Like our juries they have a way of being right.”Īgain McGee’s attorneys appealed and again a new trial was ordered-this time on the grounds that the exclusion of blacks from juries denied equal protection under the law. Such action was so ingrained in the Southern way of life that even a progressive like Faulkner could pronounce, “But there is one curious things about mobs. Heard offers several examples in which locals took black prisoners from jailhouses and subjected them to horrific torture before killing them. Lynch mobs frequently took the law into their own hands when a black person was accused of raping, murdering, or even stealing from a white person. The first order of business for the state was to keep McGee alive in order to stand trial.
But had he done so voluntarily or had he been beaten as he later claimed?
Soon after being taken into custody, McGee confessed. Police soon noted that he had not shown up for work and that friends stated he had been in the Hawkins’ neighborhood around the time of the alleged rape. McGee was arrested the next day on unrelated charges that he was in unauthorized possession of a truck owned by his employer, the Laurel Wholesale Grocery Company. She acknowledged that she could not see his face, but she knew he was black by virtue of his hair’s texture. She said that the man crawled on top of her and threatened to kill her and her daughter if she talked. Hawkins, a thirty-two-year-old housewife, told police that a man had broken into her house in Laurel while she was asleep with her sick eighteen-month-old daughter beside her. Understandably McGee’s descendants sought to clear his name, while Hawkins’s relatives were committed to eradicating the belief that still lingers in some quarters that Willette and Willie had been having an affair and that she had cried rape to protect her reputation. Among those with whom he spent time and shared notes were the children and grandchildren of the two principals. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he is currently editorial director of Outside magazine, Heard commenced a journey that would take him back home and introduce him to a cast of characters, some dead, some still alive, some noble and some decidedly ignoble.
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