August 3, 2017 • 35 mins
Arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in the electric chair in 24 hours.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This episode contains material that may be upsetting to some listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I finished law school on the first Friday in June
of nineteen sixty. On the following Monday, I went to
work for Donald L. Halliwell, who was the ultimate civil
rights lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia at the time.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Vernon Jordan, one of the great figures in the American
civil rights movement talking about his mentor.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And I went to work for him right out of
law school for thirty five dollars a week, and there
were no other jobs at the local government level, county, state,
or federal. We couldn't even take the bar review course
(01:09):
at John Marshall University because Georgia law quiet education be
separate and segregated. So I went to work for Don Hollowe.
My first day at work, I was in the Atlanta
Municipal Court helping him get demonstrators from the Atlanta University's
system out of jail.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode picks
up with a previous one left off with the story
of an extraordinary man named Donald L. Hallowell. Hallowell died
(01:54):
in two thousand and four, but I wish he were
still alive, because he has so much to teach us,
like how do you keep going when all seems lost?
How do you behave how do you conduct yourself if
you're one of the leaders of a lose cause? And
for most of his life Hollowell fought uphill. How do
you prepare those behind you for the day when you
(02:15):
might succeed?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
What did he look like?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Hallowell big heavy guy, played quarterback at Lane College.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Vernon Jordan is a big guy as well, imposing charismatic.
I mention not only because it's not a trivial fact.
The two of them, Jordan and Hallowell, would drive around
Georgia from one end of the state to the next,
to towns and courtrooms where a black lawyer was not
just an anomaly but a provocation. If you were five
(02:50):
foot two with a little squeaky voice, it didn't work.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
I would just like to think that the people at
the university and around the university are sufficiently fair minded
that you want to see.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I watched all these old, grainy videotapes of Hallowell in
the Auburn Avenue Library in Atlanta, and I became fixated
on his hands, which would rise and fall as he talked.
They were enormous. In Atlanta's segregated buses, there'd be a
little sign on the back of the seat where the
white section ended. It would say colored, directing black people
(03:27):
to their place. Sometimes, when no one was looking, Hollowell
would unclip it and stick it in his coat pocket,
mess things up a bit until the bus driver noticed,
or some white lady got hysterical because she inadvertently sat
in a seat still warm from the presence of a
black person. Hallowell was subversive in his own way, but
(03:48):
also formal proper. They used to say, he talked like
the Black Shakespeare. Hallowell once paused in the middle of
a trial to instruct the court on the correct pronunciation
of negro, not nigra, your honor negro. Another time, he
was up against two district attorneys in court, and the
(04:09):
moment he got up to speak, the white judge swiveled
in his chair with his back to Hallowell so he
would not have to suffer the indignity of gazing upon
a black man. What did Hallowell do, just kept talking
and talking in those slow, formal tones until it was
a judge who looked like a fool.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I did all the driving, and we get to a
town and so a principal or school teacher or the
local doctor. Somebody's got some independence. That's where you spent
the night. I slept the many night with holloween. You
(04:53):
know we're piling the same bed.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It better be a big bed if the two of
you were.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, but there were no big beds in those there
were no kings eye bed. But no, No, it was
Holliwell was a real hero.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
In the early morning of November fifth, nineteen fifty three,
a woman named Betty Joe Bishop calls the Atlanta Police
Department in hysterics. In her car is the badly beaten
corpse of her boyfriend, Marvin Lindsay. She tells the police
that two of them had been attacked when they were
parked on a secluded road on Atlanta's South Side. It's
(05:40):
a sensational case. In fact, it was written up in
one of those pulp crime magazines that were so popular
back then, Official Detective Stories, March nineteen fifty four issue
Wanted the Man in the Pyramid Hat I can't do
justice to the spirit of pulp journalism. So we're going
to reenact some scenes from the article, starting with this
(06:03):
description of the moment. Betty Joe Bishop meets Atlanta's Chief
of Detectives, Glynn Cowan, on in November morning.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Suppose that you begin by telling.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Us your name, Bishop, missus, Betty Joe Bishop, I'm a widow.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
You were with Marvin Lindsey tonight. Yes, tell me what happened?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Bishop tells the detective about driving to Jonesboro Road.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
We were only there a few minutes when this man
came out of the woods. It was terrible. He struck
me with his fist and Marvin had to fight him off.
Then he walked around the car and hit Marvin with
something heavy. Marvin pleaded for him to stop, but he wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
She covered her face with her hands and broke into long,
racking sobs. Cowen waited patiently until she recovered her composure.
What happened?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Then he asked what happened?
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Then? Well, after he got tired of hitting Marvin, he
ran into the woods. Marvin was lying half in and
half out of the car, so I walked around at
the driver's side and made him lie across the seat.
He was bleeding something awful, so I knew he was
hurt bad. I drove to his home in Blair Village
(07:29):
and told his brother John what had happened, and John
got in the car. We drove to Grady Hospital, but
it was too late. Marvin was already dead.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
They're in the police station. She can barely hold it together.
She's all beaten up. Her lover is dead. She tells
the officer that the assailant had come back after killing
Marvin and raped her. Maybe Detective Cowan takes her hand
in sympathy. Maybe He waits a few moments to let
her collect her thoughts. Then, as the article describes it,
(08:05):
he asks her to describe the assailant.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I'm not sure sure. It was very dark, and I
was scared. He was tall, and then I remember that much. Also,
when I grabbed one of his hands, I'll remember it
felt kind of bony.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Slowly, gently Cowan draws a description out of her. The
man was in his late thirties or early forties, about
five foot eleven then, wearing a leather jacket, dungarees, a
funny cuint of hat, pyramid shaped.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
And he was swarthy and had dark, oily hair.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The article never comes out and says so explicitly, But
if you're a reader of the pulp magazine Official Detective
Stories in March nineteen fifty four, you know what swarthy means.
The killer's black. That's why this is such a sensational case.
Betty Joe Bishop is an innocent white widow and she
and her boyfriend have been attacked by a mysterious black man.
(09:09):
Atlanta's finest immediately got to work. They scour the crime scene.
The killer had a rolled up newspaper which he'd apparently
left at the scene, and he'd circled two wantads, one
for a dishwasher at a local restaurant. The police go
to the restaurant. Did a thin, swarthy man with oily
(09:32):
hair answer and ad yesterday for a dishwasher? The only
the restaurant says yes, doesn't remember his name, but remembers
the man said he used to work at Elite Bowling
Alleys on Hunter Street. The coat check girl at Elite
Bowling Alley says, oh, that's Willie. An eyewitness comes forward
says he saw a man near the crime scene, swarthy
(09:55):
wearing a pyramid shaped hat. They scour the area around
the crime scene, stumble on a little cottage inside his
thirty nine year old Willie Nash, unemployed handyman, swarthy, dark hair.
They arrest him. He confesses, So who do you call?
(10:15):
If you're Willie Nash, things are pretty bleak. What you
really want is a white lawyer. Because it's nineteen fifty four.
The jury's going to be all white, the police department
is all white, the judge is going to be white.
Willie Nash knows where the power lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
But Willia Nash is poor, so he's forced to settle
(10:36):
for one of the very few black lawyers in town,
a man two years out of law school, still wet
behind the ears, Donald L. Hollowell. When Nash realizes he
has no other choice, he breaks down into tears. I'd
have cried too, Hollowell says years later, if I'd have
been Willy Nash under those circumstances. This was years before
(10:58):
Vernon Jordan joined Hollowell's firm, but he knew all about
the Willy Nash case. Everybody in black Atlanta did.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
That's the case where he held up. The latest pan
is before the jury and that was the case set
set Hallowell up.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
A few years ago, the Smithsonian interviewed a man named
Robert Carter, another legendary black attorney. Carter talks about trying
school segregation cases in the Deep South in the nineteen
fifties with Constance Baker Motley and Thurgood Marshall, two other
pioneering black lawyers of that era. They would be in
court up against the local white schools superintendent, and black
(11:44):
people from the community would show up, cram into the balcony,
hang on every word. It wasn't that they expected to win,
because they often didn't. They just wanted to see a
black person in a position of formal authority over a
white person in Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama. At the
height of Jim Crow, that was history being made. Every hearing,
(12:07):
every trial with a black lawyer was public theater. During
cross examination, a white witness might forget his role in
the trial and start asking questions of the attorney of Motley, say,
and Connie Motley, a black woman in nineteen fifty something,
would reprimand the white male witness say, my job is
to ask the question, Your job is to respond, And
(12:30):
everybody would gasp. In the evening. Carter says he would
walk through the black neighborhoods and hear people re enacting
the trial in barbershops and beauty parlors. In other words,
there were two conversations going on at any given time.
There was the legal conversation witness, judge, lawyers accused. If
(12:53):
you were a white lawyer dealing with the white world,
that was the conversation you worried about. But there was
a second conversation, which was between the black lawyers and
the people in the balcony. And if you were an
underdog with a limited chance to win at the first conversation,
then and that second conversation was really important. Donald Halliwell
(13:14):
was very good at the first conversation, the legal one.
He was a master of the second.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
At home the defense of liberty and democracy for African Americans.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
There's a great documentary about Hallowell made by the Georgia
civil rights scholar Maurice Daniels.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
This fight will require foot soldiers for equal justice.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Daniels does a long interview with an attorney named Howard Moore,
who worked with Hallowell in the nineteen sixties, and Moore
talks about arriving early at ahering into the police shooting
of a black teenager to handle things before Hallowell got there.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
When I got down to Bibb County and went to
the courthouse, that were about three thousand negroes on the steps.
And I went into the courthouse and there were about
three thousand or as many as they could get in
the balcony of staff. And when I walked in the courtroom,
the people upstairs, the black people, said that ain't Hollowell.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Where's Hollowell?
Speaker 6 (14:17):
That ain't Hallowell. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (14:22):
I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, you know.
So I said, well, I act like Hallowell. I'll just
object in the loudest voice I can. And then people
upstairs in the in the balcony said, well, it ain't Hallowell,
but he sounded like Hallowell.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
When Hallowell showed up at the court inquest, he put
the police officer on the stand he'd shot a seventeen
year old boy named A. C. Hall. Hallowell took the
officer through his testimony, bit by meticulous bit, slowly exposing
the officer's lies. The cop was in tears by the end.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
I've never seen that before since, when a lawyer just
take completely control of a witness and buying that witness
to his will, not with shouting and screaming, but with systematic,
well structured, well placed questions.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Now, did Hallowell win a victory for the bereaved family
of ac Hall. Was the officer prosecuted, of course not.
It's hard enough to win a conviction against a white
cop who shoots a black kid today, let alone. In
nineteen sixty two in Bibb County, Georgia, this was about
the second conversation between Hallowell and the thousands of people
(15:33):
on the steps. We are not entirely powerless. I can
bind a witness to my will one more case, because
there are dozens of them. Hollowell never stopped moving in
those years. This one was in nineteen sixty one, and
this time Hallowell was with the young Vernon Jordan.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Our client, James Phayir, a black kid from New Jersey,
had been arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to
die in the electric chair in twenty four hours.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Hallowell and his team go down to the town of Reedsville, Georgia,
to argue for a new trial.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The judge in the case was Judge WI don't want
any niggas in my court gear. He had that reputation.
On Monday, we went and we tried the case.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
At lunchtime, the judge and the white lawyers and the
white court officials went across the town square to the
white only restaurant and had their lunch.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Hallowell, C. B. King and I went to the own
the grocery store on the courthouse square or the Pound
and bolognay loaf of bread, mustard, Coca cola and the
baby Ruth and sat in mister Hallowell's car in the
(17:11):
parking surrounding the courthouse and ate our lunch. We did
it on Monday. We did it on Tuesday Wednesday with
Ryan Mcase and a black lady who waved in me
and I met her in the vestibula at the courthouse.
(17:32):
Never forget it, and she said, Lawyer, we've been watching
y'all eat that bologna for two days now. She says,
just have a Coca cola and don't eat that bolloona
today and when the court ends, which is three thirty four,
you'll drive to my house for lunch.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So they go to her house. That's the moment Jordan
remembers fifty years later, that moment of grace and quiet
rebellion outside the courtroom.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And we walked in, and the table but was set
for royalty, her best linen, her best china, her best crystal.
The aroma of the southern food was almost crippling. It
was as it circled our noses. And her neighbors had
(18:27):
come and put on nice sundresses, and their husbands had
cleaned up, and they welcomed us. And then we joined hands,
and her husband gave the grace and he said this
unforgettable sentence, which was Lord way down here in Tattnall County.
(18:52):
We can't join the NAACP, but thanks to your bountiful blessings,
we can feed the NAACP lawyers.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
So Willie Nash, Betty Joe Bishop's swoarthy assailant. The case
we began with Donald Hollowell's Trial by Fire. If you
look back on Hollowell's career, it's all there, every theme.
In that first case. Nash has been indicted for murder,
rape and robbery. The prosecutor has a murder weapon, a
(19:31):
bloody piece of pipe. He has Nash's confession, and he
has a witness, a black man named Julius Harris, who
places Nash at the murder scene. The moonlight was shining
directly on his face when I glimpsed him. Harris testifies
for Hollowell and Nash. It looks pretty bleak. But then
one of the prosecutors is trying to remember Julius Harris's
(19:54):
name and can't, and he says, in an open court room,
the eye witness, you know that fat nigger. Hollowell jumps
out of his seat and almost shouts a negro is
as entitled to respect as any other person. The judge agrees,
declares a mistrial. The second trial is two months later.
(20:16):
This time Hollowell has time to prepare. He puts the
head of the Georgia State Crime Lab on the stand
and asks, did you find any blood on the alleged
murder weapon. The man says, actually he didn't. Hallowell moves
on to the police. Turns out they have multiple conflicting
stories about what happened that night. Willie Nash testifies, says
(20:37):
his confession was beaten out of him. As for the
witness who said he saw Nash's face by the light
of the moon, Hallowell points out there was no moon
over Atlanta that night. Finally, Hollowell turns to the alleged victim,
Betty Joe Bishop. Turns out she had a second boyfriend
who left town right after the murder of her first boyfriend,
(20:58):
and when she pulled up to Marvin Lindsey's brother's house
with Marvin's dead body in her car, the first thing
out of her mouth was, I know you think I
did it, but a nigger did it. Finally, Hallowell calls
the doctor who examined Bishop right after the alleged rape occurred,
and the doctor concedes that he could find no evidence,
(21:20):
not bruises or sperm, to indicate that a rape actually occurred.
That's when Hollowell holds up an item from police evidence,
Betty Joe Bishop's underwear. Hallowell waves them in front of
the jury. Nineteen fifty four, Atlanta, Georgia. A black man
waves a white woman's underwear in the air in front
(21:40):
of an all white jury. Now who's that for? Is
it for? The jury? Of course, he's saying, Betty Joe
Bishop is lying through her teeth, but it's really for
the audience. He's saying enough. You can imagine that up
in the balcony, there was a collective intake of breath
at that moment, something that could be heard clear across Atlanta,
(22:01):
and that night, in a thousand homes, somebody stood up
and played out that scene, just like Hallowell to a
chorus of disbelief. Willie Nash goes free. But it's still
not a real victory, because what's the real lesson of
(22:22):
the false indictment of Willie Nash? That every white person
in that courtroom lied freely and blatantly. The police LIEDE,
the witness liede, the victim lied, the press slide. The
murder weapon wasn't a murder weapon, the rape wasn't a rape.
And the only reason all the liars got caught was
(22:43):
they couldn't even be bothered to keep their story straight.
It didn't seem worth the effort. I know you think
I did it, but a nigger did it. It's not
as if the whole group of them, the victim, the
police officer, the witness, the doctor, the press got in
a room and worked out an elaborate story to tell
the court that would be a conspiracy. But you only
(23:04):
need a conspiracy where there is a system to conspire against.
There was no system to conspire against. They were the system.
The Nash case wasn't a victory, but it was a warning.
Things got worse for the civil rights movement before they
(23:25):
got better. The William Nash Caase was in nineteen fifty four,
the same year that the Supreme Court ruled in the
Brownvie Board of Education decision that racial segregation was unconstitutional.
After Brown came what is known in civil rights history
as massive resistance. The white political power structure of the
(23:45):
South rose up, and the backlash began. One by one,
white governors and mayors and senators who had been at
least moderate racial issues were replaced by hard line racists.
Alabama had a governor in the nineteen fifties, Big Jim Fulsom,
who used to say, all men are just alike. I
don't think he really meant it, but at least he
(24:07):
was willing to say it. By the early nineteen sixties,
Alabama had taken a big step backwards. Their new governor
was George Wallace, who famously declared.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Segregation now, segregation, Tomarra, and segregation forever.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
The decade leading up to the nineteen sixty four Civil
Rights Act was a dark time in American racial history.
We forget this now. Martin Luther King led the Montgomery
bus boycott in nineteen fifty six, but after that he
had years in the wilderness when even members of his
own community had turned against him. And in October of
(24:49):
nineteen sixty at the lowest EBB King gets arrested. He
was already on probation for a traffic violation. He'd move
from Alabama to Georgia and didn't get a Georgia driver's
license within the requisite ninety days, for which he had
been sentenced to twelve months in public works camp, which
was the Georgia euphemism for a chain gang. King got
(25:11):
that sentence suspended, but then he got picked up for
taking part in a sit in, and the prosecutor said
that meant he'd violated his probation and now he needed
to do his twelve months on the chain gang. By
the way, if you think that this has anything to
do with driving in Georgia with an Alabama license, you're crazy.
This is what things had come to in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
You have asked me what other plans do we have
in connection with Reverend Martin Luther King's release?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So who does King call for help? Donald L. Hollowell?
Of course. In the morning after King's arrest, Hollowell stands
on the Dukalb County Courthouse steps addressing a group of reporters.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Of course, this would depend upon whether or not the
court granted our motion to vacate the order of yesterday.
If the court fails to release him, of course we
would take other steps to appeal or to affect.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Hallowell is trying to get King's case thrown out, but
the problem is that King is no longer in Atlanta.
He's banished. In Maurice Daniels documentary, Hallowell's wife Louise talks
about what happened when her husband went to retrieve King
from the county jail, only to be confronted by the warden.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
When he got there. He said, I came to get
a king out this morning, or something like that to
that effect. And he said, well, he ain't here. And
he said, well, what do you mean he ain't here?
He said, well, they took him away this morning. Sometime
and they carried him down to the state prison, and
(26:52):
he said, that's what he is. He ain't here, so
you can't get him. Well, mister Hallowell didn't like that.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I love that line. Mister Hallowell didn't like that. Daniels
picks up the story with Andrew Young, another of King's
inner circle.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
That was a word night of Martin Luther King's life.
They took him from the Decalb County, put him in
leg irons and handcuffs, laid him on the floor in
the back of a paddywagon with nobody back there but
a German shepherd, and they drove him from Atlanta to Reidsville.
It's three hundred miles. There were no expressways then, three
(27:30):
hundred miles on bad Georgia roads.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Reidsville the same place where Jordan and Hallowell ate their
Bologney sandwich in the car. They know the town well.
The state prison in Reidsville was notorious. It was the
kind of place where they used that phrase in quotation
marks that somebody got shot trying to escape, or where
they got beat up by a guard out on the
chain gang. When King's followers heard Reidsville, they honestly feared
(27:57):
that he was going to end up dead, but there's
not a hint of that in his attorney on the courthouse.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Steps, learning that Reverend King had been taken to the
Reidsville prison, I would say that I indicated two authorities
on last evening that we were desirous of having Reverend
King at this hearing.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
However, they informed.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Me that they had already transmitted the papers yesterday afternoon
to the Board of Correction, and that it was in
their purview to move him when they desired.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Hallowell's composure does not break why because he's not just
talking to those reporters. He's talking to the black people
of Georgia, telling them that it will take more than
the abduction of their leader to break the spirit of
their movement.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
We know that it's a matter of normal practice, it
is several days before a prisoner is moved. However, when
we called at eight for the purpose of ascertaining the
whereabouts or the sheriff for making service, we were informed
that Reverend King had been taken down to Reichsville at
four or five this morning.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That day, Hallowell flew to Reidsville, invited along the National media.
The White House was watching. Hallowell walked into Reidsville and
walked out with his client. It's a surreal moment. The
state of Georgia basically tried to kidnap the nation's leading
civil rights leader. There's press everywhere. Someone puts a camera
(29:32):
in Martin Luther King's face. Everyone's eyes are on him.
There's a famous picture of that moment. It ran in
all the newspapers, and you can imagine that when people
from the movement saw it, they first looked to see
whether King was okay, and then they asked, where's Hollowell.
Sure enough, there he was in the background, off a
(29:53):
little to the left, crisp white shirt, elegant black bow tie, impassive, implacable.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
This is put gave me hope.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Okay, and Jordan again. I went to see him to
talk about Hollowell, but more than that, because I wanted
to understand what it means to persevere. It's not just
that these stories are shocking and extraordinary, it's the sheer
weight of them. A white woman has her boyfriend murdered
and then just randomly pins it on a black man
(30:29):
who just happens to be in the neighborhood. A police
officer shoots a teenager in the back and gets off
scott free. A kid gets arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted,
and sentenced to die before he can even mount a defence.
Your leader gets whisked away to a chain gang because
he didn't get his license changed within ninety days. You
(30:50):
fight an uphill battle all morning in the courtroom. Then
you eat your bologney sandwich in your car like a fugitive,
and it never ends. You get in the car and
you drive to one end of the state, and the
judge swivels in his chair and will not offer you
the basic courtesy of facing you as you speak. Then
you sleep too in a bed in a stranger's house,
(31:11):
and do it all again the next day and the
next day. I don't understand how Donald Holliwell did it,
And maybe more importantly, I don't understand how he kept
everyone else, the people behind him who didn't have his strength,
from giving up. Is there any question more fundamental than that?
(31:32):
I'm not sure there is. So I went back to Vernon,
Jordan a second time after he's told me about Nathaniel
Johnson and Willie Nash I sat in his office in
Rockefeller Center and he told me one last story. It's
(31:54):
about when he was in high school the same school,
Martin Luther King went to David Howard High on Randolph Street,
an all black school in the black part of town.
Jordan was in the band, and one day the principal
gets a call from the school's superintendent, a white woman.
The senator from Georgia, Richard Russell, was running for president.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
She wanted the Dave D. Howard High School band to
be at Peastree in Baker Streets to play with these
hand me down instruments of white schools. As Richard Russell
went up p Street Street on his way to sixteen
hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Richard Russell was a hard core segregationist, one of the
most powerful men in the Senate, who used his position
to block anything even looking like civil rights. A man
who was a matter of principal did not think black
people should be allowed to drink from the same water
fountain as white people. This man one of the black
students of Atlanta to play in his honor.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
The principal told the band master, and the bandmaster told
us at band practice at two thirty, a trombone player
named Maynard Jackson and a trumpet player named Vernon Jordans
said hell, no, we won't go. Big discussion took place, right.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You and Maynor Jackson were at school together. Yeah, Maynor
Jackson in his day was part of the same band
of brothers as Donald Hallowell and Vernon Jordan and Martin
Luther King.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
The big argument took place, and at the end the
trumbone player and the trumpet player I said, wait a minute.
We raised it, but we gotta go because if we
don't go, our principal and our bandmaster would lose their jobs.
So we played at Peach Street and Baker Street for
(33:50):
Richard Russell in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
He swallowed your pride.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
It wasn't the pride, it was a practical decision. Twenty
one years later, Maynord Jackson was sworn in as mayor
of Atlanta. Right, so you got nineteen fifty one on
a bad situation and you get through it. Twenty one
years later he is conducting the political Symphony of Atlanta.
(34:17):
And that's why you can't get angry. You have to
get smart.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, at least did you at least play badly.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
No, we were too good. We were We were a
hell of a man.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Revision's History is produced by Emi LaBelle and Jacob Smith,
with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and sill Mara Martinez White.
Our editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer.
Original music by Luis Scara. Special thanks to our actors
Jody Markel and Ken Marx, and to Andy Bauers and
Jacob Weisberget Cannaply. I'm Malcolm Graddler
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
This episode contains material that may be upsetting to some listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
I finished law school on the first Friday in June
of nineteen sixty. On the following Monday, I went to
work for Donald L. Halliwell, who was the ultimate civil
rights lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia at the time.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Vernon Jordan, one of the great figures in the American
civil rights movement talking about his mentor.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
And I went to work for him right out of
law school for thirty five dollars a week, and there
were no other jobs at the local government level, county, state,
or federal. We couldn't even take the bar review course
(01:09):
at John Marshall University because Georgia law quiet education be
separate and segregated. So I went to work for Don Hollowe.
My first day at work, I was in the Atlanta
Municipal Court helping him get demonstrators from the Atlanta University's
system out of jail.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode picks
up with a previous one left off with the story
of an extraordinary man named Donald L. Hallowell. Hallowell died
(01:54):
in two thousand and four, but I wish he were
still alive, because he has so much to teach us,
like how do you keep going when all seems lost?
How do you behave how do you conduct yourself if
you're one of the leaders of a lose cause? And
for most of his life Hollowell fought uphill. How do
you prepare those behind you for the day when you
(02:15):
might succeed?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
What did he look like?
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Hallowell big heavy guy, played quarterback at Lane College.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Vernon Jordan is a big guy as well, imposing charismatic.
I mention not only because it's not a trivial fact.
The two of them, Jordan and Hallowell, would drive around
Georgia from one end of the state to the next,
to towns and courtrooms where a black lawyer was not
just an anomaly but a provocation. If you were five
(02:50):
foot two with a little squeaky voice, it didn't work.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
I would just like to think that the people at
the university and around the university are sufficiently fair minded
that you want to see.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
I watched all these old, grainy videotapes of Hallowell in
the Auburn Avenue Library in Atlanta, and I became fixated
on his hands, which would rise and fall as he talked.
They were enormous. In Atlanta's segregated buses, there'd be a
little sign on the back of the seat where the
white section ended. It would say colored, directing black people
(03:27):
to their place. Sometimes, when no one was looking, Hollowell
would unclip it and stick it in his coat pocket,
mess things up a bit until the bus driver noticed,
or some white lady got hysterical because she inadvertently sat
in a seat still warm from the presence of a
black person. Hallowell was subversive in his own way, but
(03:48):
also formal proper. They used to say, he talked like
the Black Shakespeare. Hallowell once paused in the middle of
a trial to instruct the court on the correct pronunciation
of negro, not nigra, your honor negro. Another time, he
was up against two district attorneys in court, and the
(04:09):
moment he got up to speak, the white judge swiveled
in his chair with his back to Hallowell so he
would not have to suffer the indignity of gazing upon
a black man. What did Hallowell do, just kept talking
and talking in those slow, formal tones until it was
a judge who looked like a fool.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I did all the driving, and we get to a
town and so a principal or school teacher or the
local doctor. Somebody's got some independence. That's where you spent
the night. I slept the many night with holloween. You
(04:53):
know we're piling the same bed.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
It better be a big bed if the two of
you were.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Yeah, but there were no big beds in those there
were no kings eye bed. But no, No, it was
Holliwell was a real hero.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
In the early morning of November fifth, nineteen fifty three,
a woman named Betty Joe Bishop calls the Atlanta Police
Department in hysterics. In her car is the badly beaten
corpse of her boyfriend, Marvin Lindsay. She tells the police
that two of them had been attacked when they were
parked on a secluded road on Atlanta's South Side. It's
(05:40):
a sensational case. In fact, it was written up in
one of those pulp crime magazines that were so popular
back then, Official Detective Stories, March nineteen fifty four issue
Wanted the Man in the Pyramid Hat I can't do
justice to the spirit of pulp journalism. So we're going
to reenact some scenes from the article, starting with this
(06:03):
description of the moment. Betty Joe Bishop meets Atlanta's Chief
of Detectives, Glynn Cowan, on in November morning.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Suppose that you begin by telling.
Speaker 5 (06:14):
Us your name, Bishop, missus, Betty Joe Bishop, I'm a widow.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
You were with Marvin Lindsey tonight. Yes, tell me what happened?
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Bishop tells the detective about driving to Jonesboro Road.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
We were only there a few minutes when this man
came out of the woods. It was terrible. He struck
me with his fist and Marvin had to fight him off.
Then he walked around the car and hit Marvin with
something heavy. Marvin pleaded for him to stop, but he wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
She covered her face with her hands and broke into long,
racking sobs. Cowen waited patiently until she recovered her composure.
What happened?
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Then he asked what happened?
Speaker 5 (07:05):
Then? Well, after he got tired of hitting Marvin, he
ran into the woods. Marvin was lying half in and
half out of the car, so I walked around at
the driver's side and made him lie across the seat.
He was bleeding something awful, so I knew he was
hurt bad. I drove to his home in Blair Village
(07:29):
and told his brother John what had happened, and John
got in the car. We drove to Grady Hospital, but
it was too late. Marvin was already dead.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
They're in the police station. She can barely hold it together.
She's all beaten up. Her lover is dead. She tells
the officer that the assailant had come back after killing
Marvin and raped her. Maybe Detective Cowan takes her hand
in sympathy. Maybe He waits a few moments to let
her collect her thoughts. Then, as the article describes it,
(08:05):
he asks her to describe the assailant.
Speaker 5 (08:08):
I'm not sure sure. It was very dark, and I
was scared. He was tall, and then I remember that much. Also,
when I grabbed one of his hands, I'll remember it
felt kind of bony.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Slowly, gently Cowan draws a description out of her. The
man was in his late thirties or early forties, about
five foot eleven then, wearing a leather jacket, dungarees, a
funny cuint of hat, pyramid shaped.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
And he was swarthy and had dark, oily hair.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
The article never comes out and says so explicitly, But
if you're a reader of the pulp magazine Official Detective
Stories in March nineteen fifty four, you know what swarthy means.
The killer's black. That's why this is such a sensational case.
Betty Joe Bishop is an innocent white widow and she
and her boyfriend have been attacked by a mysterious black man.
(09:09):
Atlanta's finest immediately got to work. They scour the crime scene.
The killer had a rolled up newspaper which he'd apparently
left at the scene, and he'd circled two wantads, one
for a dishwasher at a local restaurant. The police go
to the restaurant. Did a thin, swarthy man with oily
(09:32):
hair answer and ad yesterday for a dishwasher? The only
the restaurant says yes, doesn't remember his name, but remembers
the man said he used to work at Elite Bowling
Alleys on Hunter Street. The coat check girl at Elite
Bowling Alley says, oh, that's Willie. An eyewitness comes forward
says he saw a man near the crime scene, swarthy
(09:55):
wearing a pyramid shaped hat. They scour the area around
the crime scene, stumble on a little cottage inside his
thirty nine year old Willie Nash, unemployed handyman, swarthy, dark hair.
They arrest him. He confesses, So who do you call?
(10:15):
If you're Willie Nash, things are pretty bleak. What you
really want is a white lawyer. Because it's nineteen fifty four.
The jury's going to be all white, the police department
is all white, the judge is going to be white.
Willie Nash knows where the power lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
But Willia Nash is poor, so he's forced to settle
(10:36):
for one of the very few black lawyers in town,
a man two years out of law school, still wet
behind the ears, Donald L. Hollowell. When Nash realizes he
has no other choice, he breaks down into tears. I'd
have cried too, Hollowell says years later, if I'd have
been Willy Nash under those circumstances. This was years before
(10:58):
Vernon Jordan joined Hollowell's firm, but he knew all about
the Willy Nash case. Everybody in black Atlanta did.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
That's the case where he held up. The latest pan
is before the jury and that was the case set
set Hallowell up.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
A few years ago, the Smithsonian interviewed a man named
Robert Carter, another legendary black attorney. Carter talks about trying
school segregation cases in the Deep South in the nineteen
fifties with Constance Baker Motley and Thurgood Marshall, two other
pioneering black lawyers of that era. They would be in
court up against the local white schools superintendent, and black
(11:44):
people from the community would show up, cram into the balcony,
hang on every word. It wasn't that they expected to win,
because they often didn't. They just wanted to see a
black person in a position of formal authority over a
white person in Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama. At the
height of Jim Crow, that was history being made. Every hearing,
(12:07):
every trial with a black lawyer was public theater. During
cross examination, a white witness might forget his role in
the trial and start asking questions of the attorney of Motley, say,
and Connie Motley, a black woman in nineteen fifty something,
would reprimand the white male witness say, my job is
to ask the question, Your job is to respond, And
(12:30):
everybody would gasp. In the evening. Carter says he would
walk through the black neighborhoods and hear people re enacting
the trial in barbershops and beauty parlors. In other words,
there were two conversations going on at any given time.
There was the legal conversation witness, judge, lawyers accused. If
(12:53):
you were a white lawyer dealing with the white world,
that was the conversation you worried about. But there was
a second conversation, which was between the black lawyers and
the people in the balcony. And if you were an
underdog with a limited chance to win at the first conversation,
then and that second conversation was really important. Donald Halliwell
(13:14):
was very good at the first conversation, the legal one.
He was a master of the second.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
At home the defense of liberty and democracy for African Americans.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
There's a great documentary about Hallowell made by the Georgia
civil rights scholar Maurice Daniels.
Speaker 3 (13:34):
This fight will require foot soldiers for equal justice.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Daniels does a long interview with an attorney named Howard Moore,
who worked with Hallowell in the nineteen sixties, and Moore
talks about arriving early at ahering into the police shooting
of a black teenager to handle things before Hallowell got there.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
When I got down to Bibb County and went to
the courthouse, that were about three thousand negroes on the steps.
And I went into the courthouse and there were about
three thousand or as many as they could get in
the balcony of staff. And when I walked in the courtroom,
the people upstairs, the black people, said that ain't Hollowell.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Where's Hollowell?
Speaker 6 (14:17):
That ain't Hallowell. I don't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I don't know.
Speaker 6 (14:22):
I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, you know.
So I said, well, I act like Hallowell. I'll just
object in the loudest voice I can. And then people
upstairs in the in the balcony said, well, it ain't Hallowell,
but he sounded like Hallowell.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
When Hallowell showed up at the court inquest, he put
the police officer on the stand he'd shot a seventeen
year old boy named A. C. Hall. Hallowell took the
officer through his testimony, bit by meticulous bit, slowly exposing
the officer's lies. The cop was in tears by the end.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
I've never seen that before since, when a lawyer just
take completely control of a witness and buying that witness
to his will, not with shouting and screaming, but with systematic,
well structured, well placed questions.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Now, did Hallowell win a victory for the bereaved family
of ac Hall. Was the officer prosecuted, of course not.
It's hard enough to win a conviction against a white
cop who shoots a black kid today, let alone. In
nineteen sixty two in Bibb County, Georgia, this was about
the second conversation between Hallowell and the thousands of people
(15:33):
on the steps. We are not entirely powerless. I can
bind a witness to my will one more case, because
there are dozens of them. Hollowell never stopped moving in
those years. This one was in nineteen sixty one, and
this time Hallowell was with the young Vernon Jordan.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Our client, James Phayir, a black kid from New Jersey,
had been arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to
die in the electric chair in twenty four hours.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Hallowell and his team go down to the town of Reedsville, Georgia,
to argue for a new trial.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
The judge in the case was Judge WI don't want
any niggas in my court gear. He had that reputation.
On Monday, we went and we tried the case.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
At lunchtime, the judge and the white lawyers and the
white court officials went across the town square to the
white only restaurant and had their lunch.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Hallowell, C. B. King and I went to the own
the grocery store on the courthouse square or the Pound
and bolognay loaf of bread, mustard, Coca cola and the
baby Ruth and sat in mister Hallowell's car in the
(17:11):
parking surrounding the courthouse and ate our lunch. We did
it on Monday. We did it on Tuesday Wednesday with
Ryan Mcase and a black lady who waved in me
and I met her in the vestibula at the courthouse.
(17:32):
Never forget it, and she said, Lawyer, we've been watching
y'all eat that bologna for two days now. She says,
just have a Coca cola and don't eat that bolloona
today and when the court ends, which is three thirty four,
you'll drive to my house for lunch.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
So they go to her house. That's the moment Jordan
remembers fifty years later, that moment of grace and quiet
rebellion outside the courtroom.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
And we walked in, and the table but was set
for royalty, her best linen, her best china, her best crystal.
The aroma of the southern food was almost crippling. It
was as it circled our noses. And her neighbors had
(18:27):
come and put on nice sundresses, and their husbands had
cleaned up, and they welcomed us. And then we joined hands,
and her husband gave the grace and he said this
unforgettable sentence, which was Lord way down here in Tattnall County.
(18:52):
We can't join the NAACP, but thanks to your bountiful blessings,
we can feed the NAACP lawyers.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
So Willie Nash, Betty Joe Bishop's swoarthy assailant. The case
we began with Donald Hollowell's Trial by Fire. If you
look back on Hollowell's career, it's all there, every theme.
In that first case. Nash has been indicted for murder,
rape and robbery. The prosecutor has a murder weapon, a
(19:31):
bloody piece of pipe. He has Nash's confession, and he
has a witness, a black man named Julius Harris, who
places Nash at the murder scene. The moonlight was shining
directly on his face when I glimpsed him. Harris testifies
for Hollowell and Nash. It looks pretty bleak. But then
one of the prosecutors is trying to remember Julius Harris's
(19:54):
name and can't, and he says, in an open court room,
the eye witness, you know that fat nigger. Hollowell jumps
out of his seat and almost shouts a negro is
as entitled to respect as any other person. The judge agrees,
declares a mistrial. The second trial is two months later.
(20:16):
This time Hollowell has time to prepare. He puts the
head of the Georgia State Crime Lab on the stand
and asks, did you find any blood on the alleged
murder weapon. The man says, actually he didn't. Hallowell moves
on to the police. Turns out they have multiple conflicting
stories about what happened that night. Willie Nash testifies, says
(20:37):
his confession was beaten out of him. As for the
witness who said he saw Nash's face by the light
of the moon, Hallowell points out there was no moon
over Atlanta that night. Finally, Hollowell turns to the alleged victim,
Betty Joe Bishop. Turns out she had a second boyfriend
who left town right after the murder of her first boyfriend,
(20:58):
and when she pulled up to Marvin Lindsey's brother's house
with Marvin's dead body in her car, the first thing
out of her mouth was, I know you think I
did it, but a nigger did it. Finally, Hallowell calls
the doctor who examined Bishop right after the alleged rape occurred,
and the doctor concedes that he could find no evidence,
(21:20):
not bruises or sperm, to indicate that a rape actually occurred.
That's when Hollowell holds up an item from police evidence,
Betty Joe Bishop's underwear. Hallowell waves them in front of
the jury. Nineteen fifty four, Atlanta, Georgia. A black man
waves a white woman's underwear in the air in front
(21:40):
of an all white jury. Now who's that for? Is
it for? The jury? Of course, he's saying, Betty Joe
Bishop is lying through her teeth, but it's really for
the audience. He's saying enough. You can imagine that up
in the balcony, there was a collective intake of breath
at that moment, something that could be heard clear across Atlanta,
(22:01):
and that night, in a thousand homes, somebody stood up
and played out that scene, just like Hallowell to a
chorus of disbelief. Willie Nash goes free. But it's still
not a real victory, because what's the real lesson of
(22:22):
the false indictment of Willie Nash? That every white person
in that courtroom lied freely and blatantly. The police LIEDE,
the witness liede, the victim lied, the press slide. The
murder weapon wasn't a murder weapon, the rape wasn't a rape.
And the only reason all the liars got caught was
(22:43):
they couldn't even be bothered to keep their story straight.
It didn't seem worth the effort. I know you think
I did it, but a nigger did it. It's not
as if the whole group of them, the victim, the
police officer, the witness, the doctor, the press got in
a room and worked out an elaborate story to tell
the court that would be a conspiracy. But you only
(23:04):
need a conspiracy where there is a system to conspire against.
There was no system to conspire against. They were the system.
The Nash case wasn't a victory, but it was a warning.
Things got worse for the civil rights movement before they
(23:25):
got better. The William Nash Caase was in nineteen fifty four,
the same year that the Supreme Court ruled in the
Brownvie Board of Education decision that racial segregation was unconstitutional.
After Brown came what is known in civil rights history
as massive resistance. The white political power structure of the
(23:45):
South rose up, and the backlash began. One by one,
white governors and mayors and senators who had been at
least moderate racial issues were replaced by hard line racists.
Alabama had a governor in the nineteen fifties, Big Jim Fulsom,
who used to say, all men are just alike. I
don't think he really meant it, but at least he
(24:07):
was willing to say it. By the early nineteen sixties,
Alabama had taken a big step backwards. Their new governor
was George Wallace, who famously declared.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Segregation now, segregation, Tomarra, and segregation forever.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
The decade leading up to the nineteen sixty four Civil
Rights Act was a dark time in American racial history.
We forget this now. Martin Luther King led the Montgomery
bus boycott in nineteen fifty six, but after that he
had years in the wilderness when even members of his
own community had turned against him. And in October of
(24:49):
nineteen sixty at the lowest EBB King gets arrested. He
was already on probation for a traffic violation. He'd move
from Alabama to Georgia and didn't get a Georgia driver's
license within the requisite ninety days, for which he had
been sentenced to twelve months in public works camp, which
was the Georgia euphemism for a chain gang. King got
(25:11):
that sentence suspended, but then he got picked up for
taking part in a sit in, and the prosecutor said
that meant he'd violated his probation and now he needed
to do his twelve months on the chain gang. By
the way, if you think that this has anything to
do with driving in Georgia with an Alabama license, you're crazy.
This is what things had come to in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
You have asked me what other plans do we have
in connection with Reverend Martin Luther King's release?
Speaker 2 (25:43):
So who does King call for help? Donald L. Hollowell?
Of course. In the morning after King's arrest, Hollowell stands
on the Dukalb County Courthouse steps addressing a group of reporters.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
Of course, this would depend upon whether or not the
court granted our motion to vacate the order of yesterday.
If the court fails to release him, of course we
would take other steps to appeal or to affect.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Hallowell is trying to get King's case thrown out, but
the problem is that King is no longer in Atlanta.
He's banished. In Maurice Daniels documentary, Hallowell's wife Louise talks
about what happened when her husband went to retrieve King
from the county jail, only to be confronted by the warden.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
When he got there. He said, I came to get
a king out this morning, or something like that to
that effect. And he said, well, he ain't here. And
he said, well, what do you mean he ain't here?
He said, well, they took him away this morning. Sometime
and they carried him down to the state prison, and
(26:52):
he said, that's what he is. He ain't here, so
you can't get him. Well, mister Hallowell didn't like that.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I love that line. Mister Hallowell didn't like that. Daniels
picks up the story with Andrew Young, another of King's
inner circle.
Speaker 7 (27:08):
That was a word night of Martin Luther King's life.
They took him from the Decalb County, put him in
leg irons and handcuffs, laid him on the floor in
the back of a paddywagon with nobody back there but
a German shepherd, and they drove him from Atlanta to Reidsville.
It's three hundred miles. There were no expressways then, three
(27:30):
hundred miles on bad Georgia roads.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Reidsville the same place where Jordan and Hallowell ate their
Bologney sandwich in the car. They know the town well.
The state prison in Reidsville was notorious. It was the
kind of place where they used that phrase in quotation
marks that somebody got shot trying to escape, or where
they got beat up by a guard out on the
chain gang. When King's followers heard Reidsville, they honestly feared
(27:57):
that he was going to end up dead, but there's
not a hint of that in his attorney on the courthouse.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
Steps, learning that Reverend King had been taken to the
Reidsville prison, I would say that I indicated two authorities
on last evening that we were desirous of having Reverend
King at this hearing.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
However, they informed.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
Me that they had already transmitted the papers yesterday afternoon
to the Board of Correction, and that it was in
their purview to move him when they desired.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Hallowell's composure does not break why because he's not just
talking to those reporters. He's talking to the black people
of Georgia, telling them that it will take more than
the abduction of their leader to break the spirit of
their movement.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
We know that it's a matter of normal practice, it
is several days before a prisoner is moved. However, when
we called at eight for the purpose of ascertaining the
whereabouts or the sheriff for making service, we were informed
that Reverend King had been taken down to Reichsville at
four or five this morning.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
That day, Hallowell flew to Reidsville, invited along the National media.
The White House was watching. Hallowell walked into Reidsville and
walked out with his client. It's a surreal moment. The
state of Georgia basically tried to kidnap the nation's leading
civil rights leader. There's press everywhere. Someone puts a camera
(29:32):
in Martin Luther King's face. Everyone's eyes are on him.
There's a famous picture of that moment. It ran in
all the newspapers, and you can imagine that when people
from the movement saw it, they first looked to see
whether King was okay, and then they asked, where's Hollowell.
Sure enough, there he was in the background, off a
(29:53):
little to the left, crisp white shirt, elegant black bow tie, impassive, implacable.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
This is put gave me hope.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Okay, and Jordan again. I went to see him to
talk about Hollowell, but more than that, because I wanted
to understand what it means to persevere. It's not just
that these stories are shocking and extraordinary, it's the sheer
weight of them. A white woman has her boyfriend murdered
and then just randomly pins it on a black man
(30:29):
who just happens to be in the neighborhood. A police
officer shoots a teenager in the back and gets off
scott free. A kid gets arrested, arraigned, indicted, tried, convicted,
and sentenced to die before he can even mount a defence.
Your leader gets whisked away to a chain gang because
he didn't get his license changed within ninety days. You
(30:50):
fight an uphill battle all morning in the courtroom. Then
you eat your bologney sandwich in your car like a fugitive,
and it never ends. You get in the car and
you drive to one end of the state, and the
judge swivels in his chair and will not offer you
the basic courtesy of facing you as you speak. Then
you sleep too in a bed in a stranger's house,
(31:11):
and do it all again the next day and the
next day. I don't understand how Donald Holliwell did it,
And maybe more importantly, I don't understand how he kept
everyone else, the people behind him who didn't have his strength,
from giving up. Is there any question more fundamental than that?
(31:32):
I'm not sure there is. So I went back to Vernon,
Jordan a second time after he's told me about Nathaniel
Johnson and Willie Nash I sat in his office in
Rockefeller Center and he told me one last story. It's
(31:54):
about when he was in high school the same school,
Martin Luther King went to David Howard High on Randolph Street,
an all black school in the black part of town.
Jordan was in the band, and one day the principal
gets a call from the school's superintendent, a white woman.
The senator from Georgia, Richard Russell, was running for president.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
She wanted the Dave D. Howard High School band to
be at Peastree in Baker Streets to play with these
hand me down instruments of white schools. As Richard Russell
went up p Street Street on his way to sixteen
hundred Pennsylvania Avenue.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Richard Russell was a hard core segregationist, one of the
most powerful men in the Senate, who used his position
to block anything even looking like civil rights. A man
who was a matter of principal did not think black
people should be allowed to drink from the same water
fountain as white people. This man one of the black
students of Atlanta to play in his honor.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
The principal told the band master, and the bandmaster told
us at band practice at two thirty, a trombone player
named Maynard Jackson and a trumpet player named Vernon Jordans
said hell, no, we won't go. Big discussion took place, right.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You and Maynor Jackson were at school together. Yeah, Maynor
Jackson in his day was part of the same band
of brothers as Donald Hallowell and Vernon Jordan and Martin
Luther King.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
The big argument took place, and at the end the
trumbone player and the trumpet player I said, wait a minute.
We raised it, but we gotta go because if we
don't go, our principal and our bandmaster would lose their jobs.
So we played at Peach Street and Baker Street for
(33:50):
Richard Russell in nineteen fifty one.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
He swallowed your pride.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
It wasn't the pride, it was a practical decision. Twenty
one years later, Maynord Jackson was sworn in as mayor
of Atlanta. Right, so you got nineteen fifty one on
a bad situation and you get through it. Twenty one
years later he is conducting the political Symphony of Atlanta.
(34:17):
And that's why you can't get angry. You have to
get smart.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, at least did you at least play badly.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
No, we were too good. We were We were a
hell of a man.
Speaker 2 (34:48):
Revision's History is produced by Emi LaBelle and Jacob Smith,
with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and sill Mara Martinez White.
Our editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer.
Original music by Luis Scara. Special thanks to our actors
Jody Markel and Ken Marx, and to Andy Bauers and
Jacob Weisberget Cannaply. I'm Malcolm Graddler
Host
Malcolm Gladwell
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