“Yes, sir,” Paige says, in a way that makes DeLuth wonder if he even got the joke.
“I’ll be checkin’ in every night, Carl. Call you at your house, six o’clock, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ol’ Clive was right, DeLuth thinks, not much upstairs, but he’s a damn fine order taker.
“Be back on Saturday,” the Sheriff says, starting his engine. “Sunday at the latest,” he calls, over the car’s souped-up rumble.
“Yes, sir. Have a good trip, sir.” Paige strikes attention, slicing the air with his picture-perfect salute.
The Deputy’s precise execution, his unwaveringly respectful attitude sets DeLuth to thinking, for the next hundred miles or so, of all he could set straight with an army of Carl Paige recruits.
48
Ruth sits staring, hands on the keys of her Underwood, wondering if she has what it takes to truly tell it.
Oh, it would be easy to stick to the bare bones of the attorneys’ submissions and Judge Woods’s decree, to relate to her readers, simple and straightforward, the now-settled fate of the four Dare children.
It would be easy but it wouldn’t be right, she thinks. No. Somehow she needs to wrap those bones in the flesh-and-blood drama she witnessed today in the Fifth Circuit courtroom. She has to consider her audience—the raging racists, the quiet liberals, the vast not-really-involved in the middle—new to the community and old, and somehow move them in the way that she was moved by the day’s proceedings. She has to . . .
The silence from the back room is deafening. Somewhere, just around the corner, Hugh and Walt and Joe, editor and typesetter and pressman, sit idle, waiting to run Wednesday’s edition, already late.
“Saved you the head plus twenty-four column inches, above the fold,” Hugh told her when she rushed in from the Courthouse.
“Yeh, in half that many minutes, please,” Walt, the clock-watcher, had joked.
Behind him, Hugh shook his head. He, more than anyone, knew how important this was. To the community. To us. “We’ll wait,” was all he’d told her.
Clouding her head was the news—incredible!—from Hugh that the Senate had voted—sixty-seven to twenty-two!—to condemn Joe McCarthy. That lead would be easy to write: “In ‘The Fight for America,’ America has won.”
But this one. Where to begin? With the dramatic face-off between thundering Judge Woods and sneering, leering Sheriff DeLuth? With a cross-reference to McCarthy, and the fact that this hearing, like his, rode in on the backs of what Margaret Chase Smith, America’s first female Senator, called “the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear”?
Too strong? Too philosophical? Probably. Better to let the drama reveal itself step-by-step. Engage the reader in the same startling way that every single person in the courtroom was riveted today. Yes, she decides, start at the beginning. And, with any luck, the head and the lead will write themselves afterward. She grinds out her cigarette, flips open her notepad, and begins:
DRAMA attended the closing of the Dare case that has reverberated across the nation as Americans of all races read of the four children evicted without warning or due process from their school, all-white Lake Esther Elementary, by Sheriff K. A. DeLuth and the Clark County School Board, who, against parental protest, insisted the children were Negro.
The drama was not only in the sudden bolt of its ending but also in the simmering presence of Sheriff DeLuth, who initially, single-handedly evicted the children of Franklin Dare and of William and LuEllen Dare; in the tightly packed rows of spectators, overflowing into the lobby, who sat hushed throughout the morning session, while a determined Fifth Circuit Court Judge Winston K. Woods forced the acceptance of the one and only legal issue at stake: “Are the children Colored within the meaning and intent of the laws of Florida?”
The drama increased when the plaintiff’s attorney, Thomas Paine Marsh, produced evidence to show that throughout their lives the Dares have lived as, and been accepted by their previous school, church, neighbors, and community as, white people. It increased again when defense attorneys Charles Sloan and Arnold Cooper, representing the Clark County School Board, at first refused to produce evidence to substantiate their charges that the children were Negroes. When at last forced to produce what they had, by Judge Woods’s order to “do so here and now or there will be no other opportunity,” Mr. Sloan reluctantly, and somewhat nervously, produced a fifteen-year-old dictionary and a sheaf of photostatic copies of birth certificates from his briefcase.
He then produced a Last Will and Testament, identifying it as that of Franklin Dare’s grandfather, John T. Dare, and saying it would be “connected” to the birth certificates.
Except for those of the Dare children, their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents— which were also introduced by the Dares’s counsel to show white and Croatan Indian racial listing— the certificates Sloan submitted to the court were of Negroes by the surname of Dare.
None of the names on the certificates, personally collected by Sheriff K. A. DeLuth, corresponded to the names on the Will as descendants of the children’s great-grandfather, who died in 1931. Nor did any of the certificates derive from either Avery or Robeson County, North Carolina, where the family has lived.
Mr. Marsh, given the chance to review the certificates submitted by the defense, argued, “All these Negroes have the name of Dare. I imagine you’ll find a thousand Negroes in North Carolina named Dare—hundreds in that state’s Dare County alone. We demand to know what witnesses you will produce to connect these Dares to the Franklin and Will Dare family!”
It was then the defense balked for the third time: The first was in their introduction of fourteen declarations as “issues” in the case, a list that Judge Woods whittled down to the single racial issue; the second in their begging for more time in which to “obtain more evidence,” which the Judge denied. And in this, the third instance, they asked for an additional month to obtain witnesses—after admitting they had no “expert” witnesses to submit.
After reminding them that they had already had two weeks, since the Complaint was filed, to round up witnesses as did the plaintiffs, Judge Woods gave them “until four o’clock this afternoon.”
At the four o’clock session, all parties returned. In response to Judge Woods’s query, “Does the defense have any further evidence or expert depositions to present?” school-board attorney Sloan said, “We are not presenting any names and addresses at this time, because it is not in the best interest of our clients to do so.”
Judge Woods, unmoved, demanded a “yes or no answer.” Mr. Sloan replied, “We don’t intend to introduce anything at this time.”
Mr. Marsh spoke for the plaintiffs as he said, “In view of the issue the Judge set forth today, that of race, we feel that the defense has shown no basis or any evidence that this family is not white, whereas we have produced depositions to show—with documents, affidavits, and testimony—they are white, and have always been classed white in every area where they were reared or have lived. The defense was given ample opportunity to prove their charge that the family is Negro. And they have not filed or attempted to file any evidence except the names of Dares who are Negroes. Nor have they undertaken to connect those Negroes surnamed Dare to the Franklin and Will Dare family.
“All of this shows clearly that their charge is a sham—it is patently false and unsupported by evidence or expert testimony of any kind. We move the charge be stricken from the record and that a judgment be granted for this family.”
It was here that Mr. Sloan attempted to save the hearing’s wreckage as he moved for a trial “so that the defense could question one of the plaintiffs’ witnesses.”
That witness is Dr. Kendrick McIntosh, a native of Robeson County, North Carolina—the same county of origin as the children’s great-grandfather—a professor of anthropology and sociology at Pembroke University who is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and an author, ed
itor, and recognized authority on race.
Dr. McIntosh, said Mr. Marsh, has stated in writing that he has investigated the Indians of Robeson County who are termed “Croatan” and they are not Negro. He knows the community where Mr. Dare’s grandfather was born, and he would be willing to testify that the man and his descendants are not Negro “either biologically, politically, or sociologically.”
Mr. Marsh also revealed that Dr. McIntosh, in a deposition he was prepared to enter if the case went to trial, was asked this question: “Does the fact that the grandfather’s birth certificate lists him as Croatan indicate in any way that he was a Negro?”
Under oath, Dr. McIntosh answered, “It definitely does not.”
Again, Mr. Sloan attempted to save his case with a request for trial so that “the defense might examine the physical evidence of the Dare children,” and if the word Croatan could, indeed, mean Negro.
Mr. Marsh replied, “The only evidence you’ve had of that is the Sheriff’s dictionary, which we’ve already shown has been disproved by law.”
Mr. Cooper, Mr. Sloan’s partner, took little part in the proceedings. Near the end of the afternoon session, the attorney suggested, somewhat facetiously, that the case be thrown out and “we could start all over again.” He laughed when Mr. Marsh commented, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Before ruling, Judge Woods stated that, in his opinion, the question of the children’s race hinged “crucially on the racial identity of their great-grandfather, John T. Dare,” deemed “Croatan” by his 1847 birth certificate. “That question,” Judge Woods told the packed courtroom, “is answered in a letter dated the tenth of this month, and entered into the record, from the Comptroller General of North Carolina. The letter states unequivocally that John T. Dare was a Confederate Army infantry-man and that Negroes were not used as anything but camp help during the Civil War. If the Confederate Army did not deem John T. Dare a Negro, then neither, I say, can we!”
At that, Circuit Judge Winston K. Woods granted the motion of the plaintiffs’ attorney that the accusation declaring the evicted schoolchildren are Negro could not be upheld.
Tight-lipped Sheriff DeLuth, author of the original now-declared-false accusation, strode out of the courtroom with an angry “No comment.”
Judge Woods’s ruling allows the declaratory judgment the Dare family sought in its suit against the Clark County School Board—that of the right to attend a white school.
That school is going to be Clark Christian Academy—the choice of the Dare family and a place where, according to Dr. John Leighton, head of the Academy, “Our doors are wide open for them the moment the court rules they may legally attend.”
Franklin Dare, father of two of the four falsely accused children, said, “The Lord be praised—I feel like I am living in America again.” His sister-in-law LuEllen Dare, with tears in her eyes, added, “It couldn’t be any other way. Thank the Lord— we’ve prayed so hard.”
49
From the moment that Judge Woods pounded his gavel, declarin’ for us, ’stead of aginst us, Daniel noticed, everyone’s mood changed. Like the sun comin’ onter the holler after a hard rain, he thinks.
Except for Miss Lila’s clenched jaw at the sight of the Sheriff leaving the Courthouse, and her whispered suggestion to Pap that “You’d best keep an eye out,” there was nothing but smiles all around from Miz Ruth, Mister and Miz Meyers from the lumberyard, Mister Red, and the others from the prayer vigil.
After all the shaking of hands, the thumping of backs, and the heartfelt thank-yous to Mr. Marsh, they’d made their way to Pap’s truck where Uncle Will suggested a surprise stop at the Dairy Queen drive-in. Afterward, the girls, faces sticky from their cones, knowing they’ll be back in school again come Monday, chirped like spring birds all the way home.
This morning, when Aunt Lu discovered that some varmit got into her chicken coop and left a mess of broken eggshells, she laughed. Laughed! And, Pap, inspecting the paw prints outside the coop, grinned and said, “Well, Daniel, guess we’ll be havin’ your possum hunt tonight. Prob’ly taken up in some rabbit hole out-air in our field. Whyn’t you walk ’round today, see if you kin spy its den?”
THE GIRLS RUN OUT AHEAD OF HIM, in search of some lucky four-leaf clovers; Minna, as usual, bossing SaraFaye as to which way to go. Even ’Becca, still not much for talking, smiles at him on her way out into the field.
Daniel trails along after them, relishing the feel of his .22, looking forward to the night’s hunt with Pap. And, if that weren’t enough to make a boy’s heart fairly burst with high spirits, here comes Ol’ Sampson trompin’ outta the woods with his smoker, come to check the hives on this happy day.
“Hey, Sampson,” “Hey!” the cousins call. ’Becca adds a shy wave.
Sampson grins, tips his hat, then, bearing in on Daniel, adds, “Good day, heh?”
Daniel’s given up trying to understand how the Ol’ Seminole knows all that he knows. It is a good day, for one and all.
“Huntin’ somethin’?” the ancient black Indian asks, nodding toward Daniel’s rifle.
“Possum, tonight,” Daniel answers proudly. “Just sniffin’ out his hole today.”
Sampson is busy with the smoker and a match. Daniel smells the pine needles light, watches Sampson pump the bellows to release a stream of smoke, and begin to inspect the nearest hive. “Be back soon,” Daniel says and sets out himself, eyes to the ground.
On the far side of the field, he hears before he sees the heavy rumble of the Sheriff’s car, and, behind it, the Deputy’s pickup truck. Bet they come for their sawhorses, he thinks, as the Sheriff and his Deputy stop by the stack of two-by-fours on the edge of their road.
Intent on his own hole hunt, Daniel doesn’t see, till it’s too late, that the Sheriff’s walked out to where ’Becca sits alone, poking through the clover.
“Well, looky here,” the Sheriff drawls, hands on his hips, “if it ain’t the little pickaninny started all this mess.”
Daniel sees the Sheriff cock his head, sees ’Becca freeze in the big man’s shadow.
“Forgot your name, li’l troublemaker. What is it?” ’Becca looks up, soft brown eyes big as saucers, then quickly drops her chin. Daniel sees her skinny shoulders start to shake, sees her hand, with its small clutch of clover, reach up to wipe away a tear.
“I said,”—the Sheriff hauls ’Becca up by a single bony arm—“what’s your name, girl?”
“Leave her be,” Daniel yells, running toward them, holding his .22 in a two-handed grip.
“Whoa,” the Sheriff, thick fingers around ’Becca’s elbow, turns on Daniel, “two little Niggers for the price of one. Only asked her name, boy. But ’pears to me, girl’s acting uppity. You got any idea what we do with uppity Niggers ’round here?”
“Turn her loose,” Daniel says, his breath rasping, eyes boring into the big man’s face. Just below his breastbone, his right forefinger releases the .22’s safety, levers over into ready.
“Gonna shoot the Sheriff, boy?”—He parts his lips in a slow grin.—“All I want . . .”—He slips his free hand to his hip, unholsters his gun.—“. . . is this li’l girl’s nigger-nosed name.”—He pulls his pistol up and out—“C’mon, now,”— slides the barrel under ’Becca’s chin, raising it, forcing her to lift her smudged and terrified face. “I said, what’s your name, gal?”
Daniel’s heart hammers inside his chest. He lifts his rifle to eye level, braces his legs, takes aim. “Turn my sister loose, Sheriff.”
The Sheriff’s using the tip of his four-inch barrel to trace the outline of ’Becca’s nose, now shiny with tears, up one side and down the other. “Nose like this,” he says softly, “gotta have a name.”
Just below his bead, Daniel sees ’Becca trembling, white-eyed, as the Sheriff’s gunmetal caresses her face. He sees the Sheriff, too; smiling mouth beneath cold, cruel eyes. Those same eyes had singled him out in Miss Burch’s classroom, not as a boy but as something less—wings outs
ide the duck blind, hooves in the woods, a silvery tail upstream—something to be hunted, trapped, slaughtered for sport. Daniel feels the hot blood of outrage, the searing flush of fear. “Look after yer sister.” He’d promised Mam. Now that man had a .38 in ’Becca’s face . . . refused to leave her, leave us, BE!
Bam! The Sheriff’s eyes flash surprise. Then, suddenly, his big bear’s body pitches forward, off his feet.
“NO!” Sampson, somehow beside him, howls and wrenches the .22 out of Daniel’s grip. “No, boy, no!”
“What the hell!” the Deputy shouts, scrambling up out of nowhere. “Sheriff?” He flops the big man over onto his back, recoils from the hole between the Sheriff’s eyes. “You crazy Nigger!” he yells. “You killed him!” He swoops up the Sheriff’s pistol, fires it, point-blank, at Sampson’s chest.
’Becca covers her ears, screams and screams.
Daniel cries out, drops to his knees in horror as Sampson crumples to the earth beside him. “Sampson,” he cries, flinging his arms around his friend. “Sampson!” he wails as a stain of dark blood blossoms onto the Ol’ Seminole’s chest. “He didn’t . . .” Daniel turns to tell the Deputy, but ancient black fingers grasp his shirt, yank him eye to eye.
“Don’t say it, Dan’l! Don’t! Live, you hear? LIVE!!” Sampson whispers with his final breath.
50
Lila stands, hand on the office door, and yells toward the kitchen. “Sissy!”
“Woo-hoo,” Sissy hollers back, her signal that she’ll be there in a minute.
Lila waits, eager to be done, until Sissy appears in front of her, wiping soapy hands on her apron. “Come in, would you please?” Lila steps aside to let her pass, then quietly closes the door.
“What is it, girl? Ah got pies ’bout ready to come outta the oven.”
“Sit down, please, Sissy,” Lila insists gently. She pats the arm of one of the leather chairs in front of the Judge’s desk, seats herself in the other.
True Fires Page 24
