The Law of the Land
Over the course of his journey, James R. Crawford traveled approximately 4,000 miles via car and train and visited the states of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee in just 30 days. He grew angrier with every story he was told of the cruelty shown by whites towards black men and women.
One of the things that struck Crawford was the complete lack of justice. He was told the story of Henry Gilbert’s murder which happened on May 29, 1947, in Georgia. The tale began on May 4 when a white man named Olin Sands started an argument with a black man named Gus Davidson. When Sands attacked Davidson, the black man shot the white planter dead. Gilbert was the deacon and treasurer of a small Baptist church in the area and had nothing to do with the crime.
However, he was accused of aiding and abetting Davidson and was arrested two weeks later. For ten days, Gilbert was placed in several jails until a County police officer named Willie Buchanan shot him five times and also beat him badly. Buchanan claimed self-defense but there was no evidence that Gilbert attacked him. Sadly, it appears as if this kind of incident was par for the course.
In Chapter 10 of the story, Crawford recounts the tragic tale of a war hero named Private Macy Yost Snipes. The soldier had managed to survive the horrors of World War II, and when he returned home to Georgia, he wanted to show that freedom truly belonged to all Americans by voting. However, the white residents of Rupert in Taylor County sent a chilling warning: The first black person to vote in Rupert would die. Sadly, they meant every word.
Snipes had survived years of war and would not turn back from this challenge. One week after casting his vote, a group of white men drove up to his home, called him out, and riddled him with bullets. When another black man cast his vote, he was hounded out of the county. Murdering Private Snipes wasn’t enough for the thugs, they threatened his family and told them they were not allowed to bury their fallen hero in the family plot. Instead, he was buried in a plot at the other end of the county. His killer, William Cooper, had a pathetic and unproven excuse that Snipes owed him money and this was enough for the murder to be called ‘justifiable homicide.’
The Sharecropping Scam
Another issue encountered by Crawford was the immense discrepancy in wages between white and black workers. There were few roles which outlined this outrageous state of affairs better than the earnings of sharecroppers. He spoke to a black sharecropper named Henry Williams who had worked in the role for 29 years. In 1947, Henry produced a yield of cotton and peanuts worth $5,400 to the plantation owner yet he received just $700. Crawford reasoned that Williams should have received $2,700 minus any fees for tractor hire and fertilizer.
In Macon County, a sharecropper named Henry Mann produced a yield worth $2,600 and should have expected $1,300 minus expenses. Instead, he received a paltry return of just $242. Even though these men were well aware of being cheated, there was no recourse because they were at the mercy of the plantation owners. According to Crawford, the entire sharecropping system in the South was “grand larceny on a grand scale,” and black farmers were the victims.