Alex Cross's Trial (Alex Cross 15)

Though I had never expected to see black people marching through the streets, I knew instantly what this was about. Tomorrow the trial would begin, and the first order of business was jury selection. No Negro had ever been permitted to serve on a jury in the state of Mississippi. Many of the liberal Yankee newspapers had declared it an outrage. They suggested that the White Raiders Trial might be just the occasion for the presiding judge to allow one or possibly even two colored men to serve as jurors.

We stood at the railing of the veranda, watching the marchers slowly pass. It was plain that they had taken a detour from Commerce Street to go past L.J.’s house. Some of them waved or lifted their hats to us.

Just when we thought we had seen the last of the marchers, another phalanx turned the corner onto Willow.

I was amazed. “Gentlemen. Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

L.J. smiled. “Yessir, it’s one hell of a crowd.”

“Not just the size of the crowd,” I said. “Take a look at who’s leading it.”

All white?

Not right.

L.J. squinted to see. “Those two old folks at the front?”

Jonah answered for me. “The lady is Ida Wells-Barnett,” he said. “And the gentleman, if I am not mistaken, is Mr. W. E. B. Du Bois. This is history being made, indeed.”

Chapter 97

WHEN I WAS A BOY, my mother would sometimes take me to watch my father conducting a trial.

“It’s a presiding day,” she’d say. “Let’s go see Daddy scaring the pants off of everyone.” And away we’d go to the courthouse.

To my child’s eyes the old Pike County Courthouse looked exactly like a church. The second-floor gallery where the colored people got to sit was like the choir loft. The benches below were the pews. And my father stood at the high altar in the front of the room, delivering thunderous sermons and running the whole thing like a very strict minister who happened to wield a hammer instead of a Bible.

More than twenty years later, here I was, back in the church of Judge Everett Corbett.

But today, as L.J. and Jonah and I arranged our papers and books on the prosecution table, the old courthouse felt like something else entirely.

Not a church.

It was more like a theater now.

The upstairs colored section had been transformed into balcony seats. The benches on the main level were the orchestra seats, jammed to overflowing with an audience that had stood in line for hours to see the hottest entertainment in town. And that altar? Well, that was now center stage.

That was Everett J. Corbett’s stage. He could be a dynamic, exciting performer, and I felt sure he would not let his audience down today.

Ringing the front steps of the courthouse were Scooter Willems and several dozen men like him, bristling with tripods and huge black accordion cameras. Accompanying the photographers were at least a hundred reporters flashing pencils and notebooks, trading tidbits with each other, rushing this way and that in pursuit of the latest rumors.

Inside, the colored spectators had dutifully filed upstairs to the cheap seats. The benches below were filled to maximum capacity by the white citizens of Eudora. Only the first two rows had been left empty, roped off for the pool of potential jurors.

Dominating the wall above the judge’s bench was an enormous Fattorini & Sons regulator clock nearly as long as a grandfather clock, with a carved dark-wood case, elegant Roman numerals, and a pair of gleaming brass pendulums. Growing up, I always thought of it as the Clock of Justice.

Now every tick brought us closer to nine a.m.

Here came a pair of Chief Eversman’s newly recruited deputies, leading in the defendants. Three White Raiders. No shackles, ropes, or handcuffs. The deputies chatted and laughed with the men as they led them to the defense table.

And then the great Maxwell Hayes Lewis strode from the back of the room to greet the Raiders and shake their hands so that everyone in the courtroom could see how normal, how average and amiable, these men were. After a moment’s discussion the defendants turned to look at our table. They looked back at each other and grinned. The sight of Jonah, L.J., and me seemed to amuse them greatly.

The bailiff entered with a solemn expression, carrying the heavy cast-iron imprinting seal, which he placed at the right end of my father’s bench. This was the seal he would use to mark evidence as it was admitted.

“All rise,” the bailiff called. “The court is now in session, the Honorable Everett J. Corbett presiding.”

Daddy’s big entrance was always a highlight. Here he came through the door at stage left, his hair gleaming with brilliantine, his silky black robe pressed to perfection by Dabney.

He lifted the heavy mahogany gavel. I was surprised to see him using the gavel I had sent him on his sixtieth birthday, since I had never received a thank-you note.