Bearing Witness: by John Cole Vodicka

 BEARING WITNESS...

“While white mob violence against African Americans was an obsession in the South, it was not limited to that region. White supremacy was and is an American reality.  Whites lynched Blacks in nearly every state, including New York, Minnesota, and California. Wherever Blacks were present in significant numbers, the threat of being lynched was always real.  Blacks had to watch their step, no matter where they were in America.  A Black man could be walking down the road, minding his business, and his life could suddenly change by meeting a white man or a group of white men or boys who on a whim decided to have some fun with a Negro; and this could happen in Mississippi or New York, Arkansas, or Illinois.  By the 1890s, lynching fever gripped the South, spreading like cholera, as white communities made Blacks their primary target, and torture their focus.  Burning the Black victim slowly for hours was the chief method of torture.  Lynching became a white media spectacle, in which prominent newspapers, like the Atlanta Constitution, announced to the public the place, date, and time of the expected hanging and burning of Black victims.  Often as many as ten to twenty thousand men, women, and children attended the event.  It was a family affair, a ritual celebration of white supremacy, where women and children were often given the first opportunity to torture Black victims—burning Black flesh and cutting off genitals, fingers, toes, and ears as souvenirs.  Postcards were made from the photographs taken of Black victims with white lynchers and onlookers smiling as they struck a pose for the camera.  They were sold for ten to twenty-five cents to members of the crowd, who then mailed them to relatives and friends, often with a note saying something like this: 'This is the barbeque we had last night.'”  -- James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree

February 2, 2022

Good Wednesday evening everyone,

On Monday morning, I watched the award-winning short documentary, Lynching Postcards: Token Of A Great Day.   

The fifteen minute film so moved and disturbed me to where later that day I drove to Watkinsville so that--once again--I could quietly honor the lives of twelve victims of Oconee County, GA lynchings, all murdered by mobs of white men.  

I don't know if the hundreds of white folks involved in these local acts of terrorism took celebratory photographs.  I do know that, with the help of other good people these past several years, I've managed to mark many of the sites in Oconee County where human beings were tortured, killed or buried.  (Please see my three attached photographs)

This past Monday afternoon, after purchasing three artificial lilies, I drove first to the lynch site where, on September 18, 1917, a mob captured Rufus Moncrief at his home in Whitehall (Clarke County) and brought him across the Middle Oconee River on Simonton Bridge Road.  There, on the Oconee County side of the river, the mob tied Mr. Moncrief's hands and feet to a cluster of water oak trees and riddled his body with bullets.  I knelt while placing one lily at the makeshift cross I'd planted along the roadside last September 18.  

Continuing toward Watkinsville on Simonton Bridge Road I drove to the Watkinsville City Cemetery.  

Turning into the cemetery I passed the well-manicured grounds where dozens of confederate dead are buried, along with former mayors, sheriffs, businessmen and church leaders--all white people and with marked headstones.  Watkinsville's "paupers" are buried at the cemetery's edge, in what used to be called the "colored" section of the graveyard.  

While most of the paupers' graves are unmarked, a few do still have legible headstones.  I got out of my car near one of these marked graves, that of Sandy Price Jr.  The worn tombstone indicates Mr. Price was born on October 4,1884 and died June 29, 1905.  The marker reads, "Our Loved One."  He was only 20 years old. 

Sandy Price, Jr. died along with seven other men on June 29 after they were taken in the middle of the night from the Watkinsville jail by an armed white mob, chained to nearby fence posts, and shot to death.  In addition to young Mr. Price, the mob murdered Rich Robinson, Lewis Robinson, Claude Elder, Rich Allen, Gene Yerby, Bob Harris, and Lon Aycock.  All but Mr. Aycock were Black.  

I discovered Sandy Price, Jr.'s gravesite almost by accident.  While exploring the cemetery several years ago, I literally stepped on the top half of his grave marker that was laying face down near to the tombstone's base.  Soon after, a friend and I repaired the marker and since that time I've maintained Mr. Price's plot with fresh soil and flowers.  On June 29, 2020, we held a public memorial service for Sandy Price, Jr. and the seven other lynch victims.  On this past Monday afternoon, I stood over the grave and added a lily to the mix of flowers already surrounding this sacred site.  

From the cemetery, I drove into downtown Watkinsville, past the public library, the county jail, and turned off the highway across from Harris Shoals Park.  I walked over a grassy embankment and then another fifty yards down to the edge of Lampkin Creek, where three more makeshift crosses stood.  These crosses were planted just this last December 4, 2021, during a ceremony to remember Aron Birdsong, Wes Hale and George Lowe. The three Black sharecroppers were lynched by a white Oconee County mob 100 years earlier.   On Monday, I stood at the memorial site, listening to the sound of the creek's water rushing past.  I laid the third lily in front of the three crosses.  

From 1880 to 1968, over 4,000 African Americans were lynched at the hands of white mobs, most of them in the South.  Staged as public celebrations akin to picnics or carnivals, these lynchings were commemorated through the printing and distribution of photos and postcards that would ultimately be subverted by Black activists to expose racist violence in the U.S. to the nation's leaders and the rest of the world.  Here is the link to the documentary short, "Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day."

https://watchseries.mn/watch-movie/watch-lynching-postcards-token-of-a-great-day-online-76003.7981330

Courtwatch.

Happy Three-Year Anniversary!
    

It was three years ago today--February 2, 2019--that the Athens Area Courtwatch Project (AACP) was launched!   On that Saturday, more than 60 people gathered in the Fellowship Hall of Oconee Street United Methodist Church to learn why it was important for us to keep watch on our local criminal legal system.  Since that day-long training three years ago, dozens of volunteers with AACP have observed hundreds of courtroom proceedings, our eyes and ears focused on due process, racial justice, money bail, and the criminalization of the poor.  We've posted cash bonds for individuals who otherwise would have remained locked up pretrial; we've supported and advocated on behalf of defendants and their loved ones; we've brought public attention to issues like shackling pretrial defendants, overuse of probation, the unnecessary criminalization and confinement of the mentally ill and/or homeless; and have assisted defendants with what we call "wraparound" services once they are released from jail.   

As AACP moves into its fourth year, we have much more to do.  We give thanks to our volunteer courtwatchers and to Oconee Street UMC's Racial Justice Task Force for its steadfast support.  We look forward to engaging many more folks in our efforts in 2022! 

• The Disappeared....
  
  Prison abolitionist and educator Angela Davis has said this: 
  
  "Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages. Prisons thus perform a feat of magic. Or rather the people who continually vote in new prison bonds and tacitly assent to a proliferating network of prisons and jails have been tricked into believing in the magic of imprisonment. But prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings."
  
  This evening I am thinking about the women and men I've come to know these last three years, people who have been hungry and hurting and homeless, who suffer with mental or physical disabilities, who dropped out or were forced out of school, who have been unable to overcome their addictions.  Each of these people--members of my community that is Athens, Georgia--was picked off by the Athens-Clarke County criminal punishment system and--figuratively, sometimes literally--made to disappear.
  
  Let's call their names.
  
  Justin C. has been locked up in our jail since January 17, 2021. That is more than one year.  He's mentally ill.  He's 25-years-old.  He first found his way into the ACC criminal legal system when he was arrested and jailed in April 2018 for allegedly stealing a pack of twizzlers candy from the downtown CVS store.  From that point on he's been in and out of jail, charged multiple times with trespassing, loitering, prowling, and violating terms of his misdemeanor and felony probation sentences.  His lawyer believes Mr. C. is mentally incompetent.  But the State wants to "restore" him to competency so it can prosecute him on the slew of petty charges.  In the 381 days he's been caged, Justin C. has been transported in chains and shackles from the jail to the courthouse and back to the jail again at least a dozen times.  He occupies a jail cell again tonight.
  
  Freddie C. languishes in the carceral mental health unit at the Augusta State Hospital.  He's been there since June 2021, when State Court Judge Ethelyn Simpson ordered that he be moved from the Clarke County jail until he can be "restored" to competency.  Prior to his being locked up in November 2020, Mr. C. was homeless, usually camping near downtown Athens.  The criminal legal system grabbed permanent hold of him after he was picked up one too many times for loitering, or aggressive panhandling, or urinating in public and, finally, on a bogus burglary charges.  Mr. C. is 62 years-old, and in addition to his mental health needs has developed early onset dementia.  He may never leave the Augusta facility.
  
  Sally Mae T. is back in the Clarke County jail tonight. She's 66-years-old.  Since she was arrested in September 2019 on a simple battery charge, Ms. T. has been in and out and now back in jail.  She's been arrested for violating her bail bond conditions.  Last summer she allegedly tussled with a bus driver, which resulted in her being barred from the city's public transit system.  She's been accused of trespassing and damaging property.  All this but please know she's not yet been convicted of anything--including the 2019 battery allegation that is now 28 months old!  
  
  Jennings L. is occupying a jail cell this evening, too.  He's been locked up since June 6, 2021.  Mr. L. is accused of terroristic threats and possessing a drug-related object.  Three weeks after his arrest--now almost eight months ago--Superior Court Judge Eric Norris ordered that Mr. L. undergo a mental health evaluation.  It appears that this has not yet happened.  Tonight, the 57-year-old South Carolinian, who has no family in Athens, remains mostly out of sight, out of mind.
  
  Jill L. is 59.  She is a frail but feisty paranoid-schizophrenic.  Since May 2020, Ms. L. has been arrested at least a dozen times by ACC police.  She's been charged with giving false names, trespassing, pedestrian on roadway, obstruction of a law enforcement officer--all misdemeanors.  For much of 2020 and 2021, when in jail, the 100-pound Ms. L. appeared frequently--always shackled--in State Court for status hearings.  After her last arrest on August 29, 2021, Ms. L. spent more than three months in jail, unable to make a low cash bond to gain her release.  During that time, her public defender filed a motion with the State Court asking that her client be declared mentally incompetent.  On December 10, 2021, Ms. L.'s bond was reduced to Unsecure Judicial Release (no cash) and she left the jail.  Today, no one seems to know where she is.
  
  And please, say these names, too.  May each of them rest in peace: 
  
  Calvin Jamain Cunningham died in the Clarke County jail on September 25, 2020.  He was being held on a misdemeanor probation violation.  Mr. Cunningham had just marked his 44th birthday a few days earlier.
  
  Donald Dewayne Carnes died in a prison nursing home in Milledgeville on December 1, 2020, where he'd been sent by the ACC State Court after being deemed incompetent to face misdemeanor charges pending against him.  Mr. Carnes was 85 years old.
  
  Nancy Little Gallagher, charged with misdemeanor simple battery and trespassing, spent two weeks in the Clarke County jail in June 2021 because she was unable to pay $33 bail.  The Courtwatch Project posted her cash bond, but Ms. Gallagher was unable find shelter in Athens.  She was living on the streets of our city when her dead body was found in a garbage dump in Monroe, GA last July 22.  She was 54-years-old.  
  
  And, Brice Dwayne Chambers, who was finally cleared of misdemeanor battery and felony terroristic threats charges after prosecutors declined to prosecute him one year later, died alone in an Athens motel room, possibly from a drug overdose, on December 31, 2021. His mother discovered his body when bringing clean laundry to him.  Brice Chambers was 27.
  
   
• The Discarded....
  
  Quatravis H. is 15-years-old.  He'll turn 16 in July.  
  
  Once again, our progressive district attorney, Deborah Gonzalez--who promised upon taking office one year ago that she would not try juveniles as adults in Athens-Clarke County--has reneged.  On December 7, 2021, DA Gonzalez obtained a felony indictment for the 15-year-old Mr. H., charging him with malice murder. 
  
  On September 23, 2021, during an outdoor argument where at least two handguns were accessible, Ketorian C. was shot to death in the Bethel Homes apartment complex.  Quatravis H. and 21-year-old  David R.. were arrested.  They've been locked up ever since. 
  
  On January 25, I sat with young Mr. H.'s mother and big sister in Superior Court Judge Lisa Lott's courtroom.  The two were there to support their loved one.  Since his arrest, the adolescent Mr. H. has been caged in the kiddie prison in Gainesville.  His mother and sister were told he would be transported to the ACC courthouse to be formally arraigned.  That didn't happen.  Nor did Quatravis H. appear remotely from the Gainesville prison.  Instead, after nearly an hour of waiting anxiously, a deputy sheriff informed Mr. H.'s mother that her son's attorney had "waived formal arraignment," which meant there was no need for the defendant to be physically present in the courtroom.  
  
  "He won't be coming," the deputy told us.  "You all can leave if you want to."  
  
  Last May, District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez charged another 15-year-old, Marquise M., with voluntary manslaughter.  Three months later the African American eighth grader was encouraged to plead guilty--as an adult--and was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison followed by 10 years of felony probation.  At the plea/sentencing hearing, the prosecutor told the Court that this sentence would give Mr. M. "the time to grow and learn."

THE DEATH PENALTY IN GEORGIA. 

"Government can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill."  --Sister Helen Prejean

• Research shows that Georgia has "legally" put to death more than 900 people since statehood was established.  (The Equal Justice Initiative has found that 593 people have also been lynched in our state between 1877-1950.)  Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty again constitutional after a brief four-year national moratorium, Georgia has executed 75 men and 1 woman.  John Eldon Smith was the first, electrocuted in December 1983.  Donnie Lance was put to death by lethal injection in January 2020.  In that time, 6 men sentenced to death in Georgia have been exonerated--Gary Nelson, James Creamer, Earl Charles, Jerry Banks, Robert Wallace and Lawrence Lee.  Today, 38 men occupy death row cells on Georgia's death row, located at the Diagnostic & Classification prison near Jackson in Butts County.  One woman has been condemned to die; she is locked up in the Lee Arrendale State Prison in Alto.
  
  Since 1976, Georgia ranks fourth among the old states of the Confederacy in the number of executions it has carried out (74).  Texas has put to death 563 people in that time; followed by Virginia (113), Florida (103), Georgia (74), and Alabama (61).
  
  Al Lawler, long-time death penalty abolitionist and Jubilee Partners community member, has provided us with periodic updates on the current status of capital punishment in Georgia:
  
  "Several of the 39 people on Georgia's death row have exhausted their appeals. And now, there are hints that a death warrant will come down relatively soon--hopefully not this year, but probably early in 2020.  (Once someone's appeals have worked their way through the courts, a trial judge can sign a warrant that allows the State to set an execution date.)  
  
  There are two current cases statewide in which the DA is seeking the death penalty--Ricky Dubose and Aaron Long.   Dubose's Putnam County trial is tentatively scheduled for spring, 2022.  In September, Dubose's co-defendant Donnie Rowe was found guilty of first degree murder but sentenced to life in prison without parole after the jury couldn't come to a unanimous verdict during the penalty phase of his trial.  Aaron Long pleaded guilty in Cherokee County (which did not seek the the death penalty) and received 4 life-without-parole sentences for the 4 murders in that county. However, the DA in Fulton County, who promised no death sentences during her time in office, is seeking the death penalty against Long. I have no information on the tentative trial date for Long. 
  
  If either of these 2 men is actually sentenced to death, it would be the first death sentence handed down in the last 7 years--not counting Tiffany Moss, whom the judge allowed to defend herself in her trial for the murder of her infant. Since she did nothing to defend herself in the short trial that took place, many think that her sentence might get overturned in her first appeal--the automatic review of the capital case by the GA Supreme Court.
  
  Today 39 people are under death sentence in Georgia: 18 white men, 1 Hispanic man, 19 African American men, 1 African American woman."  
  
  Thank you, Al.
  
  Last week Al Lawler and New Hope House's Mary Catherine Johnson informed us that one of the men on Georgia's death row whose death warrant was close to being signed was instead granted an unexpected hearing by the United States Supreme Court.  On January 14, 2022, the Court agreed to review the case of Michael Nance, who was sentenced to die by a Gwinnett County jury in 2002.  
  
  The legal issue at hand concerns Mr. Nance's request that he be allowed "an alternative method" for his own execution.  Georgia's law specifies that prisoners can be executed only by lethal injection.  
  
  Because of medical conditions that have compromised his veins, prison authorities told Mr. Nance that the execution team would have to "cut his neck" to establish an intravenous execution line, and that even that might not work.  
  
  Mr. Nance's lawyers filed a civil rights lawsuit stating that lethally injecting their client would be "tortuous" and would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.  
  
  Mr. Nance proposed that he instead be executed by firing squad.  
  
  Civil rights suits have long been used as a vehicle for challenging the constitutionality of execution methods.  The U.S. Supreme Court has previously held that the federal civil rights law is an appropriate vehicle for a prisoner to argue against execution by an unconstitutional method.   
  
  The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the case in May. 
  
  
  It is important that those of us who monitor the criminal legal system devote time to understanding how and why the death penalty 
  has always existed in Georgia.  We need to know that in the early 1800s,and again during the Civil War, Georgia law authorized capital punishment when slaves or free people of color were convicted of poisoning or attempting to poison a white person.  Black people could be put to death for inciting or attempting to incite a slave insurrection, raping a white female, assaulting a white person with a deadly weapon, and committing burglary.  Flash forward and discover that the vast majority of those sentenced to death and/or executed in Georgia over the last 100 years were convicted of killing (or raping) a white person.  
  
  Records indicate that four men have been executed who were tried in Clarke County.  John Henry Thomas, 21, was electrocuted in August 1936.  In December, 1937, Willie Francis Daniels, 25, was put to death.  Walter Hillman Yearwood, 23, was executed in October 1943.  And Amos Patrick, 31, died in the electric chair in May 1953.  All but Yearwood were African American.

  Just one person has been executed whose trial was held in Oconee County.  William Mark Mize was put to death in April 2009 for the 1994 murder of Mark Tucker.  Two others were also charged with Tucker's murder--Christopher Hattrup and Terry Allen.  Both pleaded guilty and received life sentences.  At one point, Hattrup confessed to being the actual shooter.  Mize was white, and was 38-years-old when the murder occurred.
  

  
  "The Innocence Epidemic"  
  The Death Penalty Information Center issued a lengthy, important report on death row prisoners who have been exonerated.  At least 185 men and women sentenced to die in the U.S. during its "modern" era of capital punishment were found to be innocent!  I encourage all of us to read the DPIC report.  Here's the link:
  
  https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/facts-and-research/dpic-reports/dpic-special-reports/dpic-special-report-the-innocence-epidemic

Making sense.

Here are important and relevant books, articles and movies to consider.

Non-Fiction

And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank, Steve Oney 
At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, Philip Drxay
Begin Again: James Baldwin's America & Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, Isabel Wilkerson 

Chasing Me To My Grave: An Artist's Memoir of the Jim Crow South, Winfred Rembert (as told to Erin I. Kelly)

Elegy For Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching, Rachel Marie-Crane Williams 

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond 
Evidence of Things Not Seen, James Baldwin

Fire in a Canebrake: The Last Mass Lynching in America, Laura Wexler 

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, Clint Smith

Ida B. Wells, The Light of Truth: Writings of an Anti-Lynching Crusader, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Bryan Stevenson

Lay This Body Down: The 1921 Murders of Eleven Plantation Slaves, Gregory Freeman
Men We Reaped, Jesmyn Ward

Murder at the Broad River Bridge: The Slaying of Lemuel Penn by the Ku Klux Klan, Bill Shipp
Nobody Knows My Name, (Essays), James Baldwin

On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century, Sherrilyn Ifill

Passionate for Justice: Ida B. Wells As Prophet For Our Time, Catherine Meeks & Nibs Stroupe 

Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America, Cameron McWhirter
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II, Douglas Blackmon

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

The Blood of Emmett Till, Timothy B. Tyson

The Burning: The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, Tim Madigan

The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone
The Fire This Time; A New Generation Speaks About Race, Jesmyn Ward
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson

To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells, Linda McMurry
Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, Leon Litwack 

Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America, James Allen 

Fiction 

A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
Billy, Albert French
If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin
Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward 
The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead 

Film 

Exterminate All the Brutes  (Documentary film on the impact of European colonial policies in Africa and the Americas, Raoul Peck, Director, HBO, 2021)
I Am Not Your Negro  (James Baldwin documentary film, Raoul Peck, Director, Netflix, 2018) 
13th: From Slave to Criminal With One Amendment (Documentary film, Ava DuVernay, Director, Netflix, 2016
True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality (Equal Justice Initiative documentary film, www.eji.org) 

"If one refuses abdication, one begins again..."  James Baldwin

Our work to is not done.  We must, as Baldwin insists, begin...again. 

>Please contact courtwatcher Steve Williams (stevewilma@aol.com) or me and volunteer to go with us into the courtrooms of Athens-Clarke County where you will find judges who permit the dehumanizing practice of shackling of pretrial prisoners, and prosecutors who justify prosecuting 15-year-olds as adults and sending them to prison.  

>Contact Hattie Thomas Whitehead(www.givingvoicetolinnentown.com) and join the Linnentown Project in its monumental effort to force the University of Georgia to acknowledge its part in the mid-1960s' demolition of an entire Athens neighborhood and make meaningful reparations to the descendants of those families who lost their homes, their property, and their livelihoods to the university's arrogance and greed.  (Yes, this is the same bastion of higher education whose buildings are still named after slave masters, Lost Cause apologists, arch-segregationists,  and a veritable Who's Who roster of dead white supremacists.)

>And please don't forget that all prisoners in the Clarke County jail appear in our courtrooms with their hands and ankles cuffed and a belly chain holding their arms close to the waist.  The majority of them are African American.  Almost everyone of them is a pretrial defendant, that is, presumed innocent of the offense they have been charged with.   

"A presumptively innocent defendant has the right to be treated with respect and dignity in a public courtroom, not like a bear on a chain." --U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, 2018

Chaining and binding prisoners is not right!  It is cruel and unusual punishment!!  

Contact the following individuals to urge them to change the ACC Sheriff's Department policies and UNSHACKLE ALL Athens-Clarke County pretrial prisoners when they appear in our courtrooms!   Sheriff John Q. Williams: sheriff@accgov.com    Chief Judge Eric Norris: eric.norris@accgov.com   District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez: deborah.gonzalez@accgov.com   Solicitor C.R. Chisholm: crchisholm@accgov.com 

>And lastly, we all must continue to confront and educate our public officials on the issues that destroy those who live on the margins in our community: the homeless poor, families facing eviction, people caught up in a dehumanizing and racially unjust criminal legal system, and our children who are being dumped into the school-to-prison-pipeline. 

As always, thank you for your work in, for and with our community.

Be well, 

John

John Cole Vodicka
BEARING WITNESS...
612-718-9307