by John Hersey
“The brothers and sisters don’t know what fear is any more,” Cleage wrote afterward in the Chronicle. “In spite of the last minute change of location, they began to arrive at Central Church at 5 p.m. to be sure of a seat. By 7 p.m. the sanctuary and Fellowship Hall were filled to capacity, and people were still coming from everywhere. More than two thousand people were in the building, and others were outside trying to get in. . . .
“There is no way to put down on paper the sheer horror of the recital of events by witness after witness. It is hard to believe that such bestiality could exist in the world, that a group of ordinary white men could so hate ordinary black men. . . .
“As the witnesses testified, the packed auditorium became more quiet than a courtroom. Each individual relived the horrible moments. . . .”
7. People Were Interested
“I was there,” Eddie Temple told me, “as a witness, actually as the person who identified my brother at the morgue. It had a tremendous value, in that it exposed to a large number of people what had happened there, what these people had had to go through, the beatings, the fear. If somebody tells you that they’re going to blow your brains out and cock the rifle, cock the handle back, it gave them a chance to see what some people had to be subject to. It was a Negro audience, primarily middle-class. It was a large number of people, it was packed, and they had it outside, and they had another annex type of place where they had speakers. This place was really packed. People were interested in it.”
8. A Joke?
“This Tribunal,” Aldridge wrote, “is the beginning of a new level of thinking in Black America. Black people are telling white judges, white juries, and white newspapers that we are ‘hip’ to your tricks. That Carl Cooper, Auburey Pollard, and Fred Temple have not died in vain. Their deaths have been the signal that flashes injustice in America.
“For Carl, Auburey, and Fred, ‘no more water, but fire next time.’ If I must die, better it be on Linwood than somewhere in Saigon; better Dexter than Da Nang.
“The Detroit News put it on page I D next to the comics, and when I went up to ask the News about it, a Mr. Beck, a Re-write, said, ‘We played it like the joke it was.’
“If it were such a joke, why was James Sortor picked up by police and charged with being a ‘Peeping Tom’ three days before the Tribunal and questioned not about said charge, but about the Algiers incident? He was released for several hours and picked up again—this time for felonious assault.
“If it were such a joke, why did detective Schlokman [Schlachter?], Assistant to the Prosecuting Attorney, Weiswasser, go by Lee Forsythe’s home the night prior to the Tribunal and tell him not to appear?
“And why were certain types of pressure brought upon John Ashby when plans were made to hold the Tribunal at the Dexter Theater?
“If you think it was funny, we plan to keep you in stitches.”
9. No Solution
The following Sunday Albert Cleage preached a sermon entitled “Fear Is Gone.”
“We had the People’s Tribunal,” he said, “to try the officers charged with the massacre of three black youth in the Algiers Motel during the July Rebellion. Right here, beneath the Black Madonna, witnesses testified. Everything possible had been done by the police to intimidate these black people, and yet they testified, they told the truth. Does that mean that as they sat there their hearts were not pounding? Of course not. They knew that ‘the man’ was going to brutalize them at the first opportunity, but that wasn’t fear because they did what had to be done. A whole lot of you have guilty feelings about being afraid. You needn’t have. It is not fear as long as you do what has to be done.
“America is set on a disaster course of conflict and violence. The black man cannot accept America as it is. The white man refuses to make the changes necessary for the black man to live in America with dignity and justice. These are two facts. We will not accept conditions as they are, and the white man will not accept the change. There is no solution to that except open conflict and violence. You don’t have to feel guilty about that, either. It is his fault, not ours.”
10. Violence Breeds Violence
Rap Brown’s injunction, that if the accused were found guilty “the brothers should carry out an execution,” did not then prevail, but several weeks later there came an echo of it, and an example of the way in which violence copulates with violence and conceives bloody offspring. Late in the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., a .45-caliber submachine gun, allegedly held by a black extremist named James Thomas Dawkins, who was standing in the shadows between two buildings on West Warren, stitched an arc across a police car cruising on that street and gravely injured, though it did not kill, Patrolmen Terrance Collins and Phillip Tuck of the Sixth Precinct. The worse-injured of the two, Tuck, was a son-in-law of Charles Schlachter, the detective in charge of the Algiers investigation. Policemen shot and killed two looters that night, one of them accidentally, the police said: “an eighteen-year-old named Robert Baughan, who, with his hands up, backed into a cop’s gun and died of carelessness.”
42
HARASSMENT?
1. What Happened down There?
“Every time, seemed like, I wanted to walk somewhere,” Sortor told me, “they’d pick me up. Each time they’d pull me in at the Fourteenth Precinct. They’d just pick me up out there on Grand River. I’d be going over to Allen’s house, my friend Allen’s house, to shoot some pool, and they’d pick me up over by his house. Been picked up four times.
“The first time they picked me up, they said I was peeping through somebody’s window. I was walking down the street, it was on Meyers. The people said I was peeping through their windows. I said, ‘What you talking about?’ They say, ‘Yeah, you’s the one. Get in!’ So I got in, you know, they took me down, they said they were holding me for an investigation of a B. and E. They can hold—investigation, they’ll just say, you know—they can hold you in there for seventy-two hours. Stayed in there all night, and they let me out Sunday morning about eight o’clock.
“They picked me up one day, somebody say I had a gun, they took me down to McGraw Station then, so they hold me in there. They were fighting in this here lady’s house around here, you know, so she told me to break it up, so I pushed both of the ones who was fighting apart, you know. This guy run out the door and called the police, say I had a gun and I’d hit him, you know, so they put me on a year peace bond, and I ain’t even did nothing.
“Each time I go down there, they keep talking about the Algiers. ‘What happened down there?’ So I say, ‘I don’t have to tell you.’ And they keep coming back down there asking me to tell them, you know. And I say, ‘I don’t have to tell you nothing.’
“They kept me a couple of days, and then they let me go.”
2. Fifteen Dollars
Report on case investigated for warrant recommendation:
“Defendant: Karen Malloy, f/w/18
“On 9-7-67 at about 1:45 AM, Patr Samuel Stone assigned to the Vice Bureau was driving North on Woodward when at 3900 Woodward in front of the Astor Motel the officer pulled into the curb and observed the Def standing there. The Def motioned the officer to the rear of the Motel which he did. The officer parked in the rear and walked up to the Def. The Def then asked the officer how much he’d spend and he said $15.00. The Def said O’K and the officer asked what he’d get for his money and Def stated a Half & Half. At this time the officer identified himself and placed the Def under arrest for Accosting and Soliciting.
“Dispensation: 6 Months Probation.”
3. Have Some Fun
Report on case investigated for warrant recommendation:
“Defendant: Julie Hysell, W-18; Janet Wright, W-19.
“On Sept. 13, 1967 at approximately 11:45 AM the officer, Patr. James Montgomery, was standing on Virginia Pk. west of Woodward in front of the Algiers Motel when the defendant, Julie Hyzell, walked out of the office of the Motel and walked toward the officer. The def. Hyzel
l said Hello to the officer and the officer returned the salutation. The def. Hyzell then asked the officer where he worked and the officer replied Intervale Steel Corp. The def. Hyzell then asked the Officer if he was a Police Officer and the officer replied no. The def. Hyzell then asked the officer if he would like to have some fun and the officer replied yes if it didn’t cost too much. The def. Hyzell then asked the officer how much money he had to spend and the Officer replied $10.00. The def. then took the Officer to Rm. 17 of the Algiers Motel and the officer then asked the def. Hyzell what he would get for his money and the def. replied a ‘Blow Job’ or she would ‘Fuck the Officer.’ The Officer then asked the def. what it would cost to have two girls and the def. Hyzell replied $30 to $40, the officer said he would like to try that but that the highest he could spend would be $30.00. The def. Hyzell then told the Officer to wait in the room and she then left the room and returned with the def. Janet Wright. The defs. then both entered the room and told the officer to make himself comfortable and take off his clothes. The Officer then asked the defs. what they would do, and the def. Hyzell replied that she would ‘Blow’ the officer and the def. Wright would ‘Fuck’ the officer. The def. Wright agreed to this and then both defs requested to be paid in advance. At this time the officer identified himself as a Police Officer and placed the defs. under arrest for Accosting and Soliciting.
“Disp. 6 months Probation and 75.00 Cost.”
4. You Got a Brother?
“One policeman,” Tanner Pollard said, “stopped me out in the middle of the street, you know, Plymouth Street. I was going to get some groceries, corner of Fielding. He stopped me and he pulled me over, and he said, ‘What your name?’ He asked me did I break in anything. He said, ‘You done broke in around here.’ The other policeman ran around the other side. I gave him my name and phone number and he searched me and everything. He said, ‘You got a brother named Auburey Pollard?’ I say, ‘Yes.’ He say, ‘He got killed, didn’t he?’ I said, ‘Yeah, a policeman did it.’ He said, ‘That’s what these pimps need to get.’ I told him, ‘My brother never was a pimp.’ I said, ‘He had a job, working at Ford’s.’ And then he said, ‘Well, that’s what these pimps get.’ And they both started laughing.”
5. They Locked Me Up
“I had my car taken away,” Tanner Pollard told me, “never got that back, a ’62 Cadillac. The police came and took it out the driveway. I showed them all the papers on it and stuff. They told me to come down to the station to take a report on it. I went down to the station and then they took my fingerprints and everything. I thought they was taking a report on my car. And then they locked me up in jail and told me I can’t go nowhere. And I asked them, I say, ‘Can I make a phone call?’ ‘No, you can’t make a phone call. Wait till you get down to the big jail.’ And so I waited and waited, and when I got down to the other jail, they let me make a phone call, and come down to find the car wasn’t stolen, not by me, but they never did let me have my car back. This was after Auburey got killed. This was when the police kept on, you know, riding around the house. I was washing—you see, my car had been sitting about a month and had bird mess and all types of stuff all over it, and it was real, real dirty, and I took and I scraped it and washed it and buffed it and shined it all up. By the time I got it cleaned up the police came and took it. They drove it until it ran out of gas, and then the cars kept on bumping into it, pushing it and stuff, and they dented the back trunk all up and everything. It was paid for, too. I paid cash for it. And plus I had a new motor put in it. Had the transmission worked on and everything. I asked the guy that I bought it from and he said that the car was stolen, and they sold it at an auction, and then he taken and sold it to me. The original owner had sunk about twenty-seven hundred dollars on it, something like that. They give it back to him. And I paid five ninety-five for the car. Plus one fifty for the motor.
“I had one policeman, this other time, he came out with a shotgun—I remember we was on Dunbar—and he asked me where—that was when the car was all dirty—they said, ‘Whose piece of shit is this?’ I told him that was my car. They said, ‘Get it off the street.’ He asked me for the title and registration, so I showed him the title, but I didn’t have the registration for the car at that time, because I left it with the man at the station. He told me to get up against the tire, and he shoved me and stuff, you know, holding the shotgun up against me. He recognized my name from the title. He said, ‘Is your name Tanner Pollard?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Was your brother killed over in the Algiers Hotel?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ The policeman said, ‘I should beat your head.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’d like for you to do that.’ ”
6. Read the Papers
“About a month later,” Sortor told me, “then they came, and I was driving with this girl. She stopped, me and her and her brother, and we stopped on the street, on Cheyenne or one of those streets back over that way, so she say she was going over to her girl friend’s house, and we were just fixing to get out the car, and the police pulled up, and so they started questioning us and everything, and they said, where were we going, and we said, ‘We’re going in this house right here.’ This old lady, she came out and came over to the police car, from the house we were stopped right in front of. She was the one who said her house had been broken into. They told us to get out of the car and they searched us down. Held us there for about fifteen minutes, and they told us we could go. So we pulled off. And they caught up with us, you know. By the time we got to the corner, they come up there again, you know, and got us, and put us under arrest. They let the girl and the other boy go. Found out who I was and asked me, ‘What happened over there at the Algiers?’—you know, ‘What happened over there?’ I say, ‘Well, I don’t know what happened,’ you know. I told them, ‘Read the papers,’ you know.”
7. Witnesses in Trouble
And so it went. On November 21, Tanner Pollard was sent to the Detroit House of Correction for fifteen days (the police had already held him two days) for driving without a license. In mid-December, James Sortor was picked up again, and, evidently tired of being questioned about the Algiers, he gave the name James Fry; then later at the police station thought better of the deception and gave his own name; was held overnight; was fined fifty dollars for giving false information to a police officer. In January, Lee Forsythe was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery in a furniture store and was held for several weeks in Wayne County Jail on $7,500 bail, which he could not raise, awaiting trial; on May 1, he was sentenced by Judge Gerald W. Groat to seven and one half to twenty years for Robbery Armed. On February 4, Charles Moore was stopped for speeding by two policemen, who got out of their car and said that Moore’s automobile fitted the description of one that had been used for a bank robbery. Moore objected. There was an argument. The officers beat Moore up, took him downtown, booked him for resisting arrest, and held him for investigation of the bank robbery, on which, he told me, he had an airtight alibi because of his time card at Rockwell-Standard, where he worked. “It was,” he said, “a fairy tale.” On March 13, Michael Clark was sentenced to ninety days for larceny. On April 26, Karen Malloy was sentenced to forty-five days in the House of Correction for violation of her probation.
43
THE PAILLE APPEAL
1. Six Months
On September 16, Prosecutor Cahalan appealed DeMascio’s freeing of Paille, arguing that the judge should have admitted the excluded statements in a pretrial examination; that only a trial judge could determine the admissibility of such evidence.
A strange quirk of local procedure required that first appeals should go not to a higher court but rather right back through Recorder’s Court, so that another of the ten judges in Recorder’s Court would have to pass judgment on the decision of a colleague. By chance the appeal fell to the lot of Judge Geraldine Bledsoe Ford, a woman and a Negro.
Elected to the bench less than a year before, four days after her fortieth birthday, Judge Ford was the first woman ever to sit in
Recorder’s Court. “Would you believe,” she asked a Free Press reporter the day she was elected, “a man asked me what I would do if a rape case were brought before me? He seemed to think that women don’t know anything about that sort of thing. I wanted to tell him it takes two to tango, but I didn’t.” Daughter of a prominent lawyer, she attended Howard University, the University of Michigan, and Wayne State Law School, and she married Len Ford, an all-American football player at Michigan who later became an all-pro lineman. As a judge she had a reputation, particularly among Detroit prostitutes, for dishing out tough sentences.
It took Judge Ford nearly six months to hand down a decision on the appeal.
2. I’ve Always Led a Clean Life
“I just can’t understand all this here, you know,” Paille said to me, “because in the past I’ve always led a clean life here, I’ve always been responsible, I’ve done my job to the best of my ability, and I feel that I don’t warrant this at all. I can’t understand it to this day. And as far as I’m concerned there, I’d just as soon go back to work. And I’ve always treated these people with respect in the past. And even the whores there, you know, I’ve never really cussed them out like I’ve heard some fellows cuss them out. I’ve done my job. I just can’t understand it.
“I feel this is going to affect all the policemen here, this case, to the sense that: What can they do for a few? You know? When they’re separated from the many, you know? They take a few of us out of the ranks there, and they tried to put everything on us. And the city, they get out of the picture altogether. For instance the Mayor himself, in the past over here, he assaulted his sister-in-law, and nothing was done about that, it seems. It was in the paper one day, and the next day it was out. Nothing. And a man of his sophistication and all, you’d feel that they’d really try to make something out of this, but apparently he got out quick.
