Harlem Redux (38 page)

He gazed at the horizon with profound longing. He should have anticipated her desire to live on Strivers’ Row. She was a realist. The house was one reason why she was attracted to him; the house, the status and the stability it stood for. That didn’t bother him because he was sure she loved him. He had sensed her adoration since the first day she had seen him, when they were children, so many years ago, long before his family became rich. He wished intensely that she had been prepared to go away with him, but why should she? What could he offer her but vague promises and undefined dreams? His shoulders slumped but his smile was valiant.

“All right, we’ll stay here, Rachel. I promise you the house and all that goes with it. If that’s what you want, that’s what you’ll have.”

He felt like a prisoner who’d been given a glimpse of freedom, then yanked back into his cage. He then saw the delight and joy in her eyes and that comforted him.

“One more thing,” she said. “I want you to accept that Lilian’s gone. You can’t bring her back. You’ll get Sweet out of the house—I don’t want him there either—but otherwise, you’ll leave him alone. No more trying to say that he killed Lilian. Agreed?”

She squeezed his hand gently and looked up at him. He was quiet, his head bent, his jaw clenched. There was a long silence. This was not what he had intended. She kissed him.

“I don’t want you to spend our married life chasing down Sweet,” she said. “I don’t want you wasting
our
time.”

He looked at her.

“I have a right to ask that of you,” she said. “God knows, I’ve waited for you long enough.”

He smiled dryly, but he thought to himself that she was right. He had kept her waiting, too long. And how much of a life could they have with him always looking back? On the other hand, how could he let Sweet get away with ...

He sighed roughly. Rachel drew a fingertip across his chin. He gazed down at her. He did care for her. And he wanted to make her happy. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps it made no sense to continue to rake up the past. Perhaps ... it was indeed time to let Lilian rest in peace. With an effort, he pushed his misgivings aside and took Rachel in his arms.

“All right. It’s agreed.”

They headed back to her apartment. She invited him in, but he turned her down. Noting the concern on her face, he hugged her again. Then he was gone. He needed to do what he did best––be alone.

26.
 
In the Belly of the Whale

If she only knew what that promise might cost us.

Public shame and social ostracism: The McKay family name, which represented such genteel dignity and pride of race, would become muddied with cowardice and mired in moral disgrace. The doors to the elegant homes and elite salons she so desperately wanted to enter would be slammed in their faces. They would not be able to walk down the street without encountering stares of disdain.

She might even leave him. What irony! He would stay in Harlem to give her pleasure, but it was this very decision that would cause her pain. Nevertheless, he would try. He owed her that much. He had abandoned her when he left Harlem those four years ago, not that he had planned to leave her, to leave anyone, when he went away that October day. It was the seventeenth of the month, 1922. He had expected to return after a couple of weeks’ work, but it hadn’t happened that way.

His assignment had taken him to Charlottesville, in Boone County, Georgia. He could still hear the train wheels screeching as the locomotive ground to a halt, the confused babble of hurried, excited voices as people climbed off, met friends, and tried to find their way.

Charlottesville was a rich little town in the southernmost part of the state, near the Florida border. David’s intent was to investigate the lynchings of five Negroes—four brothers and one of the men’s sons, an eleven-year-old boy—two weeks before.

Passing himself off as a white reporter for the
New York Sentinel,
David found it easy to get the locals to talk. They didn’t try to hide their part in the lynchings, but talked volubly, sometimes with pride. They enthusiastically described the torture, mutilation, burning, and hanging of the five victims as though they were relating a day at the circus. Many took out their “souvenirs” from the lynchings: the burnt stump of a wooden stake, a bloodstained stretch of rope, charred bones, and pickled body parts removed while the victims were still alive. At the same time, however, none of the whites he spoke to would name names. If he pressed for the identities of the mob leaders, a funny look would flit across their faces, a sudden suspicion, and he’d find the conversation ended.

Certain facts were not in dispute: Over the course of three days, October 8 through 10, 1922, mobs executed Hosea Johnson, his brothers Solomon, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and Ezekiel’s son Caleb. The men were accused of having murdered a white farmer, Ray Stokes, and of raping Stokes’ wife, Missy.

There was no doubt that Stokes had been killed, but was it premeditated murder? Had his wife indeed been raped? And if so, what, if anything, did the Johnsons have to do with these events?

The Johnson brothers were family men. Stable. Hardworking. Even the whites conceded that. After the men were killed, their homes were burned to the ground. Their widows and the remaining children, a total of twelve, were whipped, then driven out of town with only the clothes on their backs.

Talks with the locals also quickly gave David a picture of Stokes. Big and burly, Stokes had owned a large plantation in Boone County. He was known for beating and cheating his Negro workers. After a while, no blacks would voluntarily agree to work for him, so Stokes found a way to force them to. He would visit the courthouse and check the docket to see what black man had been convicted and couldn’t pay his fine or was sentenced to work on the chain gang, Stokes would pay the fine, get the man released into his custody, and have him work off the debt on his plantation.

Hosea Johnson fell under Stokes’ shadow in just this way. His thirty-dollar gaming fine had been beyond his means. Stokes put his money down and had himself a new man. Johnson labored on Stokes’ property until the thirty dollars had been worked off. Perhaps the situation would’ve turned out differently if matters had ended there. But they didn’t.

Johnson’s wife was pregnant with their fifth child. Money was more than tight and work was hard to come by. So when Stokes offered to “let” Johnson work additional hours, Johnson agreed. Days went by and Johnson’s labor added up to a considerable amount of service. After a week, Johnson asked Stokes for his money; Stokes refused. Witnesses said the two men argued. That was on October 7. That evening, Stokes was found dead on his front porch, an ax embedded in his meaty chest.

The call went out and men swarmed to the Stokes plantation. Suspicion immediately targeted Hosea Johnson. Somebody mentioned how close the Johnson brothers were and pointed out that they’d all had trouble with Ray Stokes. No doubt, the brothers had committed the crime together.

Men were deputized and went looking for the brothers, but word of Stokes’ death and the ensuing manhunt had spread; the Johnson brothers and their families had disappeared into the woods.

On October 8, Solomon and Jeremiah Johnson were captured about five miles outside Charlottesville. They were lynched on the spot. Hung upside down, they were literally ripped apart by a furious fuselage of more than five hundred bullets.

Sheriff Parker Haynes caught Ezekiel that afternoon and placed him in the nearby Putnam city jail. That evening, Hayes and the county court clerk took Ezekiel out of jail, ostensibly to transport him to the county seat at Lovetree for safekeeping. Haynes told David that a mob had “ambushed” him near the fork of the Dicey and Lovetree roads, just two miles from their destination. Outarmed and outmanned, he said, “I had no choice but to stand by and watch.”

Ezekiel was handcuffed and slowly strangled. First, the lynchers chopped off his fingers. They then strung him up and choked him till he was on the verge of death. Three times they strung him up and three times they let him down and revived him, to give him “a chance to save his immortal soul by confessing.” Finally, they just let him swing. He died maintaining his innocence.

They left Ezekiel on display for two days, as a lesson to the colored and entertainment to all others. Crowds in autos, buggies, and on foot strolled by to point and snigger.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Hosea continued in vain. After two days of searching, people assumed that he’d successfully fled the area. On the afternoon of October 10, a black man named Moses Whitney burst into Haynes’s office and told him that Hosea was hiding out at his house. Hungry and exhausted, Hosea had come to him for food, Whitney said. He’d given Hosea some grub, promised him supplies, then given him a place to sleep. As soon as Hosea had dropped off, Whitney had slipped out of the house.

The sheriff’s men surrounded Whitney’s house. There was an exchange of gunfire but Hosea was taken alive. He was attached by rope to the back of a car, dragged down Crabtree Boulevard, the busiest street in Charlottesville, then taken out to a place called the Old Indian Cemetery, on the edge of town. There, they hung him upside down, doused him with kerosene, and set him on fire. David visited the place. It was beautiful and still, and it was hard to believe it had been the site of such recent evil. The only testimony was the scorched remains of an isolated tree.

David tried to see Mrs. Stokes, but was told that she was still suffering from shock. He was able to gather information from servants, however. It was Mrs. Stokes who had found her husband’s body. As soon as she saw him lying there, she’d run screaming to her father-in-law’s house. The family physician, who happened to be a dining guest at the home of Stokes Sr., quickly sedated her.

David noted at least two discrepancies. A hysterical Missy Stokes had run screaming that Hosea had axed her “Christian man,” but she’d said nothing about Hosea having attacked
her.
Then there was the fact that she lay unconscious for nearly two days. Nevertheless, City Superintendent Sharkey Summers claimed that he’d talked to her the morning after the murder. “She told me what the nigger done to her,” he said in one newspaper article. He became one of the leading advocates for the burning of Hosea Johnson.

Local newspapers claimed that Hosea had confessed to the murder and the assault before he died. David read and reread the reports. The papers had fed the lynching mania. Not a single one had urged due legal process for the accused when captured. All had predicted with malevolent glee that Hosea Johnson would be hung and burned, virtually passing sentence and preordaining the mode of his torture and execution.

Nor had any report attempted to explain the death of Ezekiel’s son, Caleb. One wrote that “the nigger child’s death was too insignificant to explore.”

David talked not only to white locals, but also to black residents. At least, he tried to. Most had fled into the woods and were only slowly daring to return. They professed absolute ignorance of what had occurred while they were gone. Others admitted that they’d seen and heard enough to have something to say, but they refused to speak.

Over a three-day period, David canvassed about forty ramshackle homes on the black side of town. Most wouldn’t even open their doors. Finally, he gave up. There was a late afternoon train. He’d be on it. Back at his hotel, he wrote his report, packed his bags, and headed for the railway station. It was there he happened upon a man who
would
talk. And the man’s name was Jonah.

“Caleb was a bright youngster,” Jonah
said. “He was there when they dragged his papa from the woods. Later, somebody heard him say that he’d write to the Movement, tell who it was done what. That night, they came back for him.”

“God,” murmured David.

At the railroad station, Jonah, a porter, had whispered instructions to meet him at Miss Mae’s Rooming House. Then he’d gone back to work, hauling luggage. David had gone ahead to the house and Jonah had showed up ten minutes later.

“The next train ain’t till tomorrow,” Jonah had said. “But you can stay here tonight.”

Miss Mae’s was a little two-story construction, not much more than an oversized hut. David had had his doubts when he saw it. But Miss Mae eased his concern the minute he stepped inside the door.