WTW25: Be An Earl Brewer, Not A John Stennis

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:41 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is the sixth part of the Stennis Brown v. Mississippi, all that stuff. I'm Thomas, that's Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:48 Lydia: I am doing pretty well. Let's get back into it.

0:00:54 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. We're finally gonna meet our hero, and I fucking love this guy. I mean, don't get me wrong, he's, again, he was a guy who was born in the 1800s. Who knows if he sucked in some other way, but nothing that I've seen.

0:00:58 Lydia: Yay. A man of his time. Yeah.

0:01:09 Thomas: So when we last left off, I set up sort of the the very dire circumstances that were happening

0:01:11 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I recall is Clark has collapsed, the only lawyer that we like back then. The only one, in the entire country, and uh, they have like this one shot, the Kemper trio has one shot to seek not justice, but like another, another set of ears to hear what they have to say.

0:01:18 Thomas: Not

0:01:36 Lydia: And and I can't remember what it's called, you'll have to remind me on that

0:01:35 Thomas: Even that but yeah it's just uh, called a suggestion of error, and it's literally just you ask the same court again, like uh, you sure which usually I think, I don't know, of actually, are you sure about that? The actual stats, I don't know, but but from my understanding, it's the kind of thing that succeeds like one out of a million times.

0:01:41 Lydia: Right are you sure, yeah, you sure about that

0:01:54 Thomas: Because it's just like it's thing you have by right, but you know it's like in The Office when they're starting that new business and he's like, "can you re-crunch the numbers?" And he's like, "it's JUST EXCEL, I can't really re-cunch," and he like pretends he's LIKE UH RE-CRUNCH

0:01:54 Lydia: Yeah yeah a court is unlikely to rule against itself, essentially, like to be like yeah do do, do, um, and then they, no one has any money, right, obviously everything costs money, and they don't have the money, to to pursue this necessarily, and they've already missed the deadline.

0:02:15 Thomas: That's yeah, yeah that's all true, that's now the torch sort of is picked up by Mrs. Clark, who is also awesome because, again, you're right, her husband has collapsed, suffered a real break in his health that took him a while to even be able to like get out of bed only thing you left out was, was that also Clark had not raised any federal issues in his appeal.

0:02:46 Thomas: So technically, there's no way to get to the Supreme Court at this point. This is just the last thing they have. Another thing to remind you of, there was that Lofton case that was like current law of the land. That was where the Judge Anderson dissent was. That's not, not good precedent right now. In fact, it's, it was, it made things worse. Like the prior precedent had been a little better. And then that case made things worst kind of right before this. And how much does this sound familiar? Uh, here's part of that case: it is was expressly held that if a confession has been properly admitted in evidence after a preliminary examination as to its competency, no error is committed by a a failure to exclude it in the absence of a request to do so. Although during the later progress of the trial, it is

0:02:25 Lydia: Yeah. Right. Jeez. That's right. Right, right.

0:03:36 Thomas: Made to appear that the confession was made under such circumstances as to render it incompetent as evidence. Does that sound familiar at all?

0:03:46 Lydia: Our last episode.

0:03:47 Thomas: Exactly. It's like, well, they didn't technically make a mistake, but you know, because you didn't fill out the proper form. So Nothing we can do. So Clark had done one appeal, if I didn't say that. So the thing that they have left is after Clark did his first appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court, and that didn't go well, but it did have a really good dissent. Did in that dissent that I read, read that a couple episodes ago, I think, in that dissent, the one judge that, you know, I talked about is actually great.

I think he was trying to help Clark out a little bit because he brought up the U.S. Constitution. It was like viewing the trial as a whole, he said, "It appears to me that it is condemned by the principles laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States in the Scottsboro cases." So he's really like trying to get a hint, you know, to any lawyers out there who might want Yeah. But but as I said, they had lost this first appeal and they were scheduled to die within less than a month. It's back on. They do that old timey like Ed Brown, Henry Shields and Yank Ellington for their crime of murder. Be safely kept in the jail of Kemper County until Friday, February 8th, 1935. And on that day, between the hours of, you know, whatever, within the jail yard of Kemmerer County or such other convenient places, as the board of supervisors of Kemper County may designate. The said Ed Brown, Henry Shields, and Yank Ellington be by the sheriff of Kemmer County, hang by their necks until they are dead.

0:03:47 Lydia: Right? Yep. Yeah.

0:05:12 Lydia: My god, it's so horrible.

0:05:13 Thomas: Yeah, I can't believe we just put that kind of bullshit in legal language as though it's some sort of enlightened thing. So weird. Anyway, but this dissent, again, we're looking at the inspiring side of this now is about the people who made a difference. And this dissENT, this one judge, Not a popular decision, not a popular thing for him to have done. It got attention. It got publicity in an actual good way because people saw the dissent and were like, what the hell? Because, you know, as shitty as the times were, there's a reason this is like, you know, a tiny place in Mississippi. Now, this went on and a lot of racism went on, but like the broader public usually just kind of avoided hearing about this kind of stuff, you know, so when they when they are confronted with it, it's like, oh, really? That's that's what they're doing down there. So the publicity did help a little bit. And that that dissent was crucial to it.

0:05:19 Lydia: Yeah, right?

0:06:05 Thomas: And if you recall, also, I read you a little bit of Clark's wife talking about how the defendants had no money. Well, that was from what she did here to keep this trio alive and keep the case going, which is she wrote her friend and our goddamn hero Albert Einstein. No, his name is could have been. I mean he's alive. Yeah.

0:06:24 Lydia: Like, what? Yeah, no, that's why I didn't, like call it out as crazy.

0:06:30 Thomas: And that man's name. No, his nome is Earl Brewer. Here's what the book says here on this. Quote, I went to one of my closest friends, she said later, ex-governor Earl Brewer, who seems almost like a father to me, and begged him to help Mr. Clark in the fight he was making for a humane cause. I told him all the horrible details of the case, and he was very indignant and consented to help us solely because of his personal love for Mr. Clarke and for the purpose of helping right a grievous wrong. I said, Governor Brewer that he could not count upon a fee, Mrs. Clark continued, as as the negroes were the poorest. And that was in the letter she wrote to Earl Brewer, and I want you to think about Mrs. Clark for a second, because she also fucking ruled. I mean, this case basically killed her husband. She's white and well off in and doesn't have any connection to these defendants, other other than her husband having been one of four attorneys involved, she could easily have just done nothing.

0:06:34 Lydia: Yeah.

0:07:32 Thomas: Like she could have just, seriously, just, she could still been remorseful. Like, oh man, too bad my husband, you know, fell over. So he can't really help him anymore. She could have washed her hands of it and not thought anything. And, would have been somewhat understandable. She's not the lawyer. These weren't her clients. This is like taking on something her husband was doing, she didn't. She She was a person of privilege in the time because, you know, not all of us can write the ex-governor of Mississippi.

0:07:46 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:07:57 Thomas: She's definitely connected. You know, she's she's definitely a person privilege. But she used that privilege to the extent she she could to make a difference here. And it made all that if she hadn't written this letter, we would not even know about these three these black men, probably. And most the Supreme Court case would have never happened.

And I bring this up because I just think that like, I I think we beat ourselves up a lot, you know, like today, the state of the world is really tough right now. And I know that especially as kind of like privileged liberals, I think мы're just beating ourselves up а lot. And I just feel this great pressure that like we have to be fixing these massive impossible problems or else we just suck and we aren't accomplishing anything. But maybe that's me. I don't know. But but this thing she did here, it made a massive difference to a lot of people. And I think we can look for the little ways we can help, even if they're small. And the truth is that those things really do matter. Like it's just a sequence of those things that can make a massive distance, not only in just certain people's lives, but but even later on in big ways, maybe if things go right. And so, I don't know. I just feel like that's the inspiring part of this to me.

0:08:39 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:09:07 Lydia: I know I think that's a good point because like when you think about you from like the white privilege sort of perspective it can feel almost overwhelming to some degree you to to use that privilege for something good.

0:09:19 Thomas: Yeah. Feels way overwhelming.

0:09:21 Lydia: And you're thinking like big picture things, but it can be small for us, right? Small things. It's reaching out to someone you know, calling in that favor, you know?

0:09:32 Thomas: Yeah, donating.

0:09:33 Lydia: Yeah, donating, speaking up if you see something wrong, just in general. And those things are, they seem so small to us, but they have such a larger impact for people who don't have that privilege to exercise in that way.

0:09:48 Thomas: And they add up. And I know, I get this problem. I think it's also an ADHD problem where I think of something to do, and then I think of all the million ways it's not enough, and then it kind of discourages me from doing anything. Thing. And I think this is, to go with what you're saying, this is kind of the counter example of that. And same with the people who just barely voted in that Arizona district attorney by 200 whatever, 60 votes or something like that.

0:10:13 Thomas: These little things, I think focusing in on stuff around us and trying to make a difference there is the answer, and not constantly beating ourselves up with what the broader state of all of the country is. Not that we shouldn't worry about it, but that that if we all let that freeze us, then we all aren't doing things that, when they're added together, things that might make a massive difference, even on that big scale.

0:09:49 Lydia: Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah, yeah definitely.

0:10:34 Thomas: And keep in mind, she didn't know that, like, "Oh, I want to do this because someday there's going to be a Supreme Court case and I'll be on the very popular podcast," where there's what? No, she didn't, she didn't know where this was going. She's just like, "I literally want to save these three men's lives who are in my community. You know, it's zoomed into that degree is really what we ought to be doing, I think. So, let's talk about ex-governor of Mississippi, Earl Brewer, son of an amazing old-timey named Ratliff Brewer.

0:10:50 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:05 Lydia: Ooh, Ratliff.

0:11:07 Thomas: Ratliffe, but before you start liking Ratlif, he was a fucking Confederate captain. So fuck that guy. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we're in the South in that time. I mean it'd be, that's just what happened. Happened. And a little bit of stuff about the biography of Earl Brewer. He seemed to be just like kind of very gifted intellectually. He took over his failing family farm at a really young age and then like turned it around. Um, cause, cause Ratliff had died. I think he got a law degree in six fucking months.

0:11:09 Lydia: No. Always. Dang.

0:11:35 Lydia: What?

0:11:35 Thomas: I mean, maybe back then there just wasn't as much law. It was a little easier. I don't know.

0:11:39 Lydia: Fear of cases that they had to study.

0:11:39 Thomas: Yeah. They're like, man, They had all these like empty, like pages in the book for going forward, yeah, Like, we know we're only in 19 that was probably what, that was probably 18 something, actually, because this guy's an older gentleman and we're in 1935, is present time for us, so this is probably in the late 1800s and they're like, "Yeah, there's not much law, you know." We were to be continued, you know, we'll keep an eye on this whole constitutional law thing in fact, a lot of it is going to be developed around this time, we're talking about in the 30s and later. And so in the, the funny thing was, it was, I think it was like someone was trying to convince him to get a law degree. And, like, "I can't afford that, man," which, you know, relatable these days. Like, he's I can afford to be in school that long, like, there's no way, it's expensive. And so the whole reason he got it in six months was because he couldn't afford to do it any longer. Like,

0:11:41 Lydia: Yeah, for things to come.

0:12:00 Lydia: Yeah yeah yeah. Oh wow.

0:12:29 Thomas: You wouldn't have been able to afford to the tuition for the, that length of time if you had to do it in longer. So yeah, he seems like a really driven, smart guy. And And he started a law practice, kind of out of law school, and a semi-famous case I won't get into, but he won $2,600, that's quite a lot of money at the time, for the widow of Casey Jones. That's a deep dive that I made myself not go down, but Casey Jones is a famous, kind of like a folk hero railroad thing, where he stopped like a runaway train, and he was the only one who died somehow. Yeah, it was like kind of familiar to me.

0:12:49 Lydia: Oh yeah.

0:13:05 Lydia: That's there's a song right?

0:13:07 Thomas: Yeah, there is a song. He it's that Casey Jones and And he, Brewer, won $2,600 for his widow from the railroad. I think the railroad was probably trying to fuck him over, as every single company and corporation anything ever did all throughout history. And uh, but he won, so that's, so he got a little bit, of you know, a little but notable for that. So eventually he was appointed DA, a little bit of a similar trajectory to our Stennis. Wow.

0:13:31 Thomas: I didn't think about this, this is real Lex Luthor, or no, that's not a good example. What's a, what's a good example of like, I guess he came over here as a baby and yeah, maybe it does work.

0:13:07 Lydia: Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Grew up together.

0:13:39 Thomas: Yeah. Well, depending on which show you're watching.

0:13:39 Lydia: Yeah? Smallville.

0:13:43 Thomas: Yeah, it's a real that, you know, where it's like, he's got a lot of this similar things actually, but Stannis, you know, goes the Stannist direction and Earl Brewer it goes the fucking awesome direction. So after five years, he resigned from D.A. to run for governor, but he lost. And Four years later, though, this is kind of weird. I don't have much information on four years later. He won the primary unopposed, which had never happened in the state before. So like something about the way he ran in even though he lost to like the incumbent, I think he was notable enough that people were really excited about him. And he won, you know, unopposed in the primary the next election cycle.

0:14:19 Lydia: Interesting.

0:14:20 Thomas: And here, oh God, this is the best. I'm glad we're, I've been waiting so long to tie all these things together. Remember Theodore Bilbo?

0:14:26 Lydia: Yes, he was the U.S. Senator before Stennis, and he's a horrible white supremacist and said horrible, awful things, um, and we hate him. Yeah.

0:14:37 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. That's the official position of the show. We are not voting for Theodore Milbo in his reelection campaign in hell.

0:14:41 Lydia: Yeah.

0:14:45 Thomas: He, so if you remember all that, which you did, that's correct. He's one who died and made made Senate Senator. Now that's all later, obviously. That's after where we are in the story. Right now, where I am in the story of Earl Brewer's past is when Earl Breuer was elected governor, Theodore Bilbo was elected governor. And it was a separate, it's not like a same ticket thing.

0:14:54 Lydia: Yeah. Uh.

0:15:08 Thomas: It's like two different, Two different. No, not split tickets, just two different positions that you vote. So it's not like they ran together. It's like they just happened to be elected. They're probably the same party. I Don't know, but but they um weren't like associated or running together. He just happened to Beale elected to lieutenant governor when um Brewer was elected governor. And Brewer fucking hated Bilbo again, more reasons why I love this guy, um, and just to give you a little bit more information on why fuck Theodore or Bilbo. In 1907 was that first run by Brewer. 1911 was when he was elected governor and Theodore Bilbo was elected lieutenant governor. So, hun, this was, again, one of the many things where I was just reading this and just being like, I cannot wait to tell you

0:15:07 Lydia: The Split Ticket Oh Yeah.

0:15:28 Lydia: You Yeah.

0:15:50 Thomas: This story. Because here's another quote about Bilbo. One of his enemies declared, he was a pert little monster, glib and shameless, with that sort of cunning common to criminals, which passes for intelligence. The people loved him, the description continued. They loved him not because they were deceived in him, but because they understood Him thoroughly. They said of Him proudly, He's a slick little bastard. He was one of them and He had risen from obscurity to the fame of glittering infamy. It was as if they themselves had crashed the headlines.

0:15:58 Lydia: Oh my God. Oh my God, it's Trump.

0:16:21 Thomas: Yep. I was was going to ask you, what does that remind you of? Exactly Trump. Very, very similar. And here's the other thing. I don't think I read you last time. Bilbo's prejudices and intolerances were not visited upon blacks alone. They were directed at other religious and ethnic groups as well. And by the way, I don'T have to issue, I DON'T think, as much of a content note for this one, but still a note on old-timey racism and stuff, just in general, and reading old racist language and stuff. Uh, but get a load of this. He once declared in, in an effort to kind of like say, no, I'm not intolerant. He said, I'm for every damn Jew from Jesus Christ on down and responding to a critical letter sent to him as U.S. Senator by an Italian American woman. He addressed his reply to quote, my dear Dago in

0:16:25 Lydia: Yeah, oh my God this guy

0:17:13 Thomas: A let imagine or dressing the crazy, uh, U. S. Senator Robert Robert A. Taft declared he was a disgrace to the Senate later.

0:17:21 Thomas: So this was, again, the guy who was elected lieutenant governor when Earl Brewer was elected governor. And Earl Breuer, I don't know if it was coincidental or just already what he intended to do, but he wanted his administration to root out corruption. And wouldn't you know it, all the kind of roads of investigation of corruption led to Theodore fucking Bilbo. So they, yeah, essentially, yeah. They developed this rivalry and Bilbo spread these vile rumors about Brewer. Like he made up some thing, some old timey, like, oh, he was in the company of a lady of the night, you know, that kind of

0:17:20 Lydia: I went to Bilbo, his right-hand man.

0:17:58 Lydia: Oh,

0:17:58 Thomas: Crap. And so they hated each other. And it like, the book says, quote, it became the chief ambition of Governor Brewer's life to prevent Bilbo being named his successor. Like, I just love this guy. Like, this is the best. It's so good. Brewer discovers evidence that Bilbo accepted a bribe, and Bilbo was eventually indicted, so, like that like I said, all the the corruption investigations they're doing, they're like, "Ah, found the guy, it's Bilbo" And Brewer testifies at the trial. Imagine the government, the sitting governor, testifying at the trail of the lieutenant governor, being like, "Yeah, fuck this guy" and What was the first, like, major setback in Brewer's life that really threw him for a loop? Bilbo fucking gets off somehow. Again, Trump-esque. He gets off. And not only that, he wins election to governor in 1914.

0:17:58 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah, wow. Yeah yeah.

0:18:50 Lydia: Jeez, how

0:18:51 Thomas: And I don't know. It doesn't go into it much. But how does it happen? It's fucking, look at the world. That's how it happens. We think we, like. Yeah, this is obvious. This guy sucks and is a piece of shit. And then people are like, but I like how he speaks for me. You know, he just really, he says what he says. What I don't agree with everything. Yeah. But he just, you know, he tells it like it is that that Theodore Bilbo it's probably, and Brewer refused to attend his inauguration. Like that's how much he was pissed at this guy.

0:18:51 Lydia: Did did that happen yeah yeah yeah he says what we're all thinking yeah yeah crazy oh crazy. Depression.

0:19:21 Thomas: And so this was a big setback for Brewer. He was, you Know, That's pretty rough. He kind of was on top of the world there for a minute, and then this fucking asshole, everything he does kind of doesn't work when it regards to Bilbo, and he loses to him and all that. So then the only thing he tried in politics again was in 1924, so that's like 10 years later, he tried to unseat Senator Pat Harrison, but lost terribly. So, then he pretty pretty much just went back to practicing law he has this sort of like Renaissance, but he you got rich on cotton by He was like, you know, working contracts and stuff with his law practice. And I think somewhere through that, he like acquired some sort of cotton farm or some crap and he made a bunch of money, but then what happened?

0:20:07 Thomas: Great Depression and basically everyone lost everything uh and so he lost, the you know, the farm and everything, all that crap, and so he's just kind of back again in kind of a shitty place, but he's just practicing law. And in 1933, he defends a friend of his in some sort of case, and he was apparently so brilliant that, like, the papers wrote about him, and they're like, this "This fucking, this ex-governor that, remember this guy, you know, remember ex-Governor Brewer?" He's looking amazing in this trial that she wins. And that brings us to around this time. And at the time that Mrs. Clark asks him, wrote that letter to him to defend the trio, he's currently doing another case. So he seems to have devoted his practice defending and arguing cases of,

0:20:07 Lydia: Yeah thinking what you're yeah well

0:20:59 Thomas: People like the Kemper Trio or other people who are kind of downtrodden in our society. And he's just doing that kind of good pro bono work. Yeah, it's amazing. It's like, this guy is so cool. And the case he was working on, and this was a little sad for me because I was under the mistaken impression that Taft was actually kind of a cool dude based on the book I read about, you know, Taft and Roosevelt.

0:21:07 Lydia: Yeah oh Because he hated Bilbo. Oh, no.

0:21:22 Thomas: But that was different.

0:21:22 Lydia: No, other Taft. Gotcha.

0:21:24 Thomas: But Taft, when he was on the Supreme Court after he was president, it was this time. And the case that Brewer was working on, which I read a lot about, but I'm not going to go too into depth on, at this time, he was already like, oh, yeah, I will help you with the, you Know, I want to help with the case, but but I've got another thing going that's pretty big. And it's called Gonglum versus Rice. And it is actually another famous case, but for bad reasons. And so what this was, was there were some Asian folks that, and this is, okay, this is the tough thing about the past.

Because on one hand, I want to be like, yeah, it was this poor Asian family that, you know, Brewer's helping out of the kindness of his heart to, to not be in segregated schools, but also there's the wrinkle to it that actually these Asians were also very racist against black people and so the Asian people around this time in Mississippi were like, hey, we shouldn't have to go to the schools with black people, like we should get counted among the white people, you Know, like that's essentially what this case was And so, you know, on one hand, it's like he is taking on this case. These were people had no money were.

He like was taking this on because they were completely poor and the school that the state is making them go to is like, you know, dog shit because that's separate but completely the unequal, was the standard at this time. And so this case was about, OK, apparently we're all on board with discrimination against black people.

And this case is one of the, the last ones decided under this kind of shitty I think one of The Last Significant Ones, and there's a couple of paragraphs I can read. This is by Taft.

0:21:35 Lydia: Oh yeah. Yeah.

0:22:59 Thomas: You know, this is the opinion authored by former President Taft. In Plessy v. Ferguson, in upholding the validity under the 14th Amendment of a statute of Louisiana requiring the separation of the white and colored races in railway coaches, a more difficult question than this, this court, speaking of permitted race separation, said, and this is just to remind you how fucking shitty and racist this country was forever, ever. Quote, "The most common instance of this is connected with the establishment of separate schools for white and colored children, which has been held to be a valid exercise of the legislative power, even by courts of states where the political rights of the colored race have been longest and most earnestly enforced." And so that's Taft quoting Plessy, basically. Decision that Plessie, in case we hadn't made that clear. It goes on.

0:24:17 Thomas: Of Columbia, blah, blah blah, as well as by the legislatures of many states and have been generally if not uniformly sustained by the courts, citing many of the cases above named. The last paragraph here, and again, this is just supremely disappointing, kind of sucks about Taft. I thought he was like a slightly cooler guy. Most of the cases cited arose, it is true, over the establishment of separate schools as between white pupils and black pupils, but the question is in any way different or that any different result can be reached, assuming the cases above cited to be rightly decided, where the issue is as between white pupils of the yellow races.

0:24:59 Lydia: Yikes.

0:24:59 Thomas: The decision is within the discretion of the state in regulating its public schools and does not conflict with the 14th Amendment. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Mississippi is affirmed. So that's Taft saying, well, this Plessy case is the law of the land. And if that's true, then I don't know why we should let Asian people have nice schools. We only need to let the white people have Nice schools. So affirmed, basically.

0:25:00 Lydia: Yeah yeah.

0:25:24 Lydia: That's state's choice.

0:25:25 Thomas: So not good. That was a little disappointing. But that was what Brewer was literally working on that case at this time. Brewer takes it on. So Mrs. Clark's letter is a success here and Brewer takes it and remember that that deadline, how it would pass? Well, fortunately Brewer, and maybe this is due to, you know, him having connections and esteem as the ex-governor of the state, uh, probably gets you some favorable looks from judges.

0:25:49 Thomas: He was able to have it extended by 15 days and he was able to get a judge to delay the execution by like 13 days. We're on really tight margins. The, The three men were very nearly killed in this time. This was like barely getting out alive at this point because of these like little administrative stays and crap like that to make matters worse, and this is something I've kind of teased throughout, the rumors that Brewer was taking on the case and was going to appeal made people so mad that the sheriff had to have his deputies escort the trio to the quote mob proof Heinz County jail in Jackson, which that really makes me wonder, like, why don't they build the whole airplane out of the mob proof jail.

But like, what, like, why is there such thing as not a mob proof? Jail would be what I would ask. But then, then I saw like, well, that's in Jackson. So maybe the mobproof part is just like having people around, you know, being in, in more like a city. I don't know if that's all it is, you Know, but like, seems kind of make them all mob proof maybe would be What I would say. Even worse at this time. Yank Ellington is like reportedly on death's door here from his injury sustained by the fucking mob. Because if you remember, he is the one who resisted admitting guilt and he was sort of initially saved by Cliff Dial, but

0:25:58 Lydia: Oh. My. Gosh. Yeah. Huh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:04 Thomas: He had been, you know, strung by his neck twice. And then there's other talk that he was possibly, you Know, kind of stomped by the crowd a little bit, but yeah, just awful stuff. And so the press reported that Yank was in such a condition that he may not live to hear the decision of the Supreme Court. And that means the Supreme court of Mississippi, by the way, on a suggestion of error. And the Heinz County physician said that Ellington will die in a few days unless given proper hospital care. Since they were being held under the authority of the Kemper County Circuit Court, permission of the Kemper County officials was required to move him to a hospital, but Kemper county officials refused to give their permission.

0:27:07 Lydia: Oh. God. Yeah. Okay. Of.

0:27:43 Lydia: Course, yeah.

0:27:43 Thomas: Kemper county sheriff fucking Adcock said, quote, Kemper county would furnish medicine and doctor services for the Negro in the jail here, but he would not authorized Yank's transfer to a a hospital. And his excuse was like, look, if we have to move him to a hospital, he'll have to be guarded day and night as a desperate character. Not being guarded from the mob that wants to kill him, by the way. He'll be guarded as a desperate character because he's, you know, he's probably going to commit a crime or something while he's on death's door, barely surviving in the hospital. So that was his reasoning. Kemper County, So he said, it you would not stand the expense of a guard. Fucking asshole.

0:28:06 Lydia: Yeah.

0:28:20 Lydia: That's, that's ridiculous.

0:28:22 Thomas: Then the Hines County Sheriff said, that they you were doing everything possible to quote, make the Negro comfortable, I guess, like assuming he's going to die. Yank had complained of continual chest pains where it claims he was stomped by the mob, as I said. Um. So yeah, he's not doing well. Tiny Tim who did not die, um, somehow it just, like, at this point he, though, just apparently made a full recovery. I feel like this is good, good old 1930s medicine reminder, like, they're like, yeah, he's, he's dead any minute, and then they're just like, oh, okay.

0:28:41 Lydia: Never.

0:28:55 Lydia: Mind, yeah.

0:28:56 Thomas: Uh, we did nothing and he got better pretty much. Um, so that was nice, at least he did end up pulling through. But there are, you know, pictures of him not doing well. He was being held up by the other, you know, the other defendants and some of these reports and all that. And now we talk about the money again, you know, cause there was just no money. Sorry. And this is where, again, Clark really came through as a hero again, not the best lawyer, but he, but what he did on his own by, by throwing together that first appeal, even though admittedly, you know, he kind of messed it up a little, but no one else was going to fucking do that. He did it. And the NAACP was impressed by that and praised him. And we're like, all right, now that you did this, like we will do everything we can, which is not much to help Brewer. Fact, the NAAP said, they said about Clark, quote, "All this action took place without the assistance of any organization or indeed of any colored people in or near Kemper County," which was interesting.

0:28:59 Lydia: Oh.

0:29:50 Thomas: I mean, there's a lot of like, I I think this also was said by the NAACP as a way of trying to rally the black community a bit. I think it's shaming them a little like, hey, can we raise money for this guy? Like this white this guy guy here came and did this appeal for these three poor black men who are doomed to die. And he did it without the help of any black people. I think the NAACP was really trying to like, you know, yeah, which, which is like fucking on one hand, I'm like, I guess, but also like, God, there it's the great depression already. White people don't have money at this time, let alone a bunch of sharecropping black people.

But you know I, obviously there are some black people who are doing okay at this time, relatively speaking, and you so I guess they were really, yeah, they were really trying to get them to raise some money. I found this part interesting too, though. There's one black lawyer who wrote in and was frustrated because the NAACP was supporting Brewer now. And he thought that like, well, no black person is ever going to call up a black lawyer to defend them here. And I thought this was horrible catch-22 because it's like honestly, yeah, you know, the Kemper trio just factually speaking better served by a white lawyer than a black one, like it's just

0:29:59 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:30:08 Lydia: Community's Got to show up. Yep. Yeah.

0:30:28 Lydia: Churches probably have money. Yeah, yeah.

0:30:59 Thomas: Factially, like the the shittiness of the time is that's just gonna give them a better chance of survival, just is, is. And yet I totally get where this black lawyer is coming from. Who's like, there's like four black lawyers here. I think like literally, I think you said there's like four even doing anything here. And it's a little bit shaming to us if it's like, we can't even defend our own, essentially, parlance of the time, like our own race kind of thing. I get it. You know, it's like I don't know what the answer to that is, man.

Like on one hand it's like, yeah, but also if the ex-governor is going to come help your trio not die, like, I mean, I'd probably take him up on it. But I think this lawyer also kind of understood because he ended that letter by being like, know, but this is a problem we can tackle after this case kind of thing. So he wasn't like trying throw to, a wrench in it or anything.

He was just like noting like, hey, there are black lawyers, you Now, which is valid. Once again, though, Clark lost his appeal, that dissent by that judge made a big difference because people saw it and energy around it led to the creation of a Meridian branch of the NAACP, which was the first active unit in Mississippi in years,

0:31:06 Lydia: Yep. Yeah.

0:32:05 Thomas: Because I think they had just been truly terrorized out of it. Just horrifying, obviously, the racial violence that took place. And so it's kind of revitalizing that a little bit. I can't imagine anything scarier than going to an NAACP meeting as a black person in the 30s in Meridian. Like, Jesus, those are some brave people. I mean, that's wow. But it led to that kind of energy. But back to sort of the legal part of it, Brewer still has to overcome the fact that Clark did not, mention the U.S. Constitution in the thing. And for the law geeks, here's how the book I read kind of describes Brewer's approach. There's a lot of technical crap I won't get into, but there's a little bit I could read here to give us an idea.

Earl Brewer therefore attempted in his suggestion of error to correct John Clark's mistake stake in not raising federal constitutional issues in Clark's appeal of the Kemper Trio's case to the Mississippi Supreme Court. In arguing that the use of coerced confessions as evidence against Brown, Shields, and Ellington was a reversible error, Brewer invoked the due process clause of the 14th Amendment and its guarantee

0:32:20 Lydia: Rural Mississippi. Yeah.

0:33:08 Thomas: Of a fair trial in state criminal proceedings. You and I might listen to that and be like, yeah, well, duh, that sounds like you just did the thing. Yeah, that didn't exist yet. Like this is where this comes from. Essentially, I mean, it's being built in different ways at this time. In attacking the use of coerced confessions, Brewer could not invoke the self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment of the federal constitution since the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1908 in twinning or twining, I'm not sure which, v. New Jersey, that the self incrimination clause only applied in federal trials and proceedings and not in state proceedings. Yeah.

0:33:15 Lydia: Yeah. Hmm. Oh.

0:33:42 Lydia: Interesting. Yeah.

0:33:44 Thomas: That is how it was. These things were guaranteed in the federal constitution and then slowly they were incorporated out into the states. And nowadays, your average person would not even know that. They would just think, yeah, these are our guarantees. All of these amendments are our... Yep.

0:33:46 Lydia: Yeah. Regardless. Of where you live, yeah.

0:33:59 Thomas: And that did not exist until shockingly late. In fact, I know the second amendment was not even to the the States until I think like 2003 or whenever that decision was like, it just wasn't. And we just assume these things always are. Uh, but no, there, was a lot of fight to get to this point. And there's a lot more, you know, but I feel like that's enough law talk, especially because it's like, this is kind of about nuanced stuff about law that doesn't exist anymore. And it's, it's kind of, but there was some interesting wrinkles just for me to read about like the strategy of, oh, it'S not about, coerced confession because that precedent was bad. It'S It's like, it's about false evidence being, you know, there's kind of ways of like shading it to make it hit on different parts of the 14th amendment and due process that I thought was interesting, but it doesn't matter now. Cause now hopefully for the most part, we understand that at least those basic things are just covered, but back then they were not. So Brewer argues really well in this, uh, again, this is the,

0:34:53 Thomas: Suggestion of error, just right back to the same court, but he's tying in the constitutional

0:34:24 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah. Uh. The Federal

0:34:59 Thomas: Questions which I still don't get why that works because like, well, you didn't bring it up in the trial and the in the appeal, it's weird that I guess you're able to do it now. I don't know, that's how the fucking bullshit rules work

0:34:59 Lydia: Yeah. They're Just doing Like Control F and looking for like anything federal, and if it's in a document, then they're like, okay, good.

0:35:16 Thomas: Control, try to think, I was trying to make the comic version of what that is, but I can't even think of what it, like you, you control your secretary to find, yeah, control secretary find blind federal whatever. So, as I mentioned, I think this is even true of a lot of these appeals today, like, as I said, this is usually just a like, hey, re-crunch it, no, we checked, still no, but Brewer turns this into like, oh, okay, and this becomes more of a process, and the court orders additional briefs from each side, and doing that becomes important because it delayed the execution again, because that, you know, it's like, all right, more briefs, um, that means you need time to write them, obviously, especially

0:35:22 Lydia: Yeah It's not possible Yeah

0:35:57 Thomas: Back then, you know, Microsoft Word, you well, I don't even know how they're doing any of this. So we're going to stay the execution a little longer and that matters. But ultimately, the court still said, nah, they can just fucking die. So he still loses this suggestion of error. And this is, again, a lot of legal nuance here. I don't think it's going to do anything really to go through all of it. But here's what I thought would be worthwhile. If you were wondering how the court responded to the general sentiment that you and I have both expressed, which is like, hey, if you didn't want to be killed by the state, you should have filed the proper form, you know, complaint form and stamped it with the right stamp and put it, you know, that kind of nonsense.

0:36:08 Lydia: Jeez. Yeah.

0:36:32 Lydia: I Don't have my hopes up for their response here.

0:36:34 Thomas: Well, yeah, they gave us this gem. Quote, are technical only in the sense that all such rules are, and what the defendants request is simply that they be accepted from the procedures heretofore, uniformly applied to all litigants. The court continued, this we cannot do. In conclusion, however, the court indicated a certain defensiveness regarding its second affirmation of the convictions of Brown, Shields, and Ellington, quote, all litiguants of every race in color are equal at the bar of this court, and we would feel deeply humiliated if the contrary could be justly said. The court concluded, nothing herein said is intended to even remotely sanction the method by which these confessions were obtained. So, once again, what does it fucking remind you of? You know, it's like, well, okay, well, obviously the the confession, they were basically beaten but Yeah and I love the art, the the argument, like, it's not technique, you're saying, saying this is like a technicality. It's only technical in so far as it's rule, and rules are technical.

0:37:00 Lydia: Yeah Yeah Hands Are Tied, nothing We can do Yeah, yeah Yeah Um Rules are technical.

0:37:39 Thomas: It's like, all right, come on. It's ridiculous. But now that one dissenting judge had turned into two. He had cloned himself. No, he had, I guess, convinced another person.

0:37:39 Lydia: So You Know So, ooh, just recruited somebody. Yeah.

0:37:50 Thomas: Yeah. And so instead of a 5-1, this became a 4-2.

0:37:53 Lydia: Interesting.

0:37:54 Thomas: And Anderson is now joined by another dissenting judge, the fantastic old timey name, Judge Virgil Alexis Griffith. And come on, Virgil, Judge Virgil.

0:38:01 Lydia: Wow. Does he have a Confederate past?

0:38:05 Thomas: I don't know. We'll just hope not. I doubt it because he, you know, sided with the defendants here, but who knows. Are people bringing Virgil back? I feel like that name should come back. I'm just thinking of this now.

0:38:11 Lydia: Yeah. Virgil? Yeah, I have a, I mean, I don't know about back, but yeah, that there is someone I knew growing up named Virgil in my family.

0:38:23 Thomas: Please, that was years ago. I am talking about now. Yeah. I mean, am talking about the 1800s.

0:38:24 Lydia: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, no, nobody. I can't imagine. No, there's Virgil

0:38:28 Thomas: Come on. No, it's a good name.

0:38:30 Lydia: Nowadays. Yeah.

0:38:31 Thomas: Judge Virgil. But Griffith, now he kind of takes the baton or whatever, and he he writes the amazing descent here that later gets picked up by the Supreme Court. And he goes into a decent amount of detail about the horrific abuse they suffered and contributes another quote. And this will get picked up in papers in the Supreme Court decision, which is, quote, quote, "It is sufficient to say that in pertinent respects, the transcript reads more like pages torn from some medieval account than a record made within the confines of a modern civilization which aspires to an enlightened constitutional government."

0:39:04 Lydia: Man, that's good. And I think it's also important that he included, as horrific as the details are kind of keeping that at the forefront, because, you know, if you're just an average person or journalist or something like that, putting together a story or reading a story and they say it was horrible, but then the details or, you know, you'd have to go track down the, you know, Meridian newspaper for any information or like go down to that courthouse and be like, can I see the transcript? The average person is certainly not going to do that. Most journalists at that time aren't going to do that, can't do that

0:39:04 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Well, and think about what the 30s would be like. I'm sure there was a lot of a sense of like, yeah, you know, they get the criminal, they rough them up a little, that's the you know, people even think that now like, much less in the fucking mobster days of the third, you know, like I'm sure that would get written off as like, yeah, well, okay, they're murderers, so they're sure they roughed them up a little, but going into details of like, no, they specifically beat them into a confession, you know, doing all that, I agree like yeah it's it's, yeah, there's more than just that. I wish I could read that whole dissent, but I'll just, one more part. After, um, the confessions had been secured by torture, the sheriffs of Kemper and Lauderdale counties were then summoned to hear the free and voluntary confessions of these miserable and abject defendants, Griffith sarcastically pointed out.

And even though Henry Shield stated that he could not sit down because of the severity of the beating he had undergone, and though Yank Ellington's neck clearly had had rope burns on it, the solemn farce of hearing the defendant's confessions was gone through as if they had been free and voluntary. So, yeah, he's not happy, this Griffith, how this went down. So, yeah, now we've got another dissent that makes a big difference. You know, these things get covered in the papers and the papes. I'm

0:39:45 Lydia: Yeah, but I, but, yeah couldn't sit, yeah yeah, exactly Yeah,

0:40:50 Thomas: Moving lots of papes to sell. There, anyway. Is this Newsies time? When was Newsies? I don't know.

0:40:50 Lydia: I don't know Oh, that's a good question. Not sure.

0:40:56 Thomas: Oh, I thought you knew Meanwhile, I thought you were an expert. I thought she had a PhD in newsies was what I thought.

0:40:57 Lydia: I don't know the date. I know Christian Bale and 1992.

0:41:04 Thomas: And not for nothing. Yeah.

0:41:05 Lydia: Just kidding.

0:41:07 Thomas: Yeah. Weird. Boy, it's a different time, I guess.

0:41:13 Thomas: And not for nothing, what the other side was saying, when you have the people who did the beatings admitting on the stand that they happened, that's not a point that's in controversy. You know, that's not like, well, they should have, you know, introduced evidence that it It wasn't court. It's like they admitted it.

0:41:22 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a fact as as recorded by the court.

0:41:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's what one of the, you know, one the points that Griffith made was like, yeah, you can't penalize them for not like introducing counter witnesses. Why would they need to? Here's the best line that I know I'm doing more because it's so good. Absolute best line in this thing. This fucking Griffith, Virgil, Virge, my friend Virge. Love him. "For the majority of the Supreme Court" again, Mississippi Supreme Court, it's confusing, but that's where we are, just reminding you "of the Supreme Court to hold that the confessions of the Kemper Trio had been validly considered in the trial court because defense counsel failed to object to their admissibility was essentially the same as ruling that a lynching party has become legitimate and legal because the victim, while being hung by a mob, did not object in the proper form of words at precisely the proper stage of the proceedings. In my judgment, there is no proper form of words, not any proper stage of the procedings in any such case as the record of the so-called trial now before us disclosed, it was never a legitimate proceeding from from beginning to end."

0:41:42 Lydia: Yeah

0:42:32 Thomas: It was never anything but a fictitious continuation of the mob which originally instituted and engaged in the admitted tortures. I keep in mind, we're in Mississippi in 1935. This guy is, this guy fucking rules. Yeah. And he finishes by practically asking the U.S. Supreme Court to fix it.

0:42:41 Lydia: Yep. Yeah Yeah. Ballsy. Yeah.

0:42:53 Thomas: So pretty good, uh, there's something he says here that I've, I've thought a lot about and I think it's interesting. He says, "It may be that in a rarely occasional case, which arouses the flaming indignation of a whole community, as was the case here, we, we shall continue time to have outbreaks of the mob or resorts to its method. But if mobs and mob methods must be, it would be better that their existence and their methods shall be kept wholly separate from the courts, that there shall be no blending of the devices of the mob and the proceedings of the courts, and no court shall by adoption give legitimacy to any of the works of the, the mob, nor cover by the frills and furbelos." Oh, I don't know that word.

0:43:39 Thomas: That's awesome. The frillsandfurbelos of a pretended legal trial, the body of that which, in fact, is the product of the mob. And then by closing the eyes to actualities, complacently adjudicate that the law of the land has been observed and preserved. I found that interesting. What do you think about that?

0:43:58 Lydia: You know, so there's like a section in there where I it felt like he was saying, like, just let the mob like if they're going to be separate, then the mob mob justice can just be. And so if they kill somebody, they kill something and then we'll deal with it after. But it's almost like it's not it's against the mob just saying that it can't intermingle with the court system.

0:44:05 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:19 Thomas: Yeah, it's interesting. I don't, I'm not sure exactly how he means it. I'm not sure if he means, you I could see reading it a few different ways, But it's interesting. I've just thought a lot about it. It's a thought provoking paragraph because it's like, yeah, I get that this is fucking Mississippi in 1935 and you all apparently hate black people so much that I guess we're not going to always be able to get rid of mob justice and these lynchings, but if they they are going to happen don't lend legitimacy to them by using the court to like do a Legal Lynching and I don't know what difference that makes I guess like I've just been thinking

0:44:23 Lydia: Yeah. To Finish Yeah Yeah

0:44:55 Thomas: You know I don't know how either way it's just something I wanted to read because I've been thinking about it it's kind of it's an interesting principle even even to think about today like is it would it be better if there was some thin legal veneer or does that make it worse because it's like corrupting the law. I think that's what he's trying to say. I think he's try to say don't corrupt the law by like bending it into justifying these atrocities. If you're going to do atrocities, fucking don't pretend it's legal, I think. I think, that would be the good interpretation of it, maybe. I don't know, I found it interesting.

0:45:22 Lydia: Well The Rest Of it's so good so I'm gonna say that that's what he meant and I'll uh I'll Sit In That

0:45:26 Thomas: Yeah. There may just be a bit of, you know, this is a different time. Maybe a bit realism to it. Like, fucking this is probably going to happen. But don't fucking try to justify it legally. Which, I don't know, I get it. I mean, it also could be a little bit sarcastic or at least not meant literally like, okay, why don't you go ahead and keep doing mob stuff? It's just like, no, this whole thing is fucking a joke and don't justify it legally. But as despite his amazing dissent and the objectively great performance by my personal hero in this, Earl Brewer, the execution is back on June 6th, 1935. Mark your calendars. But even more attention was raised. And now Clark's legal error essentially bypassed somehow. I guess this counts like because Brewer raised federal questions for whatever legally legal reason, I guess that works, we still got the problem of money. Brewer donated a hundred percent of his time. Amazing. Great guy.

0:45:31 Lydia: Yeah Interesting Yeah

0:46:20 Thomas: But He did ask that expenses be taken care of. Reasonable. And these weren't like, you know, self-serving fucking staying at a nice fancy place and eating well expenses these Are things like you we just wouldn't even think of his

0:46:20 Lydia: Yeah Can Of beans I'm just just kidding is

0:46:36 Thomas: Bean but he sends over his bean invoice it's Like I've been eating a lot of a lot of beans they're yummy uh but they do you know they do cost at least a nickel and that's a lot of money these days Sort Of not Exactly What it Is is you're required at each phase in this to print out the whole record and your brief for the court. Because it's 1935.

0:46:47 Lydia: It Stuff like a notepad To like take Notes and Okay Oh

0:46:59 Thomas: Yeah, it's not, that's not easy to do. That's not cheap to do is the great depression. Like the amounts of money here are depressingly tiny. But think about that. Like nowadays it's like, yeah, okay. Well, you, you know, you submit electronically everything to the court and it has the whole record. It's like no, you got to print all that out every time you appeal. And, and yeah, it does.

0:46:57 Lydia: On Your dime interesting Yeah It Gets more Expensive every time you Have to do It yeah

0:47:18 Thomas: Yeah. It adds to the record. That's, that adds to That's insignificant. I mean, it makes sense. It's like, you're the one trying to appeal something. It's kind of on you to like, yeah, you got to bring the court, all the evidence and the record and all that. And if you do all that, they, they will render a judgment. But yeah, that, that I didn't, I just never would have thought of that. You know, I never would've occurred to me. Um,and that, I think that's the bulk of the expense is just printing. It's just kind of interesting.

0:47:21 Lydia: Mm-hmm Yeah That's Crazy.

0:47:41 Thomas: But at this point, the NAACP just had no money. You know? It had pledged $500 at the outset, but they had only sent $150 and maybe they were more optimistic about how much they could raise or something, but they just were like, we don't have any more. We can't get it. There's a bit of a tangent, maybe not a tangent but not the focus of this episode.

There's a lot made in the book about this dynamic of like the trio, a lot of the success of this here is largely about their cause being visible, but not because any groups like the NAACP or groups that the broader racist public views is like, oh, you're coming in here and telling us how to change our ways, which I think is like it's true, but depressing. Like the you know the way this went it wasn't like oh you know all these Angry black people are mad at us or or by the way not even that it's like these elitist white liberals from the north are telling us what to do and apparently that makes these you fucking assholes mad and then they like become even worse they do that toddler thing oh you're gonna tell us to not not lynch people, we'll lynch more people,

0:48:47 Lydia: Yeah.

0:48:47 Thomas: Which is like depressing, but like, honestly, not an exaggeration. And we don't have to go down that, rabbit trail, but it is interesting that they like that did kind of benefit from how this went, it's, you it's sad to think about, but there's a lot of those politics in it. I also read the weirdest thing and I just have to share this. The, the group was called the commission on interracial cooperation. And that That was that's like the group that because it intervened, it had more of a positive effect than maybe the NAACP because of perception. It's just, you Know, racist perceptions. This CIC, it's called Commission on Interracial Cooperation, was like a multiracial group, you now, that wasn't looked at is like radical, basically. So it's like, what's the equivalent I'm trying to think? It's like you know, oh, mothers against shootings thing, trying to get gun reform rather than like, this is the fucking AOC coming for all your weapons group.

0:49:43 Thomas: Yeah, there's probably a better example of that, but it's kind of like that. That's, that's how this is being described in the Book.

0:49:37 Lydia: Uh-huh. Yeah, the way that school, you know, back when we took history characterized the difference between MLK and the Black Panthers.

0:49:52 Thomas: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Right, which is stupid, but yes, totally. Um, I only mention it because I said this, let me read you this. Mississippi CIC had been active in the state, especially in conducting a campaign directed at, that, the prevention of lynching. The Mississippi Bar Association, for example, produced a handbook on the prevention of lynching, which contained contributions from the governor, state judges, and members of Congress, which was promoted by the, the Mississippi Interracial Commission mission as a high school text. I'm just reading them. Like, I just imagine like the fucking sexual harassment videos. So you're about to lynch a black person. You know, it's the weirdest thing, a pamphlet, like here's how to not lynch black people. Step one, if you find yourself lynching a blackperson, kill yourself.

And you know, like, I don't know what just, yeah, it was just like, fucking what? That's weird, weird. But it, it probably is more like the stuff that, well, it says high school text though. I was going to say it's more like, oh, make sure you're, you're building the whole airplane out of the fucking mob proof jail. But if it's a high school test, I don't know what, what I wonder what the, I want to get my hands on that. I want to, I wonder if I could, I didn't try, but we should find the prevention. I just wonder like what advice did they have to give these fucking assholes back back then. Hey, don't do racist hate crimes. Oh, okay.

0:49:53 Lydia: Yeah exactly. Yeah yeah yeah you're a horrible racist and yeah yeah yeah.

0:51:12 Lydia: Yeah

0:51:13 Thomas: Did that work? Like, I don't know, you know, like weird. So lots of fascinating stuff here. Obviously don't have time for all of There's it. Amazing personal letters that this author had access to. And like, there's even a ledger of like the money, which is so fascinating because, you know. Even back then, this is how how expensive the fucking legal system is. Even back then we're talking thousands, you know, at least a few thousand dollars, which, Yeah. That's, I mean, $45,000 today. So imagine I, you know, that's, imagine, three poor black families trying to come up with $45,000 for this appeal.

0:51:42 Lydia: Yeah. Cash. Yeah.

0:51:50 Thomas: Yeah, like fast. What What are you, what are you to, that's not easy, not easy to do. That's a lot of money. Jesus. Holy shit. That's like all printing costs. Imagine if you're like, I got to print this document and I need $45,000. How do I get into that line of work? As they always say. But in the End, through a lot of the shaming and the, and things they were doing, the NAACP does end up being the largest donor slightly raising a total of $690, which is pretty incredible. That's when it's all said and done. The CIC, that group that made the pamphlet, they had said they'd be a matching donor. So whatever anyone else raises, we'll add 50% to that.

It was fucking awesome. And so every time it's bunch, a a bunch of letters that are like, here, we got this donation. Can you give us the 50 cents on on the dollar. And they're like, yeah, so that's pretty cool. Also the Clarks amazing, especially specifically Mrs. Clark, who, know, you again, I think, think I Clark still isn't doing great. Um, you know she was having her friends donate and stuff, you you know, and like raising money that way and forwarding. And that really made it like they barely, barely got this together.

0:51:53 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:52:54 Thomas: I mean, all of this was so contingent or whatever, like it really so many ways this could have not happened. But what really moved me was remember, you how the black families couldn't raise five dollars between them to save their lives. And I think that was literally true. And the twelve dollars was plausibly an amount of money that someone would murder for, you the trial, in the original trial, um, of the increased attention and Uh, and because of you, know, the The, attention to The the, abuse and the fact that it it, looked a little more optimistic now that, You know, brewers that on the case and all that the black community raised, what to me is just frankly, an astonishing amount of money. So Earl Brewer reports to a guy involved in the fundraising, quote, some colored men came in and left in my office for me in the Ed Brown, Henry Shields, and Yank Ellington case, $21.62.

0:53:42 Thomas: This was left in small amounts, Brewer said, $11.01 from one party, $6.81 from another party, a dollar, man, that's actually really moving, a dollar 80 from another and two dollars from another, like, think of how little these people had back then. Yeah.

0:53:57 Lydia: Scraping it together.

0:53:58 Thomas: And Like they're And, and, and for what? For people they probably don't know, like this is just in the community, like maybe they know of them, but, and, and all for the hope. By the way, this isn't like, oh, give us this money and they're free. This is like, raise some money in the, in the fucking Great Depression, black families have nothing and maybe, maybe we can get an appeal that might do something, but who, who knows, you know, like it's, it's really, it's just incredible to see that, that happened. That's like amazing to me that they did. That's, that'd say literal king's ransom to these people. I mean, that's just crazy. So there's lots of coverage in national magazines. Uh, and that was again, part of what helped some of the other fundraising. And also a, I bunch of the fundraising came from honestly, like the us, us of the time. Like, I really feel that, I feel like this could be a lot of people listening too. It's like, you know, relatively privileged.

0:53:58 Lydia: Yeah mm-hmm.

0:54:46 Thomas: Liberals elsewhere in the country who hear about this shitty thing, read about it on some of these like national magazines are like, oh my God. And they have a compassionate, empathetic reaction. They send in some donations. And I just want to say, shout out to the us of that time. Like that kind of thing made a difference then, hopefully makes a difference now. These things matter to people and that helped these, they barely, like I said, barely scraped it together, required all this. And just another piece of evidence that Mrs. Clark was great, here's, here's this quote from Mrs. Clarke writing back to these donors who kind of sent her money to give to Brewer, quote, I have reached the conclusion that all of my public welfare and political activities are to, to be the means for giving me prestige and contacts I shall need for what I have decided to do in the future. I shall from now on be active in helping the poor, unfortunate Negroes in their vain efforts to secure justice in courts.

This case has brought to me the realization that we are a brother's keeper, and I feel that it is my duty, the unfortunate victims of race hatred and prejudice, we, we have paid a great price for being true to our conception of duty.

0:54:56 Lydia: Yeah yeah.

0:55:53 Thomas: And I know that the future will bring more disappointments and unhappiness because of our stand in face of so much local prejudice and intolerance. But you can be assured that we will always be fighting for the cause in which you have manifested a friendly interest. And that's again, writing back to people who donated to her and She wasn't just like bullshitting, there Clark lost his re-election to the state senate, and in her words, the only issue was his defense of the Kemper trio, and so the way they make it out, and, and who knows, you know, who knows if this is Mrs. Clark embellishing, who knows, but the way they, she tells it is this case not only broke, broke his health, but like ruined his career.

And he doesn't do much after, you know, like he pretty much, knows, he loses his reelection. He kind of goes back to practicing law, but I think he dies not, not long after this. She though, she goes on and has a political career and gets elected to something, which, which in my mind, Yeah, which of my mind made me a little bit doubt some of this, because like, well, okay, if, supporting them was enough to get him, losing an election, why didn't it affect her? Maybe it's just a gender thing of like, she wasn't visible in the fight for the Kemper trio. I don't know. But either way, I mean, it's good that she was able to have success later on. But I found that letter really inspiring, too.

So they barely scraped the money together and Brewer gets granted cert, meaning, you know, they're going to the Supreme Court. About something fun history here, this happens to be the exact same year that that the Supreme Court first got a building. I don't know if you remember this from some of the like coverage.

I dunno, there, there was a lot of Supreme Court coverage around the, you the, the packing the court and the blah, blah, like a lot, a lot, a lot of history I feel like I learned in podcasts around that time. And that, do you know who kind of made that happen?

0:56:48 Lydia: Cool.

0:57:32 Lydia: No.

0:57:34 Thomas: Yeah. So It was like his whole thing, his whole cause back in the 20s was like, we, we're all working from home right now, we're zooming in, and it was true, like, and what's funny is some of the justices didn't like that, they got like I, Like Working From They Were Just like You Know, work on cases casually in the fucking, in a cafe, you know, it's kind of funny, um, but Taft was like, no, we need a place, we do, Taft, uh, by the way, he dies in like 1929, I think, so he doesn't even get to see it, he dies before it gets built. But Um, it's finished around this time and they M they just have moved into their new fancy building. And we all know the building by memory. I'm sure like the picture of what it is. And when I think of that that building. I think, wow, look at that. You know, the old, the columns, the cool, like it looks so official and neat. And one of the justices was like, boy, they sure fucking botched this thing. Like, like,

0:57:34 Lydia: Oh hmm.

0:57:47 Lydia: Yeah they did they wanted to keep working from home. Yeah return to office.

0:58:04 Lydia: Yeah. Yeah.

0:58:26 Thomas: It looks nice, but like the design is all messed up. And he even wrote like, sucks that they like, didn't get better people to work on something that's supposed to last forever. It's like, this is, this has been, it's like carved into stone. You know, like this thing is like supposed to be this eternal, you amazing building. And like was he complaining about where like certain rooms were and it's it's all disorganized and like illogical. Yeah, it's really funny. I I love that idea of like, we've got this building. One of judges is like, fuck this, man.

I don't want to go into here. I don' to work here. Now also, gosh, this is something for another show to cover. But, one thing that's always bothered me and what I really appreciated about opening arguments was learning about how, the like, right has this story of oh, the Right to Privacy and Abortion was made up in Roe v. Wade, you this is exactly the time period where all these things I've said it a few times, but all these Things we think of as our fundamental rights were just made up, they were made up up in the same way, you due

0:58:44 Lydia: That's funny. Yeah, yeah, no,

0:59:16 Thomas: Process. What does due process mean? That's the whole fucking problem. These originalists are like, yeah, no, you just look at the words. Okay. What are the words due process means?

0:59:23 Lydia: Somebody at some point had to interpret the meaning of that word

0:59:26 Thomas: Yeah. How do you know what due process, what is the process? How much of it are you do kind of thing. And the right to not be forced to confess, uh, freedom of speech and even freedom of the press, even banning of mob domination of trials, um, not allowing the the knowing use of perjured testimony in a conviction, these are things that are just now in this time period being kind of codified sort of by the Supreme Court. Like these were not guarantees. You did not have these rights, except in certain circumstances, maybe federal trials kind of thing. You didn't have those rights at this time. And now you do for the most part.

And that was quote unquote made up in exactly the same way that the right to an abortion was in Roe v. Wade. Topic for another podcast entirely, but it's really interesting looking at this period of time and like these a lot of these cases are that, you know, so we're at the Supreme Court and, uh, turning in briefs here that cost pretty penny to print, I'm sure. And on one hand, we've got Brewer making the, I think, uh, pretty obvious case that no, this wasn't the fuck a fair trial for literally a zillion reasons. And then we have the state. The state argues here, the selection here will get you, you know, get you properly mad about it. Quote, "There is nothing in the federal constitution that

0:59:27 Lydia: Yeah. Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hm. Yeah.

1:00:37 Lydia: Strange.

1:00:38 Thomas: Says a dog cannot play basketball. Weird. Really prophetic. Yeah. There's nothing in the federal constitution which is infringed by the use in state courts of coerced confessions, even if we concede that the confessions in this case were so coerced, or stated in other words, the exemption from the compulsory self-incrimination in the courts of the states is not secured by any part of the federal constitution. The self-incrimination clause of the Fifth Amendment of the federal constitution has the been uniformly held by this court as not intended to limit the powers of the state governments in respects to their own people, but to operate on the national government alone. Loan. It regulates the procedure of the federal courts exclusively and is not obligatory upon the several states of the union. So they're just saying it. Yeah, no, yeah, sure. We might have towards these people in confessing, but you don't get to tell us not to do that.

1:00:42 Lydia: Wow. Huh.

1:01:25 Lydia: You Don't get to tell us what to do, yeah.

1:01:32 Thomas: Pretty much. Yeah. And they weren't wrong at that time. Like they really weren't. There's a reason this is a precedent setting case. They weren't right. They, they, if you want to be more mad, they also said, quote, "No testimony was concealed from the defendants. They knew better than anyone else perhaps just exactly what did happen, and they admit that their true circumstances are before the court. We are not dealing here with three innocent men, but three guilty ones, as clearly appears from their own cross-examinations.

Not only this, but on the very day of the trial, two of them voluntarily called the sheriff of the county aside and told him that they had told him the truth when they were in Lauderdale County jail. Was, where is there any fraud, any deliberate deception?" The court should also notice, the state said, that the confessions actually used at the trial were not the products of coercion. Earl Brewer leaves the impression in his brief that that the confessions which were used were the direct result of beatings administered by those who testified with reference to the confessions. But the record does not bear him out on this ground.

1:01:34 Lydia: What?

1:02:01 Lydia: What?

1:02:32 Lydia: So, so

1:02:33 Thomas: He's saying the actual confessions used weren't the torture ones, they were, when they repeated it

1:02:34 Lydia: They're saying we didn't use this piece of paper we use this piece of paperwork, okay.

1:02:40 Thomas: Exactly they repeated it later while not being beaten and then we use that, we just use that one, we didn't we didn' use the other one, yeah only using the second one. God, oh boy, also interesting to note that based on the way Brewer was kind of arguing, it sounds like the precedent not too long before this was that right to counsel only required in these shit Southern fucking racist sham trials that you just have one person who's like technically a lawyer sit next to the black man about to be legally lynched is, in so many ways. Like, that's my interpretation, but like, it sounds like from the way he writes that once again, the court invented, in quotes, another new right, which is the right that, you know, the right to council actually means like, like, actual counsel, not just,

1:02:46 Lydia: Right. Because the other one was dirty it was tainted, yeah, yeah, wow. Oh.

1:03:28 Lydia: Wow. Like Someone

1:03:28 Thomas: Yeah, you can imagine the ways that these assholes game the system. Oh, he needs right to counsel. Okay. We sat somebody next to him. No. Okay, and that probably worked for some number of fucking decades until only, yeah exactly, he had counsel.

1:03:28 Lydia: Actually working on your behalf and Yeah, yeah. He Was there if he had questions He could have, yeah.

1:03:45 Thomas: Not even exaggerating, I think that's how it was until only a few years before this, based on just context clues. The briefs filed, so that's, mean, there's a ton in the the briefs, but like now, you know, skipping through a lot of that, that's the thrust of them and the brief are filed and and the court schedules oral arguments. And I just had to throw in this old timey detail. The oral argument is scheduled for January 10th, but Brewer was also due in federal court in New Orleans on the 9th. And that was like not doable in 1936.

1:03:46 Lydia: Wow.

1:04:12 Lydia: Can't do both, yeah. You're not going to make it

1:04:13 Thomas: Yeah. So he had to book a flight and he was was like terrified it's 1936, yeah. I don't even know a balloon. I have no idea. So he, there's a letter of Mrs. Brewer being like, "All right, hey, our kids are grown, I'll go with you if, if something happens, then at least we both die." He has to get a flight to do both these things, and just, I had to throw that in. It's so funny. And so by all reports, Brewer just fucking nails oral arguments. Uh, it's reported that the justices were shocked by the case, like literally, like, by what happened. And and so the guy, the asshole arguing for the state, now it's not Stennis, you know,

1:04:18 Lydia: Oh. Yeah, what was the plane even back Yeah.

1:04:32 Lydia: Wow. Hmm. Oh.

1:04:54 Thomas: That's not his job per se, um, but someone named William Maynard. He points out that oh, there had been no motion to exclude the confessions at the trial as required by Mississippi procedure. But then he was interrupted by one of the justices who said, Maynard was speechless in the face of the question, feeling that if he replied in the negative, he would be conceding his case. While if he answered yes to the question he would appear to be heartless.

1:05:06 Lydia: Right, mm-hm. Yeah.

1:05:26 Lydia: An evil piece of shit, yeah.

1:05:27 Thomas: MaynARD instead of answering dropped his head in silence and the justice said, I thought so. Though.

1:05:33 Thomas: And then I'm like, fuck, I yearn for the Supreme Court of Czechs notes. 1930 fucking six. This wouldn't this wouldn't happen now. We in that Arizona case where that I broke down for you last episode. The lawyer's like, no, no, we should just kill him. Like, just, I don't care about any, you know, someone Sotomayor would be like, are you saying that we should just kill this guy because he didn't object in the right way? Yes, yeah.

1:05:42 Lydia: No. And More than half the court would say yeah, we are, actually, we, yeah.

1:06:00 Thomas: Back then, this guy was like, "Fuck, god, he got me, I don't want to look like an asshole." Now they're like, "Oh no, I'm an asshole, yes, we should kill him," and then he wins. That guy wins yeah that's that is depressing like I know obviously there's plenty of ways this court was not better but like fuck in this specific way it might it might have been better in 1936 than now for certain criminal justice things that they're taking on here crazy so you already know this because the famous case he wins and another funny detail, it's completely overshadowed by the Tennessee Valley Authority case, that's one of the New crucial deal ones, you know, where

1:06:05 Lydia: Rules Are Rules Oh. Right.

1:06:37 Thomas: Reports at the time are like, well, they, they orally like announce, they that's how it works, like some guy's like, "Hear you, hear you you know, and like announces the reads the decisions and he's yeah and he starts reading and it's about the Camper Trio and everyone's like, "Ah," and then, like, because everybody well, no, that's just, they really it's

1:06:45 Lydia: It's a trumpet that introduces him Oh god. Yeah. They wanted to hear the other one. Oh.

1:06:55 Thomas: Yeah it's really important like the camper trio obviously important but like the the other one the new deal cases like that has implications for the whole country like that's these programs that are going to be really important and so it's kind of funny that and again the book is suggesting like maybe they benefited from that because like the less of a deal you make about this, the less of chance that a white mob goes and kills them, you know? And so it's like, maybe that was good. And one interesting thing here about the decision to point out, this is worth pointing out, the court could have just ruled that they had ineffective assistance to counsel. And if they had, we wouldn't have heard about this case because that precedent already established in the previous cases, like just a few years prior. That would just be like, yeah, we're making this decision consistent with that case. End of story. But they didn't. They, for the first time, that the 14th Amendment protects us, you and I even, from coerced confessions. And the court cited Griffin's dissent, the, you know, the second dissent

1:07:10 Lydia: Interesting. Yeah. Right.

1:07:33 Lydia: Yeah.

1:07:51 Lydia: Griffin's

1:07:51 Thomas: Cited at length. Yeah, Griffin, Griffin, Cited at length. Just more pining for a quote-unquote better time in shocking ways. "Of is in the decision, state of Mississippi nevertheless maintained that the confessions were properly admitted at the trial because the counsel for the defendants failed to object to their use as evidence, after it appeared that they were the product of coercion. This contention proceeds upon a misconception of the nature of petitioner's complaint. That complaint is not of the commission of mere error, but of a wrong so fundamental that it made the whole proceeding a mere pretense of a trial and rendered the conviction and sentence wholly void. We are not concerned with a mere question of state practice or whether counsel assigned to petitioners were competent or mistakenly assumed that their first objections were sufficient."

1:07:52 Lydia: Uh-huh. Yep. Yeah,

1:08:42 Thomas: Nudge to our fucking asshole court that you don't have to be like, well, the rules say, you can just be like, no, this was a fucking joke, you know, like that's, it makes you think about what even is the law, you. You can point to these little things and be like the rules say, or you can just be like, hey, this is fundamentally not justice and our job. It's in the name. We are justices, like so, no, you know, that's interesting. Oh, shoot. Wow. We've gone on super long. I think we'll take another pause there. And in the next part, I'll talk about what happened after. Got a lot of interesting stuff there. Not only what happened afterwards, what happened each to of the players we've met here, but also how we link this all back to Stennis. We'll come back for the final wraparound of the Stennis thing. Not the final part, because there's a bonus extra thing that I'm not sure how we'll deal with. But essentially, this next part will be the completion of this story arc.

1:08:48 Lydia: Yeah,

1:09:36 Thomas: And we'll get back to what this says about Stennis. And we'll find out what happened after this court decision. So that is next time on Where There's Woke. Thank you so much for listening. Hope you support the show on patreon.com/wherethereswoke. It is the only reason we can do it. And we'll see you next time.