John Porter frowned in plaintive disapproval. “Mr. Watson? What’s this business all about?” Porter had his eye on the sheriff, and his tone was pompous as befitted an indignant citizen. Not being a stalwart sort of man, he saw no reason to be hung for being my friend. “I demand an answer, Mr. Watson!” he shouted into my face. I leaned away for his breath was worse than usual. “Nervous stomach,” he explained miserably, seeing my wince. “Ed, you have to explain to Sheriff Purvis! I had nothing to do with it, I wasn’t even there!”
“Nothing to do with what, John? And how would I know that you weren’t there when I don’t even know where there might be?”
Porter, growing frantic, yelled, “Sweet Jesus, Ed! How can you sit here cracking jokes when any minute they might drag us off this train? Hang an innocent man who has done no wrong?”
“No man is innocent,” I intoned. “Reflect upon that if you will.” I, too, was weary of my stupid jokes but even wearier of Porter: Frank Reese had much more cause to bitch and here he was, bracing desperately against the jolts, hitching his ass up onto his chained hands to save his spine. Finally he gave up exhausted and sank into a daze of pain, gazing blindly at the toes of his torn boots, taking his punishment.
Now that lynching was no longer imminent, I had time to wonder why this seasoned outlaw had not taken the pains to bury that gun a whole lot deeper. Had it never occurred to him that they might come hunting the only suspect arrested in the death of the victim’s brother? Or was he too angry to think clearly, with incriminating evidence dropped into his furrow after Cox had tried to implicate him in the first case? Frank must have known he’d be in fatal trouble if that gun was found anywhere near him, yet all he did was kick a little dirt over it and keep on plowing. Never emptied the shells out of the chambers, never buried it deeper, never walked forty yards to hide it in the woods. He never touched that gun, he told me later. Just didn’t want anything to do with it.
“You figured I dragged you into it, the same way Leslie did. You wouldn’t lift a hand to help, not even to save yourself from getting hung.”
“It weren’t me gettin me hung!” Frank Reese burst out, so violently that a deputy hollered at him to shut his nigger mouth. “I figured you knowed what you was up to,” he muttered. “Never took time to explain nothin to no dumb-ass nigger.”
“You’re even dumber than you think,” I said. The truth was, Frank was a more complicated man than I had thought.
Arrived in Lake City that Monday evening of March 23, 1909, we were lodged in the county jail. I would not have had much sleep anywhere else. Next morning the deputies passed word that the south end of the county was forming a huge mob. By Tuesday afternoon, rumors were swirling—The mob is on its way! Sure enough, we heard wild yells and restless gunfire. Poor Porter was beside himself with the injustice of it all, howling his innocence from his cell window to all who passed below—“You men know me and know I am no murderer!” Those unacquainted with John before sure knew him by the time he finished because he hollered out his tale of woe every few minutes and for many hours, in case the mob had spies out in the street and might take pity on him, and spare him any rough stuff when the time came.
Frank Reese, who had no part in the killing either, remained quiet. As a black man, he’d never expected anything from life and knew that no protest would save him. So far as Frank Reese was concerned, life was right on schedule.
Word of my predicament had been telegraphed to Governor Broward, who sent orders back to move the suspects out of town for their own safety. Later that night when Deputy Bill Sweat, who ran the jail, heard the train whistle at the crossing, he ordered us out in a big hurry, rushed us to the station. To devil John Porter, I complained that we didn’t care to be marched down the main street in chains like common felons when we hadn’t been found guilty of so much as loitering. Mopping his brow, Deputy Sweat explained that a well-lit thoroughfare might be safer than taking a back street and falling prey to unknown men who might be laying for us in the darkness. Sweat was the right name for ol’ Bill that night, cold as it was: he was nervous they might lynch him, too, while they were at it. Already some passerby had run off into the side streets to spread word; we heard faraway hollers of frustration as we boarded.
Next day, armed escort was provided to Jasper, in Hamilton County, then to the Leon County jail at Tallahassee. I sent word to Broward at the state capitol, inviting him to step downtown and visit his old friend in his piss-stink cell, but Governor Nap was a politician now and stayed away. A few days later we were moved to the Duval County jail at Jacksonville.
By now I had learned that my Collins nephews had presented my alibi so poorly that my own mother was persuaded of my guilt: Purvis informed me in his rural way that my so-called alibi had held up about as long as jail-house toilet paper. And on April 10, at the sheriff ’s instigation, the coroner’s jury charged my nephews as accessories after the fact, the better to coerce them to corroborate the sworn testimony of their friend Jim Delaney Lowe that E. J. Watson had solicited an alibi from all of them. Sure enough, Minnie’s boys caved in after a day or so, having been persuaded that said solicitation was tantamount to a confession. With the prime suspect’s dropped revolver and his buried shotgun, the state was building a strong case, my attorneys warned me, preparing the ground for charging fatter fees, and within the week, Reese and I were indicted for the murder of County Commissioner D. M. Tolen.
Meanwhile the real killer had gotten himself arrested for carrying an unlicensed pistol and disturbing the peace. In addition, after almost a year, Cox had finally been charged with the murder of Sam Tolen: Julian and Willie Collins and Jim Delaney Lowe, along with the Tolen nephew William Russ, had implicated Leslie on the evidence of his own boasting, overheard while he was showing off for May Collins and other local damsels. This time, even Sheriff Purvis could not ease him out of it.
When Leslie joined us in the Duval County jail, swearing dire vengeance on my nephews, Frank groaned dolefully and shook his woolly head, arm flung up in grief over his eyes. “Lo’d, Lo’d, what a pathetical sight! Nice young gen’leman like Mist’ Les Cox in de county jail!” Broken-hearted, Frank actually commenced to cough and blubber, and when I laughed, too, he just let go and whooped so hard that he had to lie down on the floor to get his breath back. Leslie said, “If they don’t kill you, nigger, I damn well will.” He meant that, too, and Frank knew he meant it, but that was not why Frank fell quiet nor why the tears ran down those scarred black cheeks. Someone would pay for the death of a county commissioner and Reese knew it would be him; he was weeping not because he was afraid but because, facing death, he was free at last, free to say anything he damn well wanted. And so he sat up and wiped his eyes and said in a cold deadly tone, “Not if I ketch you first, Mist’ Les, you fuckin po’ white moron.”
Cox squinted in disbelief that I could grin at such an outrage. Before stomping off to the far side of the pen, he pointed his forefinger and repeated his death threat in a voice thick and heavy, as if his throat was full of clotted blood—so full, in fact, that Reese and I could not even agree on what he’d said. “Some kind of secret redneck curse, you think?” I asked, watching Les go. Reese looked me over. Then he spoke again in that same furious cold voice. “Redneck, whiteneck—don’t make no fuckin difference to us blackneck niggers.”
In early April, thanks to Walt Langford and Jim Cole, the celebrated Senator Fred P. Cone of Lake City had been retained as our defense attorney. Cone was a silver-haired aristocrat, very close to Broward, and scarcely a judge in all north Florida would stand up to him, knowing “Senator Fred” was certain to occupy the governor’s mansion in the future and settle up any old scores with the judiciary. But in our first meeting, Fred Cone warned me that the state’s attorneys were already claiming “an ironclad case”—just the kind, he smirked, that he most enjoyed smelting down.
On Friday, May 1, in Columbia County Court, the defendants pled not guilty before Judge R. M. Call. Frank Reese
was described by the Lake City Citizen-Reporter as “a very dark-colored negro wearing overalls. Asked how he pleaded, he was stopped by counsel.” Cone ordered Reese to keep his mouth shut even for his plea, which was all right, I suppose, if he had good reason. But Cone did this with an impatient gesture, not looking at Reese but at me, as if telling me to put a stop to my dog’s barking, and Reese muttered something so ugly for my benefit that I had to warn him.
That day the judge asked him to plead was Frank’s last chance to stand up as a man and declare his innocence; he was never questioned or even mentioned in the case again. Even his own counsel never spoke to him. Day after day, in courtroom after courtroom, he would sit like a dark knot on the oak bench in the white man’s courtroom. Once in a while I caught his eye and winked but he just looked away.
By returning the prisoners to Columbia County Court, Lawyer Cone had provoked the populace into raucous demonstrations in the streets—a clever tactic, I agreed, if we survived it, establishing before the trial could begin the dire prejudice against the suspects in this county. With threats and abuse being shouted through the courtroom windows, Cone prepared his petition for a change of venue, waving a whole sheaf of affidavits; having discussed the case with two hundred local citizens, he had found not one unprejudiced against his clients, and had therefore concluded that it would be impossible to seat a fair and impartial jury in Columbia County. By this, the defense intended no reflection on the residents: “Honest men can be prejudiced as well as other men,” the court was told, “and some men mistake their prejudices for their principles.”
Naturally the state’s attorney had sheaves of sworn testimony to the contrary, duly signed by the Herlongs and those others who had howled for my head that afternoon at Herlong Station.
That morning the court was informed by Mr. Charlie Eaton, a special investigator appointed by Nap Broward, that he had heard about a lynch raid on the jail planned for 3:00 a.m. on Thursday night in the week previous. The defendants, he testified, had been in such peril of mob violence that he’d rushed to the Elks Club to alert Lawyer Cone, and these two agreed that the state militia should be called out to guard the prisoners. Cone told the court he had gone to Sheriff Purvis and demanded protection for his clients and that Purvis responded that those “ol’ boys” in the mob had given him their word that the accused were in no danger, since the evidence against them was so strong that they would hang anyway. Purvis admitted he had ordered extra guards around the jail but only as a courtesy to the defense attorneys. If the truth be known, declared this lawman under oath, real trouble was far more likely to arrive with Defendant Watson’s friends from southwest Florida. Even now, he said, crowds of dangerous men were on their way north by sea and rail to effect his rescue.
This mendacity so astounded my attorney that he smote his marble brow. He invited the sheriff to admit that he’d confided to Detective Eaton that he feared for his prisoners’ lives. Purvis denied this, saying, “If I told you that, I told you a lie.” The witness was thereupon informed that the defense had no confidence whatever in his truthfulness and even less in the intentions of his deputies, several of whom had been identified as members of the lynch mob. Purvis cheerfully agreed that he had heard that, too.
Lawyer Cone’s assistant now advised the judge that when he’d gone to Purvis and the prosecutor to express concern about the prisoners, they had merely laughed at him. Hearing this complaint, those two men laughed at him again in open court, behavior which struck me as so outlandish that I had to clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing with them. “Are you crazy, Watson?” Fred Cone whispered irritably behind his hand.
Next up was Will’s brother Jasper Cox, who testified he’d been solicited to join the lynch mob by none other than Mr. Blumer Hunter, a member of the coroner’s jury which had held impartial hearings on the case. Politely, Jasper had declined, explaining to Mr. Hunter that he “was not in that line of business.” Next morning, according to the Lake City paper, Mr. Hunter came to town (in brown coveralls smeared with wet cow dung, if I know Blumer) and informed the court stenographer that the testimony of Jasper Cox was “an unqualified fabrication.” Even John Porter had to smile at the idea of such fine words emerging from the brown tobacco teeth of Blumer Hunter.
That afternoon, my son-in-law arrived from Fort Myers with a note from Carrie: Oh Daddy, we all know that you are innocent! Eddie has written us about those dreadful Tolens! On the witness stand, Langford declared, “Why yes, I am his son-in-law, but that don’t mean I am a stranger to the truth. And the truth is that ever since my arrival, what I have heard over and over is, ‘That murdering skunk should be hung on general principles!’ ” When I told Walt later that quoting my ill-wishers with such vehemence might not help my case, the banker flashed me kind of a scared grin. Walt could never quite make out when his father-in-law was being serious and when he wasn’t.
Meanwhile, Mr. Eaton passed the word that the governor was following the case and meant to take “all appropriate measures to ensure the safety of the accused.” However, with that mob out there, we defendants felt like rat cheese. Our attorney could not deny there was a risk but saw the change of venue as our only hope.
On Monday morning the sheriff came to Jacksonville to escort us back to Lake City, and this day I rode handcuffed to Les Cox. For all his big talk, Leslie was pale and nervous. Fred Cone had made him get a haircut and put on his daddy’s Sunday shirt but the collar was tight and the new hairline gleamed on his sunburned neck and for all his good looks, he appeared kind of green and weedy. When he bragged that some church lady had told him he looked like Billy the Kid, I said, “Correct. William Bonney looked like weasel shit last time I saw him.” Les cackled, thinking I was kidding.
“Well, somebody done a good deed on them Tolen sonsabitches, and I sure ain’t sorry, how about you?” he chortled, and I said, “You are not sorry, son, because you think Fred Cone will get you off. You might repent of your black sins if you feared you might be dancing on a rope until you died.” But all attempts to improve his attitude were wasted on this criminal young man.
On May 4, Attorney Cone won the release of John L. Porter, establishing that he had been seized unlawfully without a warrant and held unlawfully without a formal charge. Persuading Judge Call that one Tolen case might prejudice the other, Cone got Sam’s case held over till the summer term when the climate in the county might have cooled a little. Last but not least, he won that crucial change of venue for defendants E. J. Watson and F. Reese.
We were tried next in Jasper, in Hamilton County, where we traveled from Jacksonville on a warm Tuesday of late July. Eddie and Kate Edna and my sister Minnie with Julian and Willie came there to testify, also Jim Delaney Lowe, old Calvin Banks, and others.
Peering around for a place to spit his chaw, Deputy R. T. Radford related the heroic saga of how he had stumbled over the defendant’s revolver in the woods. Next, Dr. Nance described with due pomposity how Watson’s shotgun, “primed for mayhem,” had been “craftily concealed” in the furrow being plowed by “that hard-faced negro.” Here Nance pointed a bony finger at defendant Reese, who sat at the farther end of the defense table, hunched into himself like some gnarled woodland growth. Finally, my nervous nephews and their friend revealed how the accused, arriving in their farmyard less than half an hour after the victim’s demise, had lingered just long enough to solicit their support of a false alibi.
Neither Julian nor Willie cared to meet my eye. True, their daddy had never been fond of the defendant, but Billy Collins would have horse-whipped his two sons before permitting them to stand up in court and betray their own blood uncle in this manner. Knowing this, my fragile sister went sniffling to pieces upon hearing her sons give evidence against her brother. Almost inaudible on the stand, Minnie attested in tremulous tones that their kindly uncle Edgar, “ever generous with his time and means since Mr. Collins passed away,” had arrived at the Collins house well before eight to teach her fatherless boys h
ow to dress a hog and had not left until close to noon, when he went home to get his dinner.
When Prosecutor Larabee, loud and sarcastic, demanded to know why she was weeping—Are you perjuring yourself, ma’am, as it appears? Objection, Your Honor! Sustained!—I feared Ninny would blurt something that might get me hung; instead, she murmured that she wept because it broke her heart to see her family torn in two. Plainly the jury was affected—hurrah for Ninny! But when she shuffled back to her seat like a sick old woman, nobody in the Collins row could look at anybody else, and as for me, I was truly upset to see further damage to my poor sister’s low opinion of herself. Here she was, a faithful Christian, not only lying under oath but making liars of her sons, though they spoke the truth. This ordeal might finish her.
Prosecutor Larabee did not call my wife or son lest they support my sister’s story but he made a bad mistake when he excused my mother. Granny Ellen Addison would banish me to Hell before she contradicted her precious grandsons and lied to save me.
In the recess, the prisoners were taken to the latrine. (Frank was marched to colored only.) I stepped right up behind Jim Delaney Lowe and slapped his shoulder with my chains like some old dungeon ghost. That boy jumped a mile, I hope he wet himself. I whispered, “Jim, the day they turn me loose, I aim to take care of those who did me wrong. So keep a real sharp eye out, boy, you hear?” Jim would pass that message to my nephews, give ’em something to pray about in church. I would never harm my sister’s sons but they didn’t know that, and truth be told, there were nights in those hot smelly cells in that long Florida summer when their uncle Edgar wasn’t so sure about it, either.
Throughout our trials, Frank Reese remained inert. He was there as “Watson’s nigger,” nothing more. If I was guilty, he was, too, and if I was innocent, the same, and so he waited for these white folks to decide my fate. Sometimes after the court cleared for a recess, he remained in his place like a sagging sack of turnips in a field; they had to prod him to stand up. The prosecutor forgot him, so did the defense, and there were days when I forgot him, too. Because it made me feel bad when I thought about him, I mostly didn’t. Reese didn’t count—the common fate of Injuns and nigras in our great democracy. But this man and I had ridden a long road, he had stood by me.
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