Native Son Part 51

"But the corpse returns and raids our homes! We find our daughters murdered and burnt! And we say, 'Kill! Kill!'

"But, Your Honor, I say: 'Stop! Let us look at what we are doing!' For the corpse is not dead! It still lives! It has made itself a home in the wild forest of our great cities, amid the rank and choking vegetation of slums! It has forgotten our language! In order to live it has sharpened its claws! It has grown hard and calloused! It has developed a capacity for hate and fury which we cannot understand! Its movements are unpredictable! By night it creeps from its lair and steals toward the settlements of civilization! And at the sight of a kind face it does not lie down upon its back and kick up its heels playfully to be tickled and stroked. No; it leaps to kill!

"Yes, Mary Dalton, a well-intentioned white girl with a smile upon her face, came to Bigger Thomas to help him. Mr. Dalton, feeling vaguely that a social wrong existed, wanted to give him a job so that his family could eat and his sister and brother could go to school. Mrs. Dalton, trying to grope her way toward a sense of decency, wanted him to go to school and learn a trade. But when they stretched forth their helping hands, death struck! Today they mourn and wait for revenge. The wheel of blood continues to turn!

"I have only sympathy for those kind-hearted, white-haired parents. But to Mr. Dalton, who is a real estate operator, I say now: 'You rent houses to Negroes in the Black Belt and you refuse to rent to them elsewhere. You kept Bigger Thomas in that forest. You kept the man who murdered your daughter a stranger to her and you kept your daughter a stranger to him.'

"The relations.h.i.+p between the Thomas family and the Dalton family was that of renter to landlord, customer to merchant, employee to employer. The Thomas family got poor and the Dalton family got rich. And Mr. Dalton, a decent man, tried to salve his feelings by giving money. But, my friend, gold was not enough! Corpses cannot be bribed! Say to yourself, Mr. Dalton, 'I offered my daughter as a burnt sacrifice and it was not enough to push back into its grave this thing that haunts me.'

"And to Mrs. Dalton, I say: 'Your philanthropy was as tragically blind as your sightless eyes!'

"And to Mary Dalton, if she can hear me, I say: 'I stand here today trying to make your death mean mean something!' something!'

"Let me, Your Honor, explain further the meaning of Bigger Thomas' life. In him and men like him is what was in our forefathers when they first came to these strange sh.o.r.es hundreds of years ago. We were lucky. They are not. We found a land whose tasks called forth the deepest and best we had; and we built a nation, mighty and feared. We poured and are still pouring our soul into it. But we have told them: 'This is a white man's country!' They are yet looking for a land whose tasks can call forth their deepest and best.

"This is not something that we have to be told. We know this. And, in some of us, as in Mr. Dalton, the feeling of guilt, stemming from our moral past, is so strong that we try to undo this thing in a manner as naive as dropping a penny in a blind man's cup! But, Your Honor, life will not be dealt with in such a fas.h.i.+on. It rushes on its fateful course, mocking our delicate feelings. Let us hope that this Court at least will indicate a line of action that is not childis.h.!.+

"Consider, Your Honor, the peculiar position of this boy. He comes of a people who have lived under queer conditions of life, conditions thrust outside the normal circle of our civilization. But even in living outside of our lives, he has not had a full life of his own. We have seen to that. It was convenient to keep him close to us; it was nice and cheap. We told him what to do; where to live; how much schooling he could get; where he could eat; where and what kind of work he could do. We marked up the earth and said, 'Stay there!' But life is not stationary.

"He attended school, where he was taught what every white child was taught; but the moment he went through the door of the school into life he knew that the white boy went one way and he went another. School stimulated and developed in him those impulses which all of us have, and then he was made to realize that he could not act upon them. Can the human mind devise a trap more skilful? This Court should not sit to fix punishment for this boy; it should sit to ponder why there are not more like him! And there are, Your Honor. If it were not for the backwaters of religion, gambling and s.e.x draining off their energies into channels harmful to them and profitable to us, more of them would be here today. Be a.s.sured!

"Your Honor, consider the mere physical aspect of our civilization. How alluring, how dazzling it is! How it excites the senses! How it seems to dangle within easy reach of everyone the fulfilment of happiness! How constantly and overwhelmingly the advertis.e.m.e.nts, radios, newspapers and movies play upon us! But in thinking of them remember that to many they are tokens of mockery. These bright colors may fill our hearts with elation, but to many they are daily taunts. Imagine a man walking amid such a scene, a part of it, and yet knowing that it is not not for him! for him!

"We planned the murder of Mary Dalton, and today we come to court and say: 'We had nothing to do with it!' But every school teacher knows that this is not so, for every school teacher knows the restrictions which have been placed upon Negro education. The authorities know that it is not so, for they have made it plain in their every act that they mean to keep Bigger Thomas and his kind within rigid limits. All real estate operators know that it is not so, for they have agreed among themselves to keep Negroes within the ghetto-areas of cities. Your Honor, we who sit here today in this court room are witnesses. We know this evidence, for we helped to create it.

"It is not my duty here, today, to say how this great problem can be solved. My job is to show how nonsensical it is to seek revenge on this boy under the pretense that we are making a great fight for justice. If we do that, we shall be merely hypnotizing ourselves, and to our own ultimate disadvantage.

"But the question may be asked, 'If this boy thought that he was somehow wronged, why did he not go into a court of law and seek a redress of his grievances? Why should he take the law into his own hands?' Your Honor, this boy had no notion before he murdered, and he has none now, of having been wronged by any specific individuals. And, to be honest with you, the very life he has led has created in him a frame of mind which makes him expect much less of this Court than you will ever know.

"It is indeed unfortunate that Mary Dalton should have been the woman who approached him that night; and it is unfortunate that Jan Erlone should have been the man who sought to help him. He murdered one and tried to lay the blame for that murder on the other. But Jan and Mary were not human beings to Bigger Thomas. Social custom had shoved him so far away from them that they were not real to him.

"What would a boy, free from the warping influences which have played so hard upon Bigger Thomas, have done that night when he found himself alone with that drunk girl? He would have gone to Mr. or Mrs. Dalton and told them that their daughter was drunk. And the thing would have been over. There would have been no murder. But the way we have treated this boy made him do the very very thing we did not want. thing we did not want.

"Or, am I wrong? Maybe we wanted wanted him to do it! Maybe we would have had no chance or justification to stage attacks against hundreds of thousands of people if he had acted sanely and normally! Maybe we would have had to go to the expensive length of inventing theories to justify our attacks if we had treated him fairly! him to do it! Maybe we would have had no chance or justification to stage attacks against hundreds of thousands of people if he had acted sanely and normally! Maybe we would have had to go to the expensive length of inventing theories to justify our attacks if we had treated him fairly!

"This boy's crime was not an act of retaliation by an injured man against a person who he thought had injured him. If it were, then this case would be simple indeed. This is the case of a man's mistaking a whole race of men as a part of the natural structure of the universe and of his acting toward them accordingly. He murdered Mary Dalton accidentally, without thinking, without plan, without conscious motive. But, after he murdered, he accepted the crime. And that's the important thing. It was the first full act of his life; it was the most meaningful, exciting and stirring thing that had ever happened to him. He accepted it because it made him free, gave him the possibility of choice, of action, the opportunity to act and to feel that his actions carried weight.

"We are dealing here with an impulse stemming from deep down. We are dealing here not with how man acts toward man, but with how a man acts when he feels that he must defend himself against, or adapt himself to, the total natural world in which he lives. The central fact to be understood here is not who wronged this boy, but what kind of a vision of the world did he have before his eyes, and where did he get such a vision as to make him, without premeditation, s.n.a.t.c.h the life of another person so quickly and instinctively that even though there was an element of accident in it, he was willing after the crime to say: 'Yes; I did it. I had to.'

"I know that it is the fas.h.i.+on these days for a defendant to say: 'Everything went blank to me.' But this boy does not say that. He says the opposite. He says he knew what he was doing and felt he had had to do it. And he says he feels no sorrow for having done it. to do it. And he says he feels no sorrow for having done it.

"Do men regret when they kill in war? Does the personality of a soldier coming at you over the top of a trench matter?

"No! You kill to keep from being killed! And after a victorious war you return to a free country, just as this boy, with his hands stained with the blood of Mary Dalton, felt that he was free for the first time in his life.

"Your Honor, the most pathetic aspect of this case is that a young white woman, a student at a university, ignorant and thoughtless, though educated, tried to undo as an individual a gigantic wrong accomplished by a nation through three hundred long years, and was misunderstood and is now dead because of that misunderstanding. It has been said that the proof of the corrupt and vile heart of this boy is that he slew a woman who was trying to be kind to him. In the face of that a.s.sertion, I ask the question: Is there any greater proof that his heart is not corrupt and vile than that he slew a woman who was trying to be kind? Oh, yes; he hated the girl. And why not? She was acting toward him in such a way as no white face usually acts toward a Negro, and as a white face acts only when it is about to fleece a Negro of something. He did not understand her. She confounded him. Her actions made him feel that the entire universe was tumbling about his head. What would any man in this court room do if the sun should suddenly turn green?

"Look, Your Honor, with great and elaborate care we conditioned Mary Dalton so that she would regard Bigger Thomas as a kind of beast. And, under the penalty of death, we commanded Bigger Thomas to avoid Mary Dalton. Fateful circ.u.mstances threw them together. Is it surprising that one of them is dead and the other is on trial for his life?

"Look, Your Honor. Even in this court room, even here today, Negro and white are separated. See those Negroes sitting together, behind that railing? No one told them to sit there. They sat there because they knew that we did not want them on the same bench with us.

"Multiply Bigger Thomas twelve million times, allowing for environmental and temperamental variations, and for those Negroes who are completely under the influence of the church, and you have the psychology of the Negro people. But once you see them as a whole, once your eyes leave the individual and encompa.s.s the ma.s.s, a new quality comes into the picture. Taken collectively, they are not simply twelve million people; in reality they const.i.tute a separate nation, stunted, stripped, and held captive within within this nation, devoid of political, social, economic, and property rights. this nation, devoid of political, social, economic, and property rights.

"Do you think that you can kill one of them-even if you killed one every day in the year-and make the others so full of fear that they would not kill? No! Such a foolish policy has never worked and never will. The more you kill, the more you deny and separate, the more will they seek another form and way of life, however blindly and unconsciously. And out of what can they weave a different life, out of what can they mold a new existence, living organically in the same towns and cities, the same neighborhoods with us? I ask, out of what-but what we are are and and own own? We allow them nothing. We allowed Bigger Thomas nothing. He sought another life and accidentally found one, found it at the expense of all that we cherish and hold dear. Men once oppressed our forefathers to the extent that they viewed other men as material out of which to build a nation; we in turn have oppressed others to such a degree that they, fumblingly as yet, try to construct meaningful lives out of us us! Cannibalism still lives!

"Your Honor, there are four times as many Negroes in America today as there were people in the original Thirteen Colonies when they struck for their freedom. These twelve million Negroes, conditioned broadly by our own notions as we were by European ones when we first came here, are struggling within unbelievably narrow limits to achieve that feeling of at-home-ness for which we once strove so ardently. And, compared with our own struggle, they art striving under conditions far more difficult. If anybody can, surely we ought to be able to understand what these people are after. This vast stream of life, dammed and muddied, is trying to sweep toward that fulfilment which all of us seek so fondly, but find so impossible to put into words. When we said that men are 'endowed with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' we did not pause to define 'happiness.' That is the unexpressed quality in our quest, and we have never tried to put it into words. That is why we say, 'Let each man serve G.o.d in his own fas.h.i.+on.'

"But there are some broad features of the kind of happiness we are seeking which are known. We know that happiness comes to men when they are caught up, absorbed in a meaningful task or duty to be done, a task or duty which in turn sheds justification and sanction back down upon their humble labors. We know that this may take many forms: in religion it is the story of the creation of man, of his fall, and of his redemption; compelling men to order their lives in certain ways, all cast in terms of cosmic images and symbols which swallow the soul in fulness and wholeness. In art, science, industry, politics, and social action it may take other forms. But these twelve million Negroes have access to none of these highly crystallized modes of expression, save that of religion. And many of them know religion only in its most primitive form. The environment of tense urban centers has all but paralyzed the impulse for religion as a way of life for them today, just as it has for us.

"Feeling the capacity to be, to live, to act, to pour out the spirit of their souls into concrete and objective form with a high fervor born of their racial characteristics, they glide through our complex civilization like wailing ghosts; they spin like fiery planets lost from their orbits; they wither and die like trees ripped from native soil.

"Your Honor, remember that men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread! And they can murder murder for it, too! Did we not build a nation, did we not wage war and conquer in the name of a dream to realize our personalities and to make those realized personalities secure! for it, too! Did we not build a nation, did we not wage war and conquer in the name of a dream to realize our personalities and to make those realized personalities secure!

"Do we think that the laws of human nature stopped operating after we had got our feet upon our road? Have we had to struggle so hard for our right to happiness that we have all but destroyed the conditions under which we and others can still be happy? This Negro boy, Bigger Thomas, is a part of a furious blaze of liquid life-energy which once blazed and is still blazing in our land. He is a hot jet of life that spattered itself in futility against a cold wall.

"But did Bigger Thomas really murder murder? At the risk of offending the sensibilities of this Court, I ask the question in the light of the ideals by which we we live! Looked at from the outside, maybe it was murder; yes. But to him it was live! Looked at from the outside, maybe it was murder; yes. But to him it was not not murder. If it was murder, then what was the motive? The prosecution has shouted, stormed and threatened, but he has not said murder. If it was murder, then what was the motive? The prosecution has shouted, stormed and threatened, but he has not said why why Bigger Thomas killed! He has not said why because he does not know. The truth is, Your Honor, there was no motive as you and I understand motives within the scope of our laws today. The truth is, this boy did Bigger Thomas killed! He has not said why because he does not know. The truth is, Your Honor, there was no motive as you and I understand motives within the scope of our laws today. The truth is, this boy did not not kill! Oh, yes; Mary Dalton is dead. Bigger Thomas smothered her to death. Bessie Mears is dead. Bigger Thomas battered her with a brick in an abandoned building. But did he murder? Did he kill? Listen: what Bigger Thomas did early that Sunday morning in the Dalton home and what he did that Sunday night in that empty building was but a tiny aspect of what he had been doing all his life long! He was kill! Oh, yes; Mary Dalton is dead. Bigger Thomas smothered her to death. Bessie Mears is dead. Bigger Thomas battered her with a brick in an abandoned building. But did he murder? Did he kill? Listen: what Bigger Thomas did early that Sunday morning in the Dalton home and what he did that Sunday night in that empty building was but a tiny aspect of what he had been doing all his life long! He was living living, only as he knew how, and as we have forced him to live. The actions that resulted in the death of those two women were as instinctive and inevitable as breathing or blinking one's eyes. It was an act of creation creation!

"Let me tell you more. Before this trial the newspapers and the prosecution said that this boy had committed other crimes. It is true. He is guilty of numerous crimes. But search until the day of judgment, and you will find not one shred of evidence of them. He has murdered many times, but there are no corpses. Let me explain. This Negro boy's entire att.i.tude toward life is a crime crime! The hate and fear which we have inspired in him, woven by our civilization into the very structure of his consciousness, into his blood and bones, into the hourly functioning of his personality, have become the justification of his existence.

"Every time he comes in contact with us, he kills! It is a physiological and psychological reaction, embedded in his being. Every thought he thinks is potential murder. Excluded from, and una.s.similated in our society, yet longing to gratify impulses akin to our own but denied the objects and channels evolved through long centuries for their socialized expression, every sunrise and sunset makes him guilty of subversive actions. Every movement of his body is an unconscious protest. Every desire, every dream, no matter how intimate or personal, is a plot or a conspiracy. Every hope is a plan for insurrection. Every glance of the eye is a threat. His very existence is a crime against the state! His very existence is a crime against the state!

"It so happened that that night a white girl was present in a bed and a Negro boy was standing over her, fascinated with fear, hating her; a blind woman walked into the room and that Negro boy killed that girl to keep from being discovered in a position which he knew we we claimed warrants the death penalty. But that is only claimed warrants the death penalty. But that is only one one side of it! He was impelled toward murder as much through the thirst for excitement, exultation, and elation as he was through fear! It was his way of side of it! He was impelled toward murder as much through the thirst for excitement, exultation, and elation as he was through fear! It was his way of living living!

"Your Honor, in our blindness we have so contrived and ordered the lives of men that the moths in their hearts flutter toward ghoulish and incomprehensible flames!

"I have not explained the relations.h.i.+p of Bessie Mears to this boy. I have not forgotten her. I omitted to mention her until now because she was largely omitted from the consciousness of Bigger Thomas. His relations.h.i.+p to this poor black girl also reveals his relations.h.i.+p to the world. But Bigger Thomas is not here on trial for having murdered Bessie Mears. And he knows that. What does this mean? Does not the life of a Negro girl mean as much in the eyes of the law as the life of a white girl? Yes; perhaps, in the abstract. But under the stress of fear and flight, Bigger Thomas did not think of Bessie. He could not. The att.i.tude of America toward this boy regulated his most intimate dealings with his own kind. After he had killed Mary Dalton he killed Bessie Mears to silence her, to save himself. After he had killed Mary Dalton the fear of having killed a white woman filled him to the exclusion of everything else. He could not react to Bessie's death; his consciousness was determined by the fear that hung above him.

"But, one might ask, did he not love Bessie? Was she not his girl? Yes; she was his girl. He had to have a girl, so he had Bessie. But he did not love her. Is love possible to the life of a man I've described to this Court? Let us see. Love is not based upon s.e.x alone, and that is all he had with Bessie. He wanted more, but the circ.u.mstances of his life and her life would not allow it. And the temperament of both Bigger and Bessie kept it out. Love grows from stable relations.h.i.+ps, shared experience, loyalty, devotion, trust. Neither Bigger nor Bessie had any of these. What was there they could hope for? There was no common vision binding their hearts together; there was no common hope steering their feet in a common path. Even though they were intimately together, they were confoundingly alone. They were physically dependent upon each other and they hated that dependence. Their brief moments together were for purposes of s.e.x. They loved each other as much as they hated each other; perhaps they hated each other more than they loved. s.e.x warms the deep roots of life; it is the soil out of which the tree of love grows. But these were trees without roots, trees that lived by the light of the sun and what chance rain that fell upon stony ground. Can disembodied spirits love? There existed between them fitful splurges of physical elation; that's all.

"With cunning calculated to outrage the moral sense, the prosecution brought into this court room a man, a manager from a theatre, who told us that Bigger Thomas and boys like him frequented his theatre and committed acts of masturbation in the darkened seats. A gasp of horror went through the court room. But what is so strange about that? Was not Bigger Thomas' relations.h.i.+p to his girl a masturbatory one? Was not his relations.h.i.+p to the whole world on the same plane?

"His entire existence was one long craving for satisfaction, with the objects of satisfaction denied; and we regulated every part of the world he touched. Through the instrument of fear, we determined the mode and the quality of his consciousness.

"Your Honor, is this boy alone in feeling deprived and baffled? Is he an exception? Or are there others? There are others, Your Honor, millions of others, Negro and white, and that is what makes our future seem a looming image of violence. The feeling of resentment and the balked longing for some kind of fulfilment and exultation-in degrees more or less intense and in actions more or less conscious-stalk day by day through this land. The consciousness of Bigger Thomas, and millions of others more or less like him, white and black, according to the weight of the pressure we have put upon them, form the quicksands upon which the foundations of our civilization rest. Who knows when some slight shock, disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skysc.r.a.pers in our cities toppling? Does that sound fantastic? I a.s.sure you that it is no more fantastic than those troops and that waiting mob whose presence and guilty anger portend something which we dare not even think think!

"Your Honor, Bigger Thomas was willing to vote for and follow any man who would have led him out of his mora.s.s of pain and hate and fear. If that mob outdoors is afraid of one one man, what will it feel if man, what will it feel if millions millions rise? How soon will someone speak the word the resentful millions will understand: the word to be, to act, to live? Is this Court so naive as to think that they will not take a chance that is even less risky than that Bigger Thomas took? Let us not concern ourselves with that part of Bigger Thomas' confession that says he murdered accidentally, that he did not rape the girl. It really does not matter. What does matter is that he was guilty rise? How soon will someone speak the word the resentful millions will understand: the word to be, to act, to live? Is this Court so naive as to think that they will not take a chance that is even less risky than that Bigger Thomas took? Let us not concern ourselves with that part of Bigger Thomas' confession that says he murdered accidentally, that he did not rape the girl. It really does not matter. What does matter is that he was guilty before before he killed! That was why his whole life became so quickly and naturally organized, pointed, charged with a new meaning when this thing occurred. Who knows when another 'accident' involving millions of men will happen, an 'accident' that will be the dreadful day of our doom? he killed! That was why his whole life became so quickly and naturally organized, pointed, charged with a new meaning when this thing occurred. Who knows when another 'accident' involving millions of men will happen, an 'accident' that will be the dreadful day of our doom?

"Lodged in the heart of this moment is the question of power which time will unfold!

"Your Honor, another civil war in these states is not impossible; and if the misunderstanding of what this boy's life means is an indication of how men of wealth and property are misreading the consciousness of the submerged millions today, one may truly come.

"Listen, I've talked with this boy. He has no education. He is poor. He is black. And you know what we have made those things mean in our country. He is young and not yet thoroughly experienced in the ways of life. He is unmarried and does not know the steadying influence of a woman's love, or what such a love can mean to him. I say I talked with him. Did I find ambition there? Yes. But it was blurred and hazy; with no notion of where it was to find an outlet. He knew he did not have a chance; he believed believed it. His ambition was chained, held back; a pool of stagnant water. I say I talked with him. Did he have the hope of a better life? Yes. But he kept it down, under rigid control. He moved through our crowded streets, drove our cars for us, waited upon our tables, ran our elevators, holding this thing tightly down in him. In every town and city you see him, laughing because we pay and expect him to laugh. What would happen if he wanted to get what the very atmosphere of our times has taught him as well as us that every man should have if he is able-bodied, of average intelligence, and sane? You know as well as I. There would be riots. it. His ambition was chained, held back; a pool of stagnant water. I say I talked with him. Did he have the hope of a better life? Yes. But he kept it down, under rigid control. He moved through our crowded streets, drove our cars for us, waited upon our tables, ran our elevators, holding this thing tightly down in him. In every town and city you see him, laughing because we pay and expect him to laugh. What would happen if he wanted to get what the very atmosphere of our times has taught him as well as us that every man should have if he is able-bodied, of average intelligence, and sane? You know as well as I. There would be riots.

"Your Honor, if ever there was the unpredictable in our midst, this is it!

"I do not propose that we try to solve this entire problem here in this court room today. That is not within the province of our duty, nor even, I think, within the scope of our ability. But our decision as to whether this black boy is to live or die can be made in accordance with what actually exists. It will at least indicate that we see see and and know know! And our seeing and knowing will comprise a consciousness of how inescapably this one man's life will confront us ten million fold in the days to come.

"I ask that you spare this boy, send him to prison for life. I ask this, not because I want to, but because I feel I must. I speak under the threat of mob-rule and have no desire to intensify the already existing hate.

"What would prison mean to Bigger Thomas? It holds advantages for him that a life of freedom never had. To send him to prison would be more than an act of mercy. You would be for the first time conferring life life upon him. He would be brought for the first time within the orbit of our civilization. He would have an ident.i.ty, even though it be but a number. He would have for the first time an openly designated relations.h.i.+p with the world. The very building in which he would spend the rest of his natural lift would be the best he has ever known. Sending him to prison would be the first recognition of his personality he has ever had. The long black empty years ahead would const.i.tute for his mind and feelings the only certain and durable object around which he could build a meaning for his life. The other inmates would be the first men with whom he could a.s.sociate on a basis of equality. Steel bars between him and the society he offended would provide a refuge from hate and fear. upon him. He would be brought for the first time within the orbit of our civilization. He would have an ident.i.ty, even though it be but a number. He would have for the first time an openly designated relations.h.i.+p with the world. The very building in which he would spend the rest of his natural lift would be the best he has ever known. Sending him to prison would be the first recognition of his personality he has ever had. The long black empty years ahead would const.i.tute for his mind and feelings the only certain and durable object around which he could build a meaning for his life. The other inmates would be the first men with whom he could a.s.sociate on a basis of equality. Steel bars between him and the society he offended would provide a refuge from hate and fear.

"You cannot kill this man, Your Honor, for we have made it plain that we do not recognize that he lives! So I say, 'Give him life!'

"This will not solve the problem which this crime exemplifies. That remains, perhaps, for the nature. But if we say that we must kill him, then let us have the courage and honesty to say: 'Let us kill them all. They are not human. There's no room for them.' Then let us do it.

"We cannot, by giving him life in prison, help the others. We do not ask that this Court even try. But we can remember that whether this boy lives or dies, the marked-off ghettoes where this boy lived will remain. The mounting tide of hate on the one hand, and guilt on the other, one engendering fear and hate and the other engendering guilt and rage, will continue to grow. But at least this ruling, the sending of this boy to jail, out of the considerations I have named, will be the first recognition of what is involved here.

"I say, Your Honor, give this boy his life. And in making this concession we uphold those two fundamental concepts of our civilization, those two basic concepts upon which we have built the mightiest nation in history-personality and security-the conviction that the person is inviolate and that which sustains him is equally so.

"Let us not forget that the magnitude of our modern life, our railroads, power plants, ocean liners, airplanes, and steel mills flowered from these two concepts, grew from our dream of creating an invulnerable base upon which man and his soul can stand secure.

"Your Honor, this Court and those troops are not the real agencies that keep the public peace. Their mere presence is proof that we are letting peace slip through our fingers. Public peace is the act of public trust; it is the faith that all all are secure and will are secure and will remain remain secure. secure.

"When men of wealth urge the use and show of force, quick death, swift revenge, then it is to protect a little spot of private security against the resentful millions from whom they have filched it, the resentful millions in whose militant hearts the dream and hope of security still lives.

"Your Honor, I ask in the name of all we are and believe, that you spare this boy's life! With every atom of my being, I beg this in order that not only may this black boy live, but that we ourselves may not die!"

Bigger heard Max's last words ring out in the court room. When Max sat down he saw that his eyes were tired and sunken. He could hear his breath coming and going heavily. He had not understood the speech, but he had felt the meaning of some of it from the tone of Max's voice. Suddenly he felt that his life was not worth the effort that Max had made to save it. The judge rapped with the gavel, calling a recess. The court was full of noise as Bigger rose. The policemen marched him to a small room and stood waiting, on guard. Max came and sat beside him, silent, his head bowed. A policeman brought a tray of food and set it on the table.

"Eat, son," Max said.

"I ain't hungry."

"I did the best I could," Max said.

"I'm all right," Bigger said.

Bigger was not at that moment really bothered about whether Max's speech had saved his life or not. He was hugging the proud thought that Max had made the speech all for him, to save his life. It was not the meaning of the speech that gave him pride, but the mere act of it. That in itself was something. The food on the tray grew cold. Through a partly opened window Bigger heard the rumbling voice of the mob. Soon he would go back and hear what Buckley would say. Then it would all be over, save for what the judge would say. And when the judge spoke he would know if he was to live or die. He leaned his head on his hands and closed his eyes. He heard Max stand up, strike a match and light a cigarette.

"Here; take a smoke, Bigger."

He took one and Max held the flame; he sucked the smoke deep into his lungs and discovered that he did not want it. He held the cigarette in his fingers and the smoke curled up past his bloodshot eyes. He jerked his head when the door opened; a policeman looked in.

"Court's opening in two minutes!"

"All right," Max said.

Flanked again by policemen, Bigger went back to court. He rose when the judge came and then sat again.

"The Court will hear the State," the judge said.

Bigger turned his head and saw Buckley rise. He was dressed in a black suit and there was a tiny pink flower in the lapel of his coat. The man's very look and bearing, so grimly a.s.sured, made Bigger feel that he was already lost. What chance had he against a man like that? Buckley licked his lips and looked out over the crowd; then he turned to the judge.

"Your Honor, we all dwell in a land of living law. Law embodies the will of the people. As an agent and servant of the law, as a representative of the organized will of the people, I am here to see that the will of the people is executed firmly and without delay. I intend to stand here and see that that is done, and if it is not done, then it will be only over my most solemn and emphatic protest.

"As a prosecuting officer of the State of Illinois, I come before this honorable Court to urge that the full extent of the law, the death penalty-the only penalty of the law that is feared by murderers!-be allowed to take its course in this most important case.

"I urge this for the protection of our society, our homes and our loved ones. I urge this in the performance of my sworn duty to see, in so far as I am humanly capable, that the administration of law is just, that the safety and sacredness of human life are maintained, that the social order is kept intact, and that crime is prevented and punished. I have no interest or feeling in this case beyond the performance of this sworn duty.

"I represent the families of Mary Dalton and Bessie Mears and a hundred million law-abiding men and women of this nation who are laboring in duty or industry. I represent the forces which allow the arts and sciences to flourish in freedom and peace, thereby enriching the lives of us all.

"I shall not lower the dignity of this Court, nor the righteousness of the People's cause, by attempting to answer the silly, alien, communistic and dangerous ideas advanced by the defense. And I know of no better way to discourage such thinking than the imposition of the death penalty upon this miserable human fiend, Bigger Thomas!

"My voice may sound harsh when I say: Impose the death penalty and let the law take its course in spite of the specious call for sympathy! Impose the death penalty and let the law take its course in spite of the specious call for sympathy! But I am really merciful and sympathetic, because the enforcement of this law in its most drastic form will enable millions of honest men and women to sleep in peace tonight, to know that tomorrow will not bring the black shadow of death over their homes and lives! But I am really merciful and sympathetic, because the enforcement of this law in its most drastic form will enable millions of honest men and women to sleep in peace tonight, to know that tomorrow will not bring the black shadow of death over their homes and lives!

"My voice may sound vindictive when I say: Make the defendant pay the highest penalty for his crimes! Make the defendant pay the highest penalty for his crimes! But what I am really saying is that the law is sweet when it is enforced and protects a million worthy careers, when it s.h.i.+elds the infant, the aged, the helpless, the blind and the sensitive from the ravis.h.i.+ng of men who know no law, no self-control, and no sense of reason. But what I am really saying is that the law is sweet when it is enforced and protects a million worthy careers, when it s.h.i.+elds the infant, the aged, the helpless, the blind and the sensitive from the ravis.h.i.+ng of men who know no law, no self-control, and no sense of reason.

"My voice may sound cruel when I say: The defendant merits the death penalty for his self-confessed crimes! The defendant merits the death penalty for his self-confessed crimes! But what I am really saying is that the law is strong and gracious enough to allow all of us to sit here in this court room today and try this case with dispa.s.sionate interest, and not tremble with fear that at this very moment some half-human black ape may be climbing through the windows of our homes to rape, murder, and burn our daughters! But what I am really saying is that the law is strong and gracious enough to allow all of us to sit here in this court room today and try this case with dispa.s.sionate interest, and not tremble with fear that at this very moment some half-human black ape may be climbing through the windows of our homes to rape, murder, and burn our daughters!

"Your Honor, I say that the law is holy; that it is the foundation of all our cherished values. It permits us to take for granted the sense of the worth of our persons and turn our energies to higher and n.o.bler ends.

"Man stepped forward from the kingdom of the beast the moment he felt that he could think and feel in security, knowing that sacred law had taken the place of his gun and knife.

"I say that the law is holy because it makes us human! And woe to the men-and the civilization of those men!-who, in misguided sympathy or fear, weaken the stout structure of the law which insures the harmonious working of our lives on this earth.

"Your Honor, I regret that the defense has raised the viperous issue of race and cla.s.s hate in this trial. I sympathize with those whose hearts were pained, as mine was pained, when Mr. Max so cynically a.s.sailed our sacred customs. I pity this man's deluded and diseased mind. It is a sad day for American civilization when a white man will try to stay the hand of justice from a b.e.s.t.i.a.l monstrosity who has ravished and struck down one of the finest and most delicate flowers of our womanhood.

"Every decent white man in America ought to swoon with joy for the opportunity to crush with his heel the woolly head of this black lizard, to keep him from scuttling on his belly farther over the earth and spitting forth his venom of death!

"Your Honor, literally I shrink from the mere recital of this dastardly crime. I cannot speak of it without feeling somehow contaminated by the mere telling of it. A b.l.o.o.d.y crime has that power! It is that steeped and dyed with repellent contagion!

"A wealthy, kindly disposed white man, a resident of Chicago for more than forty years, sends to the relief agency for a Negro boy to act as chauffeur to his family. The man specifies in his request that he wants a boy who is handicapped either by race, poverty, or family responsibility. The relief authorities search through their records and select the Negro family which they think merits such aid: that family was the Thomas family, living then as now at 3721 Indiana Avenue. A social worker visits the family and informs the mother that the family is to be taken off the relief rolls and her son placed in private employment. The mother, a hard-working Christian woman, consents. In due time the relief authorities send a notification to the oldest son of the family, Bigger Thomas, this black mad dog who sits here today, telling him that he must report for work.

"What was the reaction of this sly thug when he learned that he had an opportunity to support himself, his mother, his little sister and his little brother? Was he grateful? Was he glad that he was having something offered to him that ten million men in America would have fallen on their knees and thanked G.o.d for?

"No! He cursed his mother! He said that he did not want to work! He wanted to loaf about the streets, steal from newsstands, rob stores, meddle with women, frequent dives, attend cheap movies, and chase prost.i.tutes! That was the reaction of this subhuman killer when he was confronted with the Christian kindness of a man he had never seen!

"His mother prevailed upon him, pled with him; but the plight of his mother, worn out from a life of toil, had no effect upon this hardened black thing. The future of his sister, an adolescent school girl, meant nothing to him. The fact that the job would have enabled his brother to return to school was not enticing to Bigger Thomas.

"But, suddenly, after three days of persuasion by his mother, he consented. Had any of her arguments reached him at long last? Had he begun to feel his duty toward himself and his family? No! Those were not the considerations that drove this rapacious beast from his den into the open! He consented only when his mother informed him that the relief would cut off their supply of food if he did not accept. He agreed to go to work, but forbade his mother to speak to him within the confines of the home, so outraged was he that he had to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. It was hunger that drove him out, sullen, angry, still longing to stay upon the streets and steal as he had done before, and for which he had once landed in a reform school.

"The counsel for the defendant, with characteristic Communistic cunning, boasted that I could not supply a motive for the crimes of this beast. Well, Your Honor, I shall disappoint him, for I shall divulge the motive.

"On the very day that Bigger Thomas was to report to the Dalton home for work, he saw a newsreel in a movie. This newsreel showed Mary Dalton in a bathing suit upon a Florida beach. Jack Harding, a friend of Bigger Thomas, under persistent questioning, admitted that Bigger Thomas was enthralled by the idea of driving such a girl around the city. Let us be frank and not gloss over words. This Court has already heard of the obnoxious s.e.xual perversions practiced by these boys in darkened theatres. Though Jack Harding would not admit it outright, we got enough information out of him to know that when the shadow of Mary Dalton was moving upon that screen those boys indulged in such an act! It was then then that the idea of rape, murder, and ransom entered the mind of this moron! There is your motive and the vile circ.u.mstances under which it was conceived! that the idea of rape, murder, and ransom entered the mind of this moron! There is your motive and the vile circ.u.mstances under which it was conceived!

"After seeing that movie, he went to the Dalton home. He was welcomed there with lavish kindness. He was given a room; he was told that he would receive extra money for himself, over and above his weekly wages. He was fed. He was asked if he wanted to go back to school and learn a trade. But he refused. His mind and heart-if this beast can be said to have a mind and a heart!-were not set upon any such goals.

"Less than an hour after he had been in that house, he met Mary Dalton, who asked him if he wanted to join a union. Mr. Max, whose heart bleeds for labor, did not tell us why his client should have resented that.

"What black thoughts pa.s.sed through that Negro's scheming brain the first few moments after he saw that trusting white girl standing before him? We have no way of knowing, and perhaps this piece of human sc.u.m, who sits here today begging for mercy, is wise in not telling us. But we can use our imagination; we can look upon what he subsequently did and surmise.

"Two hours later he was driving Miss Dalton to the Loop. Here occurs the first misunderstanding in this case. The general notion is that Miss Dalton, by having this Negro drive her to the Loop instead of to school, was committing an act of disobedience against her family. But that is not for us to judge. That is for Mary Dalton and her G.o.d to settle. It was admitted by her family that she went contrary to a wish of theirs; but Mary Dalton was of age and went where she pleased.

"This Negro drove Miss Dalton to the Loop where she was joined by a young white man, a friend of hers. From there they went to a South Side cafe and ate and drank. Being in a Negro neighborhood, they invited this Negro to eat with them. When they talked, they included him in their conversation. When liquor was ordered, enough was bought so that he, too, could drink.

"Afterwards he drove the couple through Was.h.i.+ngton Park for some two hours. Around two o'clock in the morning this friend of Miss Dalton's left the car and went to visit some friends of his. Mary Dalton was left alone in that car with this Negro, who had received nothing from her but kindness. From that point onward, we have no exact knowledge of what really happened, for we have only this black cur's bare word for it, and I am convinced that he is not telling us all.

"We don't know just when Mary Dalton was killed. But we do know this: her head was completely severed from her body! We know that both the head and the body were stuffed into the furnace and burned!