by Safran, John
“What’s Vincent’s Hail Mary pass,” I ask, “that gets him minimal jail or no jail?”
“I think the best that Vincent can hope for is to find other individuals that have had the same experience that he did with Mr. Barrett. That they were propositioned and/or threatened by Mr. Barrett with physical harm if they had not engaged in some sexual relations with him. If he can find somebody to corroborate his version of that story, that is the type of thing that could possibly destroy the prosecution’s case.”
Richard Barrett was running his fingers down my producer’s back within hours. Jim Giles and even the DA think Richard was leading a double life.
I’m thinking there must be someone in Mississippi with a story.
Chokwe at Martin Luther King Day
Except for a French news photographer checking out the legs of high-school girls, everyone at the Martin Luther King Day parade is black. I’ve been threading through the crowd for an hour—not even one knot of white Mississippi liberals, and nothing like those white kids in dreadlocks who would rock up to an Aboriginal march in Australia.
Navy-blue black men toot golden tubas. Army-green black kids rat-a-tat drums.
Marching bands and marching girls and marching bands. Endless. Each regiment has the same shtick: Go along for a bit with tradition, then break it on down with the band going hip-hop and the girls doing booty shakes.
Everyone’s pretty joyless considering it’s a parade. No winks and secret smiles. Few seem to be into it on its intended level, and Mississippi doesn’t do meta, so no one’s enjoying it because it’s kooky.
I, however, am loving it.
Freemasons! A silver sedan slides past, marked 33° MOST WORSHIPFUL GRAND MASTER. KING HIRAM GRAND LODGE. The silhouette of the Grand Master waves from behind the tinted glass.
Obscure Freemason spin-offs! A black sedan follows, marked GRAND MATRON—ELECTA GRAND CHAPTER. ORDER OF THE EASTERN STAR. Perched on the head of the old Grand Matron is a fascinator that looks like a large exotic bird about to eat her.
Can it get any better? Yes, it can.
Shriners! A purple tractor creeps by, steered by a man in a blazer with a fez atop his head. The tractor is pulling a purple car marked IRON CAMEL JERUSALEM SHRINE #1. In the car, the Grand Poobah nods his fez-topped head.
I’m impressed, but, standing beside me, Earnest is not. Who are these black idiots appropriating the ancient rites of white secret societies? He’s also not sold on the beauty pageant winners rolling past on SUVs. They’re not independent competitions, he says. Rich fathers just make up some pageant name and award their daughters the trophies.
Earnest is in a foul mood for another reason, too. He arrived at the Jackson Advocate office this morning to find a small team furiously pulling out one page from each of the four thousand copies of this week’s paper. An obituary had been printed with a photo of the wrong woman. A living woman, as it happens. Earnest’s Vicksburg article, culminating in him sticking it to Jefferson Davis, was printed on the back of the obituary. The long piece covered his passions: It celebrated the black soldiers at Milliken’s Bend, attacked present-day black Mississippians for not understanding the past, and had a go at the curator of the Vicksburg museum. Now no one in Jackson will read it.
“The owner is so scared of any legal action,” Earnest hisses.
He had smuggled out one copy of the banned Jackson Advocate. It was obviously tense enough at the office that when passing it to me he added, “When you come back to the Advocate, you can’t bring it with you.”
A man in a porkpie hat and long winter coat skids through the crowd.
“Chokwe!” shouts Earnest, suddenly perked up. “Chokwe!”
Chokwe connects the Chokwe! with Earnest. His body, face, and silver mustache droop.
This has been a recurring theme among black Mississippians. Earnest spots you and you droop. It happened a couple of times in Vicksburg (once with a barman, once with a jazz-activist), and a few times here in Jackson, once with Earnest’s own sister. I think it’s because he’s got his theme and he sticks to it. I don’t mind that, because I’ve got mine, too.
Chokwe has been dodging my phone calls. He droops further when Earnest tells him I’m that guy.
“I’m only co-counsel!” Chokwe says. “Precious has not spoken to me!”
Precious and Chokwe work at different law firms. Chokwe says he has only agreed to help on the case with the proviso that Precious handle the bulk of it. He hasn’t had time to look into the case himself. He’s been focused on the Scott sisters.
I tell Chokwe that Precious isn’t returning my calls, either. His eyes say, So? It’s feeling awkward. So I don’t ask why it is—seeing as Vincent’s death penalty trial is starting in less than a month—that he and Precious haven’t worked out who’s doing what. I don’t ask what defense they’ve got worked out, because they clearly don’t have any defense worked out, beyond their usual routine.
The vein in Chokwe’s temple is purpling deeper the longer he’s trapped with us and my nonquestions. As a circuit breaker, he tells me he’ll hook me up with a woman from the Vincent McGee Defense Fund.
Chokwe fastens his porkpie hat and slinks away into the crowd.
The Woman Fighting for Vincent McGee
Pollution and sunshine compete in front of Chokwe Lumumba’s law firm. A skeleton of a dog hobbles past, following a black woman sweating diabetes. Opposite the law firm, a vast concrete plain is sprinkled with debris. And in the center is what looks like a soldier’s watchtower in war-torn Beirut. Then my brain cracks the puzzle. The “watchtower” is actually an elevator shaft. It’s the only thing left of whatever was there.
This is where Chokwe comes to work every day.
Inside, Vallena Greer grips her handbag in Chokwe’s boardroom.
“Is that sound or pictures, too?” she asks, pointing at my Flip camera.
“Video, just so when I’m transcribing . . .”
She pulls a comb from her handbag and combs her already neat gray hair.
Vallena is the founder of the Vincent McGee Defense Fund.
“Are you and your parents originally from Mississippi?” I ask.
Vallena slowly strokes her hair a few more times and puts the comb away.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, originally from Mississippi.”
Jim told me his white story, Earnest told me his black one. Vallena tells me how things get tangled when you’re both in Mississippi.
The Ballad of Vallena Greer
I was born in Sunflower County in 1946. My father was half-white. He was whiter than I am, with straight hair. And we got away with stuff that regular black people wouldn’t.
I remember once my sister and I were walking in the street, downtown shopping, and there was a group, it was about eight white folks. And usually black folks had to step off the sidewalk and let them pass. We didn’t know. So we just walked straight through, and one of them—I think the male in the group—bumped my sister. He wouldn’t move. They were facing each other and neither of them would move. So when he bumped her, she elbowed him. And he called her—what did he call her?—“You goddamn whore.” And she said, “You po’ red dog.” This was unheard-of for a black person to say to a white person.
So we went about our business. We were coming back down the street. There was this black man sitting at a booth, he was a shoe shine. He said, “Did one of you girls just hit a white man?” I said, “Yeah, she did.” And he said, “Go home, because he just went to a store and bought a knife.” And my sister said, “Is that all he got? A knife?” She was a lot like my father.
So we went home. When we got there, there were these police cars there at the house, so we walked in and Dad said, “Don’t say a word, go in the house.” So we went in the house, and the next thing we knew the police were flying out, because my dad just pointed his finger and stood up to
them. So that’s how my dad protected us. A full black person could never do that.
When I got married, I was twenty-two years old, and my husband was from Carthage, Mississippi. The Klan was real bad there. I didn’t know it, because I never been to that part of the state. This was in probably 1970. And I think they were trying to integrate, they had integrated, but the white folks had not accepted it.
I didn’t know anything about back door: The whites go to the front door and the blacks go to the back door. Because most of the places Dad took us to were black-only places. So we didn’t never experience that. So when I got married and moved to Carthage, there was this little hamburger stand. They had a window in the front and had a window in the back. And in the back was just mud, you know, just nasty. And in the front it was nice and clean.
So, my husband pulled out in the front parking area. I just got out and went to the front window and ordered my food. And so I noticed the lady was slinging the food, and slinging real mad. I thought, She must have had a hard day, a bad day, or something.
So, when it was time, she lifted the window, and she pointed. She said, “Your food is ready.” She said, “You need to pick it up in the back.” So, okay. “Look,” I said. “No, I am not getting my shoes dirty, no, ma’am. Why can’t I get it here? No, I want my food here.”
So she gave it to me out the front window. So I said, “What is your problem?” I didn’t know.
My brother-in-law was about thirteen years old and he was with us. So he was so excited. He went back and told his father, “Vallena went to the front window and was served at the front window!” He said, “When I go back, I am going—I am going to the front window!”
So anyway, he went back, he went to the front window and he came back crying. He said, “They threw ice all over me.”
My mother was full black. She used to participate in all the civil rights demonstrations. She participated because she told us her mother—my grandmother—was killed by Klans.
My grandmother had a Bible. The Bible had black pictures in it, and the Klans were destroying all the Bibles that had a black picture in it. And my grandmother was hiding the Bible. Before she hid the Bible, she took the Bible to church to show it to the black pastor and she said, “This is the true Bible.”
The pastor went back and told the Klans.
Yeah, he was black. But you had what we call Uncle Toms. They want the white man to like him. So, he told the white man that she had the Bible and they came to get it.
Okay, so anyway, the Klans came to the house. Mom, she was very young, said they came to the house on horses. She said she remembered eight horses carrying. Eight horses. She said they heard them coming, the horses galloping in the dust before they got there.
And the children went and told their mother—my grandmother—that they were coming. And my grandmother hid up under the house with the Bible. And my grandmother wouldn’t come out and the children wouldn’t tell the Klans where she was.
And the Klans started beating them. The Klans had . . . my mom called them “billy jacks.” She said they were sticks. And she said the Klans were on the horses and they would run past and hit them with the billy jacks. “So you better tell us where she is or we are gonna kill.”
And so she come out, but she didn’t have the Bible with her. She hid it under the house. And they start asking her where was the Bible. She wouldn’t tell and so they just run by her, run over her, with the horses and hit her, beating her in the head with the billy jacks.
After, she just passed out on the ground.
And the youngest child, I call her Aunt Beatrice. It was twelve children to my grandparents and Aunt Beatrice was the youngest. And I never knew why Aunt Beatrice had a scar across her forehead. It was about the size of my finger, and she was crossed-eyed. And Mom said that Aunt Beatrice ran up and said, “Stop hitting my momma! Stop hitting my momma!” So she ran up and tried to save her mom. And they hit her, they struck her across the head, and knocked her into some barbed wire. They had to untangle the barbed wire off her and then she had the scar across her forehead.
Eventually one of the children, one of the older brothers, went under the house and got the Bible and gave it to them to keep them from beating the mother and them.
And my grandmother, as a matter of fact, she died. She died in 1945, because I was born in 1946 and she died a year before. And she died from injuries to her head.
Vallena and Vincent McGee
“Richard Barrett, he was a Klan,” Vallena says sharply. “He was the biggest snake, biggest crook, biggest terrorist that you don’t want to see.”
It seems to me she’s been tied to a piece of elastic her whole life, drawing her to this event, too.
“How did you end up getting involved with the Richard Barrett and Vincent McGee case?”
“I was in Dallas with my job, training with the Chamber of Commerce. And one of the employees from Mississippi, she came to me and said, ‘Have you heard the news about the Klan who’s been killed in Pearl? I understand that it’s a teenager, a young black guy, who killed him.’ So, of course, I was concerned. And especially when I found out it was Richard Barrett. So the first thing that came to my mind was, What did he do to the teenager, the black young male who killed him? Because that’s just unheard-of, a young black male killing the Klan. So I never thought of it as a murder. I looked at it as a killing.”
Vallena knew it was going to be a heavy trial and Vincent was going to need funds for a good lawyer. She had her eyes on Chokwe. She had known him a long time and knew his history of helping poor people.
“So I called Chokwe and I said, ‘We are going to raise the funds, would you be interested in taking the case?’ And he said, ‘I will think about it, but see what else you can find out about the case.’ So I decided that we would do our own investigation to find out exactly what happened.”
Vallena and her friend organized to drop in on the McGees. Vincent’s immediate family, and some of his extended family, squeezed in on the couches in the living room.
“So we asked them actually what happened,” Vallena tells me. “And I wanted them to be real open, because in the back of my mind I just know the history of Klans murdering and hanging and terrorizing a young black man has to do with the white woman. That’s most of the history, I think. So, all the time I am thinking, It’s got to be a white female somewhere involved in this.”
What Tina Told Vallena Happened the Day of the Killing
Tina McGee and Alfred Lewis, Vincent’s stepfather, are relaxing on the benches in their front yard.
A black pickup truck rolls into their driveway. Out slides the white man from three houses up. Tina had seen him now and then, mainly pedaling his bicycle up and down the road. But she doesn’t know him, as such.
The old white man says he keeps a property about an hour away, in a town called Learned. He needs some help painting and raking and cutting grass. He had seen her son drifting about the street. Would he like the job?
Tina smiles. Since leaving prison, Vincent has just been loafing around the house with the blinds down, watching television. And that was over a month ago. This is good work. This is a prospect.
“Vincent!” yells Tina McGee.
After a hot day of work in Learned, the black pickup rolls back into the McGee driveway. Vincent slides out and Richard drives back to his own home, three doors down.
One hour later Richard has made his way back to the McGee front yard. Tina is out on the bench.
Richard tells Tina he has a computer. Would her son like to pop on down? He could teach Vincent how to use the computer.
Tina is really liking this Richard Barrett. She’s never known his name before, and she’s never heard it before. He knows Vincent is fresh out of prison. Yet here he is, putting that to one side, to give the boy a hand in life. You need to know how to use a computer these days to get a job.
Richard leaves. A short while later Vincent wanders down to the crummy little house.
Not too long after that, Vincent comes home and bursts in the door. He’s crying and his clothes have been torn. He has blood on him. And he says to his stepfather that he has hurt Richard, and that’s what happened, and he says that Richard tried to rape him, and they got in a struggle and he killed him, or—
Vallena interrupts herself.
“No, I don’t think he said he killed him,” she tells me. “I don’t think he knew he was dead. He said he hurt him, to the stepfather. And the mother said she never knew anything was happening, she was just sleeping in the other room.”
Vallena says she looked around the McGee living room, where, just weeks before, a bloody Vincent had stood.
“They still never told me about the question that I was most concerned about,” Vallena tells me. “And that was, was there a white female somewhere in there? We talked to them about three hours, me and my friend. And as we were wrapping it up, and about to go, I think it was the sister of the mother, said to Tina, ‘You need to tell Vallena.’ And I heard it whispered: ‘You need to tell her.’ So I turned and said, ‘Tell me what?’ And I said, ‘You need to tell me whatever it is you think this is.’
The White Female Somewhere in There
Vincent had been dating a white girl six years earlier, Tina told Vallena. The girl had invited him to a party. Some money went missing. It was Chinese money, or some other foreign money. Not a whole lot, just a few dollars.
And they blamed it on Vincent. They blamed it on Vincent because the girl had cousins and uncles unhappy with her dating a black boy.
The police charged Vincent with grand larceny and he went to jail. And officers who had ties with the white girl’s family beat Vincent in his cell. Vincent defended himself, just put up his arms to block their blows. For this he was charged with assault on a law enforcement officer.
