WILLIAM BRADFORD HUIE  comes from Birmingham,  Alabama,  the locale of this article,  which  after three years  is still  the subject of heated discussion  throughout the South.  He is the author  of two books,  Mud  on  the  Stars,  a novel,  and  The Fight For Air Power.  (November, 1941)

     YOU never heard of Roosevelt Wilson.  I  never saw him more than twice.  But Roosevelt Wilson  continues to disturb me.  Whenever I  try to  feel that  I  am an  honest  and self-assured supporter  of  the American Dream,  Roosevelt Witson  perches on  my shoulder,  laughs sardonically,  and reminds me  that I  am  just  another lousy compromiser;  that  once  when I  had my  chance  to  strike a  blow  in  defense of  the Great Dream,  I  turned aside  with the Pontius Pilates  and  whimpered:  “What the hell can I do? ”
     To understand  Roosevelt Wilson  you’ll have to visualize  the loneliest,  most insignificant human being  in the world.  The cipher  in a social system.  He never knew  who his mother was.  He just appeared  as a nameless black brat  in a cotton patch.  He breathed.  He grew.  He chopped cotton  for bread.  He stole.  And somebody,  somewhere,  labeled him  Roosevelt Wilson.  Think of him  as a black,  burr-headed creature  who felt no superiority  to a hound dog,  and whose death  would not have brought  a waft of regret  across any heart in America.
     When I first heard  of Roosevelt Wilson  he was a dog  being chased by other dogs.  He was a scurrying  black animal  to be shot on sight  and left naked  to rot in a ditch  and be picked by buzzards.  He had raped  a white woman  in a potato patch  at Bug Tussle,  and bloodhounds  and a posse  were chasing him.  It is  the old  familiar fabric  to every Southern reporter,  so I methodically  ground out  eight paragraphs  on The Chase.  And when  the black quarry  had been captured  by a sheriff  and  “spirited away  for safekeeping,”  I ground out  two editorial paragraphs  congratulating the sheriff  for preserving  Alabama’s proud record  of not  having had  a lynching  in three years.
     When I arrived  at the county courthouse  to cover the trial,  there was nothing unusual  about the scene.  The AP reporter  and I  sat in a dysentery parlor  across the street,  drank coffee,  griped about the assignment,  and hoped  Justice would act swiftly  so we could  get back to Birmingham  before night.

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     There were  two or three thousand people  massed in the streets  leading up to the courthouse square.  A scattering of sticks and shotguns.  Two companies of National Guardsmen  had mounted machine guns  around the courthouse  and an officer  with a loudspeaker  kept issuing warnings  forbidding anyone to cross the street  to the courthouse.  Only those  who had stood in line  and obtained tickets  for the two hundred seats  in the courtroom  were allowed to pass  into the courthouse,  and these— both men and women— were searched for weapons.  The scene in the courtroom  was usual  for such trials.  State police and Guardsmen,  armed with sidearms and nightsticks,  were stationed around the walls  and in the aisles.
     The jury had been selected  when I seated myself  at the table  which the sheriff  had hastened to provide  for the two  out-of-town reporters.  We had not been expected.  It was a routine trial.  We would not  have been sent to cover it  except for a dull news week.  The jurors  were farmers and townsmen  and I observed that  they appeared more intelligent  than the average  Alabama jury.  This was because  the verdict  was a foregone conclusion  and thus  counsel had not made  the usual effort  to strike  the more intelligent men  but had simply  taken the first twelve  in the venire.
     I looked across  at the plaintiff.  She was  a husky,  loose-jointed  farm woman,  perhaps thirty,  with big,  red hands,  big feet,  and a matted mass  of blonde hair  which  some amateur barber  had chopped squarely  and roughly off.  She reminded me  of a gangling battle-axe  I had once seen  in a brothel  whom the Madam  used only  as a shock trooper  to take on  the heavier  and more bellicose clients  who came in very late  and very drunk.  The two great press services  drily agreed that  young Roosevelt  had shown  damn poor taste  in his selection of a  Queen Bee  worthy of his life.
     Next to the plaintiff  sat her husband,  a burly farmer  whose cheap clothes  were much too small  for his bulging muscles  and whose flushed face  gave evidence  of the great rage  pent up inside him.  Around the two  sat an imposing array  of counsel for the state.  The Attorney-General  himself  was on hand,  his hackles up,  and issuing brash statements  by the bucketful.  Every elected prosecutor  in district and county  was present,  with assistants and volunteers,  to see that swift justice was done.  Such a case  provides rare political opportunity  and every attorney  who plans to run for office  rushes in  to participate gratis  in the prosecution  and make  a hell-raising speech  to the jury.
     You had to look  at counsel for the defense  to appreciate the contrast.  These two lawyers  had been appointed by the Court,  their names  drawn from a box  containing a list  of all practicing members  of the bar.  Fate had frowned on  poor Roosevelt again.  For he had drawn  a couple of old men  who had no stomach  for trial procedure.  They were  in mortal fear  the populace  would get the idea  that they had  willingly taken  Roosevelt’s case  and that  they believed him innocent.  Before the trial began,  one of them  rose  and addressed the Court.
     “Your Honor,”  he stammered,  “to avoid any misconceptions here,  my colleague and I  would like you to  explain publicly  that we have been drafted  by the Court  to safeguard  the constitutional rights  of the defendant  and that  no sympathy  for this defendant  is implied by  our actions.”

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     This  the judge did solemnly  in the presence of the jury.  But still  the old fuddy-duddies  weren’t satisfied.  They came over to us  and requested  we make clear  in our stories  that they were appearing  only  in compliance with  constitutional requirement.  The judge,  a grayish politician  of about sixty,  tried nervously  to rush the procedure.  He wanted the trial over  and the defendant  safely back in state prison  by nightfall.
     There was a rumble  in the courtroom.  The big coppers  and the Guardsmen  hefted their nightsticks.  You could feel  the hackles rise  and the hate  charge the air.  The defendant  was trudging in  with an escort of troopers.  I gave him  an unconcerned  and half-amused glance  and jotted down  a note.  Barefooted.  Faded and patched  pair of blue overalls  and jumper.  Hundred and thirty pounds.  Five feet six.  Burr-headed bastard.  The troopers  handcuffed him  to a chair  directly in front of us.  With the trial  about to start,  his attorneys  spoke contemptuously to him.  It was the first time,  apparently,  that they  had seen him.

“What’s ya’ name,  boy? ”
“Ruseyvelt Wilson.”
“How old are ya?”
“Ah thinks  ah’s twenty-two.”

     Then  they sat back  and were ready.  They assumed  the defendant  had no witnesses  and that  he should be  pleaded  not guilty  so as to be certain  of the death penalty.
     The state  called the plaintiff  and recorded her story.  Her husband  had been off  working in another county.  While she was digging potatoes  in one of the  more remote fields,  the nigger had  sneaked out of the thicket  and accosted her  with a shotgun.  He had  threatened to kill her  if she didn’t go  into the thicket  and submit to him.  So,  with a choice  between death and  such a sacrifice,  she had complied  with his demands.  After he had run off,  she had heard  the yells of some women  looking for her,  and she had  rushed to them  and reported the crime.
     The defense  cross-examined  softly  and sympathetically.  “Not that  we doubt your story,  ma’am,”  they explained,  “but just for the record.”  The plaintiff agreed  that the nigger  had laid down his gun  before the rape  occurred,  but the judge  promptly explained  to the jury  that she had  already been  intimidated  with the gun  and was thus  in mortal fear  for her life  even though  the gun  had been cast aside.  The irreverent  AP  cocked an eyebrow  and shook his head.  The plaintiff  weighed a  good thirty pounds  more than the defendant  and could  obviously  have smacked him silly  when he laid the gun down.
     Then followed  a succession of witnesses  who established that  the defendant  had run  when approached by the posse,  that he carried the gun,  and that  he had resisted arrest.  Two women  testified to  the nervous state  of the plaintiff  after the crime.

II
     At the noon recess  I overhead a conversation  between Roosevelt  and his attorneys.  They were  telling him that  there would be  no need  for him to  take the stand,  that it would be best  just to submit the case  when the state closed.  But Roosevelt objected.

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     “Naw,  suh,  boss,”  he said.  “De truf  aint being tole  heah.  Ah got to  git up deah  an’ tell de truf.  Ef dey kills me,  ah got to  git up deah  an’ tell de truf.”
     Believe me,  it was no noble motive  which inspired my intervention.  I only wanted  to blow up a dull story.  I stepped up  and said:  “That’s right,  Roosevelt.  If they’re not telling the truth,  you get up there  and tell it.  They’ve got to listen to you.”  The lawyers  then admitted to him that  “of course,  the court  couldn’t deny him  his constitutional right  to testify  in his own defense,”  but his testimony  would do no good.  When they had gone,  I stepped back in  and gave Roosevelt  some more encouragement.
     “Get in there  and give it to them  straight,  Roosevelt,”  I said.  Then,  in that burr-headed nigger’s face,  I saw something  I didn’t want to see.  I must have been  the first white man  ever  to have spoken  a civil word  to him.  He reacted  like a dog  when you  pat him on the head.  He let down his guard  and I saw that  he wasn’t a nameless animal  but a living,  breathing,  feeling — even aspiring — person.  He showed me  all the loneliness and fear  of his wretched life.  The loneliness of the cotton patch  and a dog  howling under the moon.  The loneliness and fear  of the swamp  with bloodhounds baying.  The loneliness and fear  of a jail cell  and a thunderbolt  exploding  in your body.  I shrugged  and turned away quickly.
     Shortly after noon  the state rested  and defense counsel  rose to inform the Court  solemnly  that counsel  had advised the defendant  not to testify,  but that  he insisted on his constitutional right.  The defense,  therefore,  was calling the defendant,  Roosevelt Wilson,  to the stand.  If you had struck a match  while that nigger was walking to the stand,  the courtroom would have exploded.  I have never felt such tension,  such organized hate  focused on one insignificant object.  Troopers clutched their nightsticks  and the judge  unconsciously  rapped for order  though the room  was breathlessly silent.
     “Now,  Roosevelt,  just go ahead  and tell your story,”  defense counsel said.  “And make it short.”  There was no effort  to guide his testimony  or to help him  in any way.
     “Well,  jedge,  it wuz lak dis,”  he began.  “Ah got up  dat mawnin’  an’ ah borr’d  Sam Winson’s gun  to go rabbit-huntin’.  Ef  Sam wuz heah  he’d tell ya  ah did.  Ah went ovah  tow’d  de nawth fawty  an’ ah seed  dis lady  a-diggin’ taters.  Ah’d seed her  atime  0’ two  befo’  an’  she’d tole me  she wanted a ring  ah had.  Ah wawked up to her  an’ ah show’d her de ring  an’ we tawked a minute.  Den ah axed her de question  an’ she lukked aroun’  an’ said she wuz willin’. . . .”
     The room exploded.  In a split second  the husband  had yanked open his britches  and from somewhere  under or between his legs  had come up with a forty-five.  And he had come up shooting.  The crowd rioted  and the Guardsmen  began laying them in the aisles  with the nightsticks.  Two big troopers  jumped on the  hate-crazed husband  and wrested the gun  from him.  Two reporters  who had been standing up,  the better to hear  Roosevelt’s story,  had done a dual jackknife  under a table.

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     It was half an hour  before order could be restored.  The jury,  the husband,  and the defendant  were removed from the courtroom,  and  AP and I  began burning up the wires  with flashes.  I asked the judge  if he wouldn’t have to  declare a mistrial.  “I suppose I should,”  he said,  “but,  hell,  we’ve got to get rid of this mess.”  He looked as if  he were bothered by an offensive odor.
     I went in  to see Roosevelt,  and his lawyers  were upbraiding him.  “We told you so.  We told you  not to get up there.  Now you see  we were right.  When court goes back in session,  we’ll just close the case.”
     “Naw,  suh,  boss,”  Roosevelt objected.  “Ah’s jest got started good.  De whole truf  ain’t been tole yit.”
     By now  Roosevelt had me  pulling for him.  “Get back up there,  Roosevelt,”  I told him.  “Don’t let ’em scare you.  Tell it all.”
     When trial was resumed,  the defense apologized profusely  and explained again  that they had  urged the defendant  not to testify.  Then they moved for a mistrial.  The motion was denied  and Roosevelt went back to the stand,  completely surrounded by troopers.  In a deadly silence  broken by heavy breathing,  he finished the story  of a mutual pine-needle affair,  hastened near the end  by  “some women  hollerin’ fo’  dis lady.”
     The cross-examination thunder  began to roll.  The prosecutors  began jumping and yelling  and shaking their fists.
     “If you hadn’t committed a crime,”  the Attorney-General bellowed,  “why did you run  like a scared rabbit  when these men  found you over there  in that field ? ”
     The reply was cool.  “Ah seed  a buncha men  come a-runnin’ at me.  Dey wuz  a-cussin’  an’ a-shootin’.  So ah jest run.  Dey kept a-chasin’ me,  so ah kept runnin’.”
     For an hour  the state battery  took turns  working out on Roosevelt.  They attempted to cross him  in every way.  But his story never changed.  The woman  had gone to the woods with him  willingly  in exchange for the ring  he had given her.
     During the impassioned oratory  to the jury,  I convinced myself  that the woman — the plaintiff — had smuggled the gun  into the courtroom.  The husband  could hardly  have brought it in,  for he was the most suspect  of all the spectators  and two deputies  had searched him thoroughly.  But the matron admitted  her search of the woman  had been perfunctory.  The plaintiff had known the story  the nigger might tell  and she had brought the gun in  to have her husband kill him  before he could tell it.
     The jury  required four minutes  to go out,  organize,  and bring back death.  While it was out,  I whispered to the judge:  “Judge,  I’ve lived around niggers  all my life  and if I ever heard one  tell the truth,  that little bastard  was telling it  this afternoon,  wasn’t he? ”  The judge  crouched down low behind his desk,  nodded his head,  and grinned:  “By God,  he shore was,  wasn’t he? ”
     When the jury  had been discharged,  I spoke privately  to several of the jurors.  To each one  I made the same statement  I had made to the judge.

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In each case,  I got the same reply.  “Shore he was telling the truth.  But what the hell,  he deserves the chair  for messin’ around  with a white woman.  Besides,  if we’d turned him loose,  that crowd outside  would’a lynched us.  We gotta live with these folks.”
     After the troopers  had rushed Roosevelt  through the crowds  and away  toward the penitentiary,  the judge called the husband back  to reprimand him  for creating a disturbance,  not to mention  attempting to murder  a man  still presumed  to be innocent.  The husband  told the judge.
     “Judge,  I felt like  I had to kill  that sonuvabitch.  I intended  to do it  this mawnin’  while he wuz  a-settin’ over there  at the table.  But ever’ time  I’d reach down  to pull my gun,  the Lawd would tell me  not to do it  fo’ them two newspapermen  wuz  a-settin’  right smack  behind him.”
     “Whew! ”  AP had turned white  around the gills.  “We got something  to thank the Lord for,  haven’t we,  boy? ”  he said.

III
     As we rode back to Birmingham  that night,  I kept thinking of  Roosevelt Wilson  in his faded overalls  and bare feet,  riding alone  toward Death Row  with a hundred and twenty Guardsmen  to see him  safely in the chair.  I thought of Pontius Pilate.  I thought of Emile Zola  and the few men  who have had the courage  to defy the mob.  I sneered.  What the hell!  AP pulled in  toward a roadhouse.  “Let’s have a drink,”  he said.
     We had several drinks.  We told the waitress  some stories  and pinched her  on the thigh.  To hell with  Roosevelt Wilson.  Smart guys  don’t go around  butting their heads  against stone walls.  Smart guys  make the most of the inevitable.
     Next morning,  in my clean-up story,  I inserted two paragraphs  about Roosevelt’s testimony.  In polite language  I hinted at its substance.  I watched the managing editor  when he picked up the story  at the copy desk.  He looked over at me,  made a wry face,  and jerked his nose  to tell me it stank.  I saw his pencil  go down  in an impatient gesture,  and I knew  those two paragraphs  would never see print.
     No person  reading my story  could have guessed  on what claim  Roosevelt based his plea of innocence.  I suggested  we use a picture  of Roosevelt Wilson  with the story.  His face  might impress somebody  with his innocence.  But my paper,  like others in the South,  had a policy against  using pictures of  Negroes.  So we used the latest  piece of  Marlene Dietrich  leg art  instead.
     I wish  I could tell you that  the Case of Roosevelt Wilson  perched on my shoulder  like a raven,  and that  I never rested  until  I had freed him  from his cell  and thrown him back  into the faces  of the Pontius Pilates.  I wish  I could tell you that  I made  a brave speech  to the editor  of my paper;  that I flung my job in his face;  and that  I fought for Roosevelt’s freedom  with pamphlets  printed on a hand press.  But none of these things  happened.  I told the editor  the filthy facts  and suggested a further story,  but when he said,  “Hell,  Bill,  you’re crazy,”  I just said,  “Yeah,  I guess  you’re right.”

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     I told the Governor  the same filthy facts.  He shrugged  and said:  “Boy,  you’re crazy.  What the hell can I do?  You know what it would mean  if I intervened  in a case like this.”
     “Yeah,  I guess you’re right,”  I said.  “But you know  I’ve read of governors  who couldn’t sleep  after they had let an innocent man  go to his death.”
     He laughed.  I laughed,  too.  The kind of laugh  you laugh  to keep from crying.  Then — incredible as it seems — I forgot Roosevelt Wilson  and it was quite by accident that I ever saw him again.
IV
     Thursday night  is execution night  at Alabama’s  big Kilby Prison.  Most every week  the state fries some black meat  and occasionally  a little white meat  is thrown in for good measure. There was a young cop-killer  sent up from Birmingham.  He was a white boy  from somewhere out West.  He had been in the Marines  and had hit the highways.  He had gone jittery  during a hold-up  and plugged a cop.  We had played the case  with a lot of sob stuff  and I was sent down to Montgomery  to cover his burning.
     The warden was impatient.  “Come on,  you guys,  let’s get started,”  he said to the reporters.  “We got  eight black boys to burn  after we finish off  this yellow cop-killer.”
     The cop-killer  was yellow  all right.  There were six preachers with him  when they brought him in the death house — all anxious to get their names spelled right — but he went hysterical  and guards had to throw him in the chair.
     I had filed my story  and was ready to leave the prison  when I remembered  I had left my coat in the corridor  near the death house.  I went back for it  and just happened to notice  the black boy  who was being led  toward the green door.
     It was Roosevelt Wilson.
     In his white prison clothes  the burr headed  little bastard  looked smaller  and less significant  than he had looked  in his overalls.  Friendless and alone,  he was going to his death.  During his weeks of waiting  he had not had  a single visitor  nor communication  from the world outside.  His eyeballs were rolling in fear,  but he was walking without support.  I tossed down my coat and called to the warden  to wait a minute.
     “You’re Roosevelt Wilson,  aren’t you? ”  I said.  “The boy  from up in Webster County.”  He recognized me.  I was still  probably the only white man  who had ever spoken civilly  to him.  “Yassuh,  boss,  ah is.  And yo’re  de newspapah genmun  who wuz at mah trial,  ain’tcha? ”
     The warden was annoyed.  “Come on,  Huie,”  he snapped.  “We’re in a hurry.  We got three more to go  and it’s gettin’ late.”  But I insisted  and he reluctantly agreed  to take another nigger on  and get Roosevelt last.  He locked us back in the cell  and we had a few minutes to talk.
     “Roosevelt,  would you like to see  a preacher  before you go? ”  I asked him.
     He said he would,  so I called an attendant  and sent him  for a preacher.  But the only preacher around now  was a nigger preacher  and he was in the death house.  So I borrowed  a greasy little Testament  from an old white prisoner  on the Row.

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I couldn’t remember  a suitable passage  in the New Testament;  so I opened  the little Bible,  pretended I was reading,  and recited the last five verses  of the Twenty-Third Psalm.  Roosevelt repeated after me.
     I fumbled  for something to say  to that Negro boy.  I wanted to say  something  that would give him faith  and comfort  and hope.  Something he could understand.  Finally,  I said:  “Roosevelt,  before you go in there,  I want to say this  to you.  You are not guilty of the crime  for which  this state  is going to kill you.  All of us  who heard your story  know that  you are innocent.  The judge knows  you are innocent.  The jurors  know  you are innocent.”
     “Den why  is dey killin’ me,  boss?  Fo’ God,  ah didn’t  fo’ce  dat lady.”
     “I  know you didn’t.  We all know  you didn’t.  But we couldn’t help it.”
     “Is dey  killin’ me  jest fo’  messin’ aroun’  wid dat lady? ”
     “Yes,  that’s one reason.  And there’s  a  bigger  and more awful reason  that  I haven’t  time to explain.  But what you want to do now  is to buck up.  Everybody has to die.  It’s not bad  in there.  You never feel it  at all.  So don’t be afraid.”
     He thought  for a minute.  “Does ya reckon  ah’ll  go to Hebben,  boss? ”
     “Well,  Roosevelt,”  I answered,  “I’ve heard it said  that the folks  here on earth  who are done wrong  like you,  and the folks  who have the worst luck — they are the folks  who go to Heaven,  and they are the ones  who get the biggest crowns  and the most gold.  So I think  you deserve  to go there  and  I believe  you will.”
     “Thank  ya,  boss,”  he said.  The warden was coming,  and he turned  and asked:  “Will ya go in  wif me,  boss?  It won’t be so bad  ef ya’Il  go wif me.”
     God,  I hated to go back in there.  It always made me sick.  But I nodded.  My folks  don’t shake hands with Negroes,  but I took Roosevelt by the hand  and we walked down the corridor.  An old  whiteheaded  Negro preacher  joined us.
     You would have been proud  of Roosevelt  in the death house.  He was scared,  but there were  no hysterics.  At the chair  he turned around and said:  “G’bye,  boss.  G’bye,  parson.”  The attendants  clapped on the hood  and adjusted the electrodes  and the old preacher broke into  “I am the Resurrection  and the Life. . . .”  For a second  the frail form  quivered  in the chair,  and then  the sovereign State of Alabama  exploded  twenty-three hundred volts of  lightning.
     They buried him  in the prison plot  for unclaimed bodies.  My paper  ran a story  under my  by-line.  It was a stinking account  of the execution  of a  yellow  copkiller.  “I have found God! ”  he was quoted  as having said  to the reporter  before the switch  was thrown.  The last paragraph of the story  was inconsequential.  It would have been  killed  by the make-up man  had it  run over  the column.  It said:  “Among the  eight Negroes  also executed last night  was Roosevelt Wilson,  22,  convicted of rape  in Webster County.”
     Perhaps  in retrospect  I attach too much significance  to this story of  Roosevelt Wilson.  It is a sordid story  involving only  an unfortunate woman  and a black maverick.

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Of  the score of  interracial rape trials  I have covered,  it is not typical  because the innocent defendant  is the exception  rather than  the rule.  But an innocent man  went to his death.
     It is apparent,  then,  that the cases  of the Roosevelt Wilsons  involve more than  plaintiffs and defendants.  They involve the faith  and the hope  and the courage  of a nation.  Small wonder that  we have such difficulty  rousing the Great Soul  of America  for its own defense.  Small wonder that  we can’t project our dreams  through the clouds of our own cynicism  and behold a vision  worth dying for.  We are all  soul-sick  in America.  It is a  what-the-hell  sickness  compounded of  cynicism and disillusion.
     Who knows?  Perhaps some day  when we have regained  the American Vision  for ourselves  and given it to others,  we may  erect a monument  to Adolf Hitler.  And when  I have atoned  for my own complacency  and  what-the-heIl,  I think  I’ll erect a monument  to a bare-footed  black boy  named Roosevelt Wilson.