpin, but they was tried after we was put in prison. Them officers took down a bunch of names at Virgil Jones' house that mornin, but there's numbers of em didn't meet that trial—

Judge Bolin called me up to the stand and gived me twelve to fifteen years in the state penitentiary on good behavior. He sung to me some that I'd been misled—he didn't say who misled me, just that I was misled. That “misled” didn't strike my shirttail—but they made that shot touch me; didn't shoot me with no bullets, shot me with shot, they made
that
touch me. But nothin they said didn't touch me because I knowed that was their interpretation and wasn't no more right in it than in their laws and rulins. They had we colored people muzzled down here in this country and didn't allow us no break for nothin. So, when old Judge Bolin put the sentence on me—twelve to fifteen years on good behavior—he didn't put so much on none of the rest of the boys, none of em; didn't give em over seven years. That was Leroy Roberts, Ches Todd, and Wat Smith. Of course, none of em didn't talk to that deputy sheriff like I did, I was the leader in that—that's why they stuck so much time on me. When the thing was sounded out, I was the head, and they
put all the time on me they could, they doubled it up on me. It appeared I was standin for the whole organization.

And then, what hurt so bad, Lawyer Stein appealed my trial—done carried me on and put me in the penitentiary and when that appeal time come, I was carried back to Beaufort. That same old judge overruled it again. Lawyer Stein took up the case. He didn't beg, didn't beg; he told em straight: they done mishandled my preliminary trial down to where they done knocked it out altogether. Then they didn't do right by me durin my main trial, didn't allow my defense to ask the questions and hear the answers they was due to be allowed—that was a shame. But the judge wouldn't admit that. Lawyer Stein told him, “Judge Bolin, you know so-and-so-and-so, you know so-and-so-and-so—” “I don't remember—” I was lookin right at the judge—“I don't remember—” Couldn't get him to remember nothin. Throwed the case out. That was my education right there—

The nigger was disrecognized; the white man in this country had everything fixed and mapped out. Didn't allow no niggers to stand arm and arm together. The rule worked just like it had always worked: they was against me definitely just like they was against those Scottsboro boys. And in the present time durin of the two cases—against the Scottsboro boys and against me—the Negro stood a light show; he wasn't allowed the full extent of his oath. And for what cause? The white man could get all out of the nigger that he wanted to know about before goin to the courts. They already had the dope they wanted on me and they didn't ask me for my story. The nigger's voice just wasn't substantious to stand up for hisself. The trials was just a sham, just a sham, both of em. I might tell em everything just like it was but they'd kick against me in court, in regards to my color, unless it come up this way: now a nigger could go in court and testify against his own color in favor of the white man, and his word was took. But when it come to speakin out in his own defense, nigger weren't heard in court. White folks is white folks, niggers is niggers, and a nigger's word never has went worth a penny unless some white man backed it up and told the same thing that the nigger told and was willin to stand up for the nigger. But if another white man spoke against the nigger and against the white man that was supportin him, why, they'd call that first white man “nigger-lover” and they wouldn't believe a word he said.

Take the Scottsboro boys: them girls, some of em, that reported them boys, changed their song. Them Negroes never bothered us, they said—I heard it that the words was spoke in law, one or two of them white girls, one in particular I know, she denied it to the last that them Negro boys didn't have nothin to do with her. And one of em got up and testified that they did. Well, that was just agitatin the thing against the nigger right on. And this'n that told it that the Negroes never had nothin to do with us noway, they didn't believe her; they went by what the other one said, that the niggers did meddle em. The average white man of this country wanted to believe her story—and it reached for miles and miles away, accordin to my knowledge.

Heywood Patterson, Andrew Wright—was two of them Scottsboro boys, and there was six or seven others. And I was told that people from all across the waters sent letters in here forbiddin em of destroyin them boys. They sent letters on top of letters in favor of them boys. One lawyer come down here and outlawed their trial, got two of them boys, at that period, and carried em away from here with him as he went. I heard that. But that Heywood Patterson, they held him a long time. They got down to just Heywood Patterson, holdin him here. But last count I heard, didn't do em no good, Heywood Patterson escaped.
^a

L
AWYER
S
TEIN
stuck with me to the last. He even come to see me after they put me in the penitentiary. He made the trip over there one Sunday—that was the last time I seed him. Last time he seed me—outside of hearin about me and I'm satisfied he heard—he didn't come to the penitentiary but one time and he come down there and told me when he got ready to go, “Well, Shaw, I'm obliged to hit the train back home. I have to go now. I'm goin to tell the ILD people in Montgomery to look after you here. So be good. Just go by their orders and make out the best you can. I'm goin to stick with you, too. But I can't stay no longer, I got to go.”

Now what he done, I couldn't swear to it, and what he didn't do, I couldn't swear to it. But I know by the fact that they never did give me no trouble at all through prison that he done something. And the ILD sent me five dollars a month the whole time that I was in prison. And they was helpin my wife, too. That's what the organization believed in—takin care of a man's family when he's pulled away from em. It's scandalous the way they done we colored people down here along that line. When they'd take a colored man away from his home his folks would go to the devil. Take a colored man away from his home, put him in jail or the penitentiary, they'd jump back and put his folks to work—the white people would, moneyed people.

P
UT
me in Beaufort jail less'n a week till Christmas, 1932, and I had a birthday there in jail, on the twenty-eighth day of December. And they carried me out of there in May, 1933, to prison. Well, durin the time that Vernon and his mother come to see me and see about me I gived Vernon my laws and orders—he didn't seem to panic and flicker and he was the only child I knowed of was threatened to be killed. I told him, “Now I'm away and will be away for twelve years, twelve to fifteen years. I've got nothin to depend on but the people that's for me and God above. I'm leavin you all at the mercy of the world. They aint goin to bother you now, I don't reckon, I hope they don't. You all's got a chance to make it. Vernon, you are not the oldest boy in the family, you are second. But now you have to take the place of the first. Stick to your mother and your little underage sisters and brothers and take care of em the best you can; stick to em until your daddy gets back.”

He done it, he done it. He got married right after they carried
me to Spignor and he brought his wife into his mother's house. And my wife treated his wife just like she was her own dear daughter.

So, I just give up my hold on the family then—I seed that they had messed me up all they could. And I told Vernon, it was my rulins and I held it out to him, “Regardless to circumstances, as long as God lets you live, stay with your mother and the rest of the children.”

W
HEN
the roadrider that went around to the county prison departments pickin up criminals to carry em into Kilby—the day he drove his truck up to the Beaufort jailhouse to pick up me and Leroy Roberts and Ches Todd and Wat Smith, when we walked out to climb on the truck, Mr. Kurt Beall told that roadrider, “Them four sonofabitches ought to be dead.”

The old man said, “Yeaaah.” But he didn't tarry and jaw with that big sheriff. Loaded us up and pulled out. Way that evenin, late, he drove all up in the upper part of the state pickin up prisoners. Alabama stands up as high as Fort Payne and he drove up thataway, though he didn't go so far. Took us on a roundabout trip and when he wound up he unloaded us at Kilby, head prison camp for the state of Alabama.

We rested over there Thursday night, Friday—Friday they lost no time with us—Friday night; Saturday they classed us up. Wanted to know what sort of occupation we was fit for. Called us into a office there one at a time and asked us what we could do, what we been doin: “What was you doin on the outside? What was your job? Farmer? Public worker? What was you?”

I knowed what all them boys was doin before they got to the
penitentiary; they was nothin but farmers—me a farmer, Leroy Roberts a farmer, Ches Todd a farmer, and Wat Smith a farmer. Never knowed nothin but to farm, that's all they ever knowed, and me too. All right. They classed me and Leroy Roberts and Ches Todd up for the farm at Spignor. And Wat Smith, they was a little undecided about him, they was watchin him—there was a point to that, I think, but there's some points you don't never understand. I knowed Wat well. He was a farmer and he'd always worked on halves and he done most of his workin on halves for Mr. Lucius Little. Didn't live far from me. Well, they sent Wat Smith to Atmore prison, road camp. He stayed down there thirteen months or less—I heard this before they transferred me to Wilcox County—and they found Wat Smith at the bottom of a well. Poor fellow, they announced he had some amount of money in his pocket, near a hundred dollars—he'd been seen with that much money—and he was found in that well dead and his money was gone. They claimed some old half-crazy nigger robbed him and killed him. Well, I don't dispute that, but who told him to do it? I learnt this much: they had some sort of grudge against Wat Smith before he was arrested. He had some enemies in the country for some cause—I never did learn what it was about and I also never come to know how come he had a hundred dollars in his pocket—and I just decided that they followed him to prison someway. And when they got him in a place that he couldn't help hisself, they bumped him off.

T
HEY
had at Spignor a great territory where they was raisin cotton and vegetables—I knowed everything a poor colored farmer could know about them crops. Had plow mules in the barn, and horses; had hogs in the pen. And had cells for us to live in—long wood houses painted on the outside, double buildins separated by halls. Them cell buildins held a hundred and sixty men apiece; mighta had more than that too, but I heard em say that them cells was
able
to hold a hundred and sixty men. And every bed was a double bed, a bed underneath and a bed overhead, didn't take up no more room than a single bed. Old iron beds, upright beds. They locked them cell doors at night and kept lights, electric lights, swingin over you all night long. I weren't used to that. I'd lived in the country all my life and I was used to sleepin in the dark.