The Judgment
By
La Belle Rouge

 

Would She Seek Revenge Or True Power?

 

“All rise. District Court of Carsfield County is now in session; The Honorable Judge Ivory Stevens Clay presiding.”

The Bailiff, Officer Lyle, seem to be in fine form and strong voice as I gathered my robe above my ankles and took my elevated seat on the bench.

“You may be seated. Your Honor, the case to be heard is The State versus Joseph Carson Rice on the charge of murder in the first degree.”

I glanced through the papers in front of me then looked down at the defendant.

The name was so familiar, Joseph Rice, who was he?

I looked into his steel-blue eyes and a thousand memories rushed into my mind, like the flooded, muddy waters of Moon Creek. I don’t think he remembered me, but I would never forget him! My hands trembled as I picked up the papers to once again glance at them.

“Bailiff, I’m not feeling well, court is dismissed until nine tomorrow morning.”

I rose from my seat and quickly headed toward my chambers. Bailiff Lyle came in after clearing the courtroom to make sure I was all right. He was a good officer, always protective and ready to make my job a little easier in any way he could. The fact that I was a woman, and the first Black judge to ever take the bench in the county, didn’t seem to bother him as it did many of the other White citizens of Carsfield County North Carolina.

“Judge Clay are you all right? You need me to get you anything?”

“It’s Ok Jim, you can go do whatever you need to the rest of the day. I just have a pounding headache and need to lie here for a while.”

I stretched out on the huge leather sofa, as Jim left, softly closing the door behind him.

Ah, yes, Joe Rice, County Central High School, 1964. He was the source of my nightmares then and disturbed thoughts ever since.

I was over fifty years old but seeing Joe Rice made me once again feel like the scared, little, high school girl of fourteen. I closed my eyes and remembered.



At the time we lived on and farmed a few acres of bottom land bordering Moon Creek. Daddy raised tobacco and had a few cows. We didn’t have a lot but we always had a roof over our heads, enough to eat and plenty of love. The house wasn’t much, just a four room shack. A living room, kitchen and two bedrooms. Mama and Daddy had one bedroom and my two sisters and I shared the other. In the Winter, snow would drift in on our beds from the small holes where the log walls and old roof rafters joined. The only means of heat, the fire in the living room, would go out and the house would be frigid on winter mornings, but we stayed cozy until Daddy built the fire up, huddled together under a thick layer of Mama’s homemade quilts. I guess we were poor, but I never felt poor.

I remembered that September morning in 1964 that changed all our lives. Mama twisted my braids up on top of my head and secured them with two blue, satin ribbons that matched my blue sweater. It was the first day of school and my first year at high school, but what made today even more momentous in my life and the lives of all the citizens of the county, was the fact that I and four others would be entering the White high school as the first Black students. I had no idea what to expect and the fear showed on my face.

“Ivory, hold your head up girl. You don’t have nothing to be scared or ashamed of. You’re not just doing this for you, it’s for all our people. Remember that, Child, and hold your head up. You got just as much right to be in that school as anybody else there. This day’s been a long time coming and I’m so proud you can be a part of it.”

“OK Mama” I mumbled as she adjusted the collar of my white blouse and gave me a quick hug.

Reluctantly I went out the door to stand by the roadside and wait for the bus. I knew if I wasn’t there before the bus arrived, it wouldn’t wait for me. The air was already beginning to become a little crisp for the first of September. My hands felt cold in the early morning chill. I looked down at them, rubbing them together, wishing I had some gloves. They were pretty hands, young and smooth, with long, tapered fingers. The color was a soft shade of light tan, not black at all, but not white either. Mama was even lighter than me. She said it was because back when her ancestors had been slaves, their blood had been mixed with that of the white plantation owners. I never asked her how that happened and I guess at 14 she felt I was to young for her to explain it.

Finally the bus stopped and the door swung open. The word terror can’t do justice to the fear I felt as I boarded with my head held down, not daring to look at anyone.

“You sit here, right behind me.” The bus driver, a petite, pretty, blond girl who was a senior told me. “That way I can keep an eye on you and make sure there’s no trouble.”

For the first few miles of the long trip to school all was quiet, then a boy from somewhere behind me began to call out the usual racial slurs. The bus driver pulled over and stood up facing her passengers. Looking back on it, I think that little girl had more grit than a drill sargeant!

“OK, this has gone far enough. This is the way things are, I can’t help it, you can’t help it and this Black girl can’t help it; so settle down and shut up or you all make a trip to the office when we get to school.”

Things settled back down after that but the nightmare for me was just beginning. When we arrived at school the other kids walked in groups talking and laughing together. I walked alone. I found my name on the list in the hall under homeroom 103 and made my way there, praying that I could find it without having to ask anyone for directions. By the time I sat down at a desk in the third row, my heart was pounding with panic. My classmates came in and found seats, there were vacant ones left on both sides, in front and behind me. I tried to remember what Mama and Pastor Graves had told me, that it would be this way and that it wasn’t personal, it was racial. Two of Pastor Graves children were here in the high school somewhere. I wondered if they were having the same experiences and feelings as I. That day was a living hell. I kept to myself and tried not to look at anyone, fear was the only companion I had. Whenever the teachers were out of hearing range, boys would throw insults at me and girls would laugh.

That first day of high school was the day I made up my mind I would get the finest education I could manage to get and I was going to make something out of my life that I could take pride in. Someday I was going to be able to hold my head up and be recognized for who I was, not what color my skin happened to be. I could hear the words of my mama over and over in my mind,

“We have been the targets of hate for many years Ivory. The way to overcome that hate is to refuse to carry it in our own hearts. Don’t let hatred make you hate, Child. Be bigger than the hate.”

It was close to three o’clock and I had made it through the first day! As I headed for the door to board the bus, someone walked up close behind me. He was so close I could smell the stale tobacco smoke on his breath. I glanced up into a pair of cold, steel-blue eyes. He spoke to me in almost a whisper,

“Think you something don’t you nigger. Well, you just remember this, we gonna make you sorry you ever walked into someplace you don’t belong!”

Then he moved through the door and was gone. I trembled and the fear was so overwhelming that it felt like I would pass out. I had never seen such cold determination in any pair of eyes before and I knew the threats weren’t idle ones. I couldn’t wait for the long bus ride to be over so I could feel the security being close to my parents always brought. Mama greeted me at the door.

“Baby, you all right? How’d it go today? My goodness Child, you look pale as a ghost!”

She put her arms around me and drew me up close to her, the same way she always did if I was hurt or scared.

“I’m OK Mama. It was hard but I’m OK.”

I didn’t tell her how bad it was or how I had made the determination that day that I was going to be somebody, someday. I just drew on the strength from deep inside of me that I didn’t know I had and hoped that the next day wouldn’t be as bad. Supper was quiet that evening and we all went to bed early. Sometime in the middle of the night I was awakened by the sounds of men yelling and Mama screaming. Our upstairs bedroom was on the front of the house and my two sisters and I ran to the window to see what all the noise was about. We could hear our parents in the living room below.

“Oh God, Ethan, don’t go out there!” my mama screamed.

“Woman, you let go my shirt, you think I’m gonna let that white trash hurt you and my girls? Not while theys breath in my body and strength in my fists.”

From the window Ona and Lilith, my younger sisters, and I could see the orange glow of the fire in front of our house and I heard the angry shouts of the white-shrouded figures.

“Come on out here Nigger, let’s see your ugly black face. Come on out here and we’ll teach you what happens to a nigger who tries to be White. You want them little spooks of yours to go to school with the Whites, maybe we’ll just fix em so they can’t go to school or nowhere else.”

The anger in the air was hotter than the fiery cross burning in our yard. I knew the Klan didn’t make false threats, even the children in the county had heard enough stories to know that when the Klan came calling, someone was going to be hurt or killed or maybe both.

I watched in terror as Daddy ran out onto the porch. Mama followed him, hanging onto his sleeve and begging him not to go out of the house. Daddy clenched his old shotgun and moved as though her tight grasp was merely a fly that had landed on his sleeve. I’ll never forget the way Mama looked that night in her ankle-length, white nightgown and her long, curly, dark hair loose on her shoulders. The fear in her face and voice only seemed to make her more beautiful. Daddy finally realized she had stepped out into the cold September night with him and he pushed her back toward the door.

“Ivory Rae, get back in the house and take care of the girls.”

“Ethan, please, please come back in the house. You can’t fight this many men!”

“Ivory Rae, I can’t just tuck my tail and let em do whatever they’ve planned, not without giving em a fight. If I go back in that house they gonna burn it down around us. Now get in the house Woman.”

I watched as Mama turned and made one step toward the door, but it was too late. Before Daddy could do anything to stop it, two of the white-hooded figures hit him with something that looked like a baseball bat. He fell to the ground and they hit him again and again. I ran down the steps and grabbed Mama’s iron skillet from the kitchen. The sound of my own screams were foreign to me, like those of a wild animal, as I ran out into the night with the skillet held high above my head, aimed at the man who was grabbing my mama. When I got close enough, I realized he wasn’t tall enough to be a grown man, he was still a boy, no taller than me. I saw the bat as he raised it and brought it down on my head and I looked into his eyes, steel-blue eyes I will never forget, the same eyes that looked at me with such hatred in school the day before. Then all was darkness, the last sound I heard were Mama’s pitiful screams , begging the men to let her go.

But they didn’t let her go. That night was the last time we saw Mama. Daddy called the Sheriff and they made an investigation, but my mama was never seen again. We didn’t even have a body to give a Christian burial to. Just an aching, empty place in our hearts and lives forever was all that was left. I told the sheriff that I recognized the boy with the blue eyes, but nothing was ever done about it.

I managed to get through high school. I studied hard and made good grades, so good that I won some scholarships. I had to look at the boy with those steel-blue eyes everyday until he finally dropped out of school in our junior year. Daddy always told me “Chickens come home to roost,” and “What goes around comes around” and that the Bible says that what a man sows he will reap. If it was all true I knew the blue-eyed Joe Rice was going to get what was coming to him someday and I hoped I was around to see it.

It was hard going to school, being a housekeeper for Daddy and a mother to my little sisters, but I did it with the help of The Almighty. Looking back on that struggling time I know it was the adversity that made me strong, strong enough to go after my dreams and achieve them. With the help of the scholarships and working part time, I finished law school. I’ll never forget how proud Daddy was the day I graduated and then passed the bar exam. Ona and Lilith went to school on scholarships also. Ona became a nurse and Lilith a teacher.

It would have been easy to leave Carsfield County and make a new life somewhere in a large city but in my heart I knew I had to stay. I practiced law for many years before becoming a judge; taking care of my people who were in trouble, writing their wills, handling their real estate transactions. I was at home, where I needed to be. Times had finally begun to change in our rural community. There was less friction and the races seemed to live less separated lives.

I prided myself on being a good judge, a fair one and I vowed I would never let the color of someone’s skin cause a prejudiced decision for or against them. Now I was faced with Joseph Rice.

What would I do? Was it time for his judgment to catch up with him? If convicted, he faced the death penalty, would I have the opportunity to pronounce that sentence upon him?

I could almost feel the sensation of relief it would bring to condemn to death the man who killed my mama.

He deserved to die. First my mama and now an innocent, retarded, Black man who simply asked Joe for a quarter and was beaten to death on the street corner in plain view of five witnesses. Yes, he deserved to die and I would be doing the county a favor by sentencing him to death. But what would I be doing to myself?

The trial went quickly, it was an open and shut case. All five witnesses testified to seeing the brutal murder. Two of the men had tried to pull Joseph Rice off his victim but with no success. The jury only deliberated 30 minutes and returned a verdict of guilty. I set the next morning for sentencing.

That night I watched as the clock made it’s rounds and I remembered. I remembered Mama’s hugs and how her hair always smelled like the rose-scented shampoo. I remembered warm, homemade, vegetable soup on winter days and hot cocoa. I remembered looking out into the field on a hot summer day and watching my parents embrace and kiss there between the tobacco rows. I heard her cries that last cold autumn night and I pictured the grief in my daddy’s worn face day after day as he hoped against hope that she might come home. I could hear the old hymns being sung at the memorial service and the muffled crying of three little girls left without even so much as a mother’s body to lay in the ground.

Yes, he deserved to die and it had been his misfortune to end up in my courtroom, where his judgment was about to catch up with him. I had to hand down a death sentence once before. I could do it again.

He stood before the bench and I looked down on him from my elevated position. His eyes met mine, still filled with the same familiar look of hatred, but this time mixed with fear. I would be dishonest if I didn’t admit that a surge of power and satisfaction pulsed through my mind and body. Finally this man would pay for his crimes.

Then I opened my mouth and the words that I heard coming from it seemed as though I was just a bystander watching the drama of life and death unfold before me.

“Joseph Carson Rice, you have been tried and found guilty of murder in the first degree by a jury of your peers. Is there anything you would like to say before I pass sentence upon you?”

He looked defiantly into my eyes and his lip curled in a sardonic smile, but he said nothing. How I hated him at that moment, for what he had done to my family and to an innocent man on a street corner.

“Very well. It is the sentence of this court that you be incarcerated at the State Maximum Security Prison in Raleigh for the rest of your natural life with no possibility of parole. Court is dismissed.”

It was in that moment that I knew I deserved to be seated at the bench. And for some strange reason the years of frustration and hatred lifted from me. For the first time I think I understood Mama’s words, “Be bigger than the hate,” and it felt good.

 

 

*"I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and will be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will be proclaimed the rule of the land. And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid. I still believe that we shall overcome."

*Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


Copyright 2001 La Belle Rouge