Deep South Dispatch by John N. Herbers

Author:John N. Herbers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2018-06-25T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Justice Delayed

The First Beckwith Trial

BYRON DE LA BECKWITH JR. WAS A FORTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD FERTILIZER salesman from an old Greenwood, Mississippi, family who had served as a marine in World War II and was a member in good standing of the town’s respected organizations—the Masons, the Shriners, the White Citizens’ Council, and the Protestant Episcopal Church. Beckwith was also a member of the KKK and a fanatic who believed that neither the KKK nor the White Citizens’ Council had gone far enough to oppose evil threats to white society. Medgar Evers was one of the most influential civil rights leaders in the state, and Beckwith wanted to be a martyr for the cause of segregation.

On a warm June night in 1963, Beckwith, hiding in a clump of sweet gum trees and tangled honeysuckle vine, waited for Medgar Evers to arrive home from a civil rights rally. As Evers stepped from his car, Beckwith shot him in the back with a bolt action high-powered rifle. A gun bearing Beckwith’s fingerprints was recovered nearby.

Beckwith, who denied his involvement in the killing, was arrested and charged with the murder. The trial, held at the Hinds County courtroom in Jackson, attracted small crowds, mostly black, and uniformed officers stood guard at the doors taking the names and addresses of the spectators. As I entered the courtroom, my memory flashed back to the Till trial and the idiosyncratic workings of the Mississippi justice system.

It was immediately obvious that selecting an impartial jury would be impossible. As with the Till trial, potential jurors were randomly selected from a list of registered voters composed largely of white men. The Southern Regional Council had made strides to register blacks in the South—about 265,000 blacks in eleven states had registered since 1962—but Mississippi still lagged far behind. Of the two hundred potential jurors summoned for the case, just six were black. The district attorney repeatedly asked potential jurors the same questions: Might race impact your verdict? Could you convict a white man for killing a black man who led racial integration efforts in the state? Do you understand that you could be ostracized in your community for reaching a guilty verdict?

The district attorney asked one prospective white juror if he thought it would be a crime for a white man to kill a black man in Mississippi. There was a long pause.

“What was his answer?” the judge asked impatiently as he sat between the Mississippi and American flags, habitually twisting his wedding ring.

“He’s thinking it over,” the district attorney replied.

Finally, the prospective juror answered yes, it was a crime, but he promised to put the race issue out of his mind for the present time.

“Not for the present time,” the judge barked. “It’s for all time.”

The district attorney dismissed the potential juror.

Three blacks were also dismissed because one had an employment conflict, another had suffered a murder in the family, and the third knew Evers personally. The three remaining black men were skipped over and sent home. Many of the rejected white jurors conceded that their verdict might be affected by the race issue.

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