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State v Johnson · Revisionist History

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin Before we begin, a warning this episode contains material
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: that may be upsetting to some listeners. The facts of
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the case in State v. Johnson, as described by the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: alleged victim, are as follows. She was thirty two years old.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: She was a nurse's aide at Talmadge Memorial Hospital. She
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: says she left work alone on the evening of January
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: twenty sixth at eleven p m. While she was getting
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: in her car, the accused, Nathaniel Johnson, seized her and
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: threatened to kill her if she did not get into
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: his car. She got away, screamed for help. He caught her.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: She told him to take her money and leave her alone,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: but he replied, I don't want money, I want you.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: The victim's description of what happened that night is very graphic.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: It goes on for several pages. I'm giving you an
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: abridged version, but it's still very disturbing, so please keep
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: that in mind. As you'll see, understanding exactly what the
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: defendant was accused of in this instance is crucial. She
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: got away and ran screaming onto the lawn of the hospital,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: where he once again caught her and dragged her to
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: his car. He knocked her down, repeatedly slapped her in
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: the face, and told her to shut up or he
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: would kill her. Johnson placed his knee on her chest,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: pinning her down, put his hand on her throat into
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: the trachia and kept bearing down on it, telling her
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: to quit screaming. He closed her nostrils with his other hand,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: and since she could not get air, she lost consciousness.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: When she came to, she realized that she was in
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the back of a moving automobile. He finally stopped his
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: car on a dirt road, pushed her out onto the ground,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and raped her. He took a shot of whiskey and
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: asked her if she drank. She replied that she did not,
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: that she was a Sunday school teacher. He raped her
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: a second time they drove back into town. He took
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: her wallet, wrote down her name, address, telephone number, and
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: her husband's name on a piece of paper, and put
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: it in his pocket. Pictures taken of the victim immediately
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: after the assault and placed in evidence without objection on
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: quoting now shows several severe scratches and bruises on her face, head,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and throat, and testimony offered by the state shows that
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: her clothing was badly torn and bloody.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: End of.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: The alleged perpetrator, Nathaniel Johnson was arrested. The victim picked
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: him out of a lineup. He confesned, he was tried,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: he was convicted. Here's my question, how do you feel
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: about the case of State v. Johnson. We have a victim,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: we have physical evidence, we have a positive identification, we
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: have a confession. Do you know all you need to know?
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. In the course
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: of this season, I have been preoccupied with the subject
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: of power, the particular power of friendship, the way shifts
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: in power change the way we remember the past. And
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: with this episode and the next one, I want to
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: return to that subject one more time and focus on
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: our reluctance to acknowledge the role of power, the way
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: we pretend that we can make sense of the world
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: without first clarifying who has the power and who does not.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Let me give you an example of what I mean
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: about the complicating effects of power. It's from Well into
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: the trial of Nathaniel Johnson. One after another, witnesses against
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: Johnson have presented devastating evidence. One of the arresting officers
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: is testifying about what Nathaniel Johnson said in his confession.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: It's a small moment and slips out seemingly without anyone
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: remarking on it. This is what the officer says. Nathaniel
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Johnson told us that after he had intercourse with this
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: lady there, that she asked him for a cigarette. He said,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: he give her a cigarette and said he took one
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: and smoked it himself, and said they threw the butts
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: down there. We found three butts there at this place,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: at the scene, we found three butts there? Does that
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: fact strike you as strange? Is it commonplace for two
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: people to share a cigarette after a brutal rape? And
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: how about this? It also slips out in the trial
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: without comment. The police chief, a man named George Mutimer,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: tells the court about Nathaniel Johnson's confession. Johnson's talked about
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: driving with the victim in his car. They fought, she resisted,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: he was apparently choking her. And then Mutimer testifies, and
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I'm quoting, he said at that time that he drove off,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: went to a little side road off the New Savannah
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Road and parked, and he claims that she said it
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: was too close to the road. He drove on maybe
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: half a city block further and parked. Why is the
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: victim complaining to her rapist that he's parked too close
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: to the road. Then there's a prosecution's star witness on
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Missus Bailey. She testifies that three years earlier, Nathaniel Johnson
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: had come up to her while she was sitting in
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: a parked car and he tried to assault her. And
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: reading now from the transcript, the prosecutor asks, Missus Bailey,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: you testified that this man grabbed you round the throat
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: and you screamed and somebody came out of the door.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I believe Missus Bailey, Yes, sir, prosecutor. Did you see
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: where he went, Missus Bailey, I saw him run down
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the road, Prosecutor, How fast was he going? Bailey? Mighty fast.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Nathaniel Johnson happens to be an Army veteran who lost
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: part of his foot in combat, broke both legs, both arms,
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: his shoulder, broke his collar bone, six bullets in his hip.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: He spent two years in a rehab hospital recovering. I
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: don't see him running mighty fast anywhere. At the very
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: end of the trial, Nathaniel Johnson finally speaks. He's not
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: very coherent. He knows he's going to get convicted. He's confessed.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: He starts out by saying that he had a statement
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: he wanted to make, but he's decided against giving it.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Again from the court transcript, this is Nathaniel Johnson. I
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: don't know. I just don't feel that it was. It
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: would be, it would be well, it would be, you know,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: for me to say it, But to tell the truth
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: about it well makes you wonder. Trial is over. He's
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: already confessed. Why is he hemming in hawing? He goes on,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I am here to say to day that I am
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: not guilty of rape. I won't give this statement which
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: would run the facts down on what really happened and
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: everything to keep from bringing a disturbment in a century
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: of colored and white at this time, I don't want
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: to be responsible for it. Nathaniel Johnson wanted to avoid
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: bringing a disturbment between colored and white. I asked you
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: at the beginning, how sure you were about the guilty
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: verdict against Nathaniel Johnson. We had a victim, we had
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: physical evidence, we had a positive identification, we had a confession.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: That sounds like enough, But that little reference to colored
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and white is a reminder that I left out almost
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: all of the details having to do with power. Where
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: did the rape allegedly take place, Well, let me tell
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: you in Augusta, Georgia, the South. Okay, when did it
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: allegedly take place? Nineteen fifty nine, a very different era
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: in a place like Augusta, Georgia. And the most crucial fact,
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: colored and white. The accuser was white, her alleged assailant,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Nathaniel Johnson was black. After his arrest, Johnson has taken
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: to the interrogation room at the police station with the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: arresting officer, Holly Tebow. Tebow's not getting anywhere, so he
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: calls in Chief Mutimer. At the trial Tebo says they
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: do that quite frequently because whenever they call him Mutimer,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: most of the people talk. Then Tebow goes on. Chief
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Mutimer stayed in the interrogation room with him for some time,
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: and he came out and shook his head and said, Holly,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: he told me about it. And I went back and
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: there in the interrogation room, and he was crying Nathaniel
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: was crying. The chief of police, who was really good
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: at making people talk, disappears alone into the interrogation room
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: with Johnson for a few hours, no lawyer's in sight,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: and when he emerges, he has a confession. Let me
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: read to you again from Nathaniel Johnson's closing statement, only
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: this time keep in mind who he is, where he is,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: and when it is. Johnson says, I am not guilty
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: of rape. And the statement I have is a true statement.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: But the shape of the courtroom to the community and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: citizens of this town, colored and white, I think I
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: would bring a big confusion between them. And I know
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: rape is a serious charge, and I know it is
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: more serious by a colored man being accused of rape
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: by a white woman. And so I want to leave
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: it in you all's hands and trust you all to
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: do what the Lord and justice of it. And I
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: am not guilty of rape in my heart. That is
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: the truth from God. If you don't know, it's Georgia,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: it's nineteen fifty nine, and that Nathaniel Johnson is black
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: and his victim is white. What do you know? Nothing?
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: In Georgia, there is a lineage of civil rights lawyers,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: A tradition. It begins with the man named at Walden,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: born in eighteen eighty five to two former slaves in
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Fort Valley, Georgia.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: When I was a kid, and Austin Thomas Walden, who
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: finished University of Michigan in nineteen twelve, would come to
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: my church for the Saint cecia vesper hour, and I
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: sang in the Saint ceci A choir, and I would
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: hear him speak about segregation, and he would say, I'll
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: be glad when you are dead, that you rascal. You.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: So I grew up wanting to be a lawyer like
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Austin T. Walden.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Vernon Jordan, one of the legends of the civil rights movement.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: He's had an extraordinary career. He ran the Urban League
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: for years. He was a close confident on the President Clinton,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: a deal maker on Wall Street. He's eighty one years old.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: He must be six foot four in pecker Southern manners,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: a long and passive face. When he talks to you,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: he leans down from his great height and lowers his voice.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: So in nineteen sixty five, as a very young lawyer,
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: I was asked to give the Emancipation Proclamation Day speech.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I went to see Jordan in his office in Rockefeller
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Center a worse suit. I was told I had to
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Vernon likes people to dress properly. He began by describing
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: his induction into the Civil Rights Fraternity. The day the
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Georgia NAACP asked him to speak.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Walden was on this pool pit with braces on his legs.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: He could hardly move and when by when I finished,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Walden struggled up to me and said he had a
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: home run. Son, you hit a home run that was
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: delaying on of hands. That was the blessing.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: In the lineage of civil rights lawyers at Walden came first.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Next in line was a man named Donald L. Hollowell,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: another legend. I will have much much more to say
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: about Hollowell in the next episode. Vernon Jordan was inspired
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: by Walden, and straight out of law school he went
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: to work for Hollowell. He was a disciple of two
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: of the greats. And I went to see Jordan to
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: learn what being a disciple in Georgia in those years meant.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: What did you learn? What were you up against? There
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: were very few black lawyers in the South in those years.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: If you were black and in trouble, you rarely had
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: one of your own to represent you. Justice is supposed
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to be blind, which is another way of saying that
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: we're supposed to close our eyes when we enter a
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: courtroom and not notice a fact like race. In nineteen
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: fifty nine, Donald Hollowell and Vernon Jordan had their eyes
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: wide open. They watched what was happening to me Nathaniel
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: Johnson and Augusta with growing alarm.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: And he was given a white quarter pointed lawyer who
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: convinced him, given the circumstances of a black man being
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: accused by a white woman of rape, said to him,
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: the best way to stay out of the electric chair
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: is to plead guilty and have her corroborate your guilty.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Plead and you'll get life. And he went for it.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: He did not get life, He got the electric chair.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: To put that in perspective, there was a case in
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Atlanta right around the same time as Johnson's only that
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: involved a white man convicted of raping his black maid.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: He broke down the bathroom door and attacked her. He
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: got two to five years. White on black rape was
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: a two to five year crime in a state of Georgia.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Johnson faced a death penalty, so when Johnson says in
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: his final statement, I know rape is a serious charge,
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: and I know it is more serious by a colored
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: man being accused of rape by a white woman. That's
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: what he's talking about. There's one set of rules for
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: white people and another for black people, and the standards
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: for legal representation those are different too.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: The White Court upon It lawyer the night before he
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: was to be executed, got drunk in an augusta bar
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: barred paper from the bartend that wrote out a rid
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: of pavias corpus, and went to the judge to argue
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: that Nathaniel Johnson's rights under the Fifth Amendment had been violated.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: As it turns out, that's the wrong amendment. Under those circumstances,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the lawyer should have raised the Fourteenth Amendment. But the
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: lawyer's writing an appeal while he's drunk, and it's not
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: at all clear that he cares that much, since if
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: you read the trial transcript, Johnson's lawyer barely ever said anything.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And it went up to the Supreme Court on sociary,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: which was denied. And then mister Hallowell, my boss, was hired,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: and I went with him to see Nathaniel Johnson and
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: the Reidsville State Prison. He was a very handsome, cool prisoner.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: Hallowell and Jordan were brought in by the NAACP to
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: try and win a stay of execution. One last Hail Mary.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: How old was? He must have been thirty thirty two,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: something like that.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Jordan and Hallowell sit down with Johnson and start to
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: piece together Johnson's version of what happened that night. It's
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: a very different story.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: He was having a relationship with this woman, this white woman,
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: and the relationship was put together by a black assistant
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: nurse at the hospital in Augusta, and he would go
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: and pick her up and they would go out on
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: the roads and do their business.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: In the version of events that got Johnson convicted, the
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: victim had never seen him before. But Nathaniel Johnson told
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: Jordan and halliwell, they had been spotted together.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: One night. They were out on the road and the
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: car got stuck in the mud, and a group of
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: white hunters were crossing the road. And she gets out
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: and says, I'm taking my yard man home. And we
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: got stuck in the mud, and these white hunters pushed
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: the car out of the mud.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: If you read the official account of the case, it
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: says that the victim reported her alleged assault to the
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: police in the early hours of the morning on January
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: twenty seventh, after she gets home. Then it goes on
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: to say crucially that the police arrest Johnson that same night.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: Think about that Augusta at the time is a city
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: of seventy thousand people, roughly half black. So we are
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: asked to believe that, in the course of a couple
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: of hours, without benefit of daylight, the police were able
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: to correctly locate, in a community of thirty five thousand
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: African Americans a suspect, and that they did this with
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: no more than the description of his automobile from a
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: badly traumatized rape victim. Because she'd never met him before.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And so after a visit on the dark road, she
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: said to him that she was pregnant, and a disagreement ensued.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: They had a fight. It beat her up. That's how
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: she ended up with all those injuries. Johnson had physical
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: power over her, but she had far greater power over him.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: In that time and place, a white woman had the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: power of life and death over a black man.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: She went home and told her husband that she had
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: been raped and they went to Nathaniel Johnson's house in
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: the middle of the night. Illegal arrest, illegal searcher and sez,
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: illegal attention, all of that.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: When you saw him, did he think that he had
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a chance.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: He was just scared to death. He was just scared
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: to death, and we were his only hope.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: We were his only hope. And so Hallowell and Jordan
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: set out to save Nathaniel Johnson's life anyway they can
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: stay the execution, fight for a new trial. Jordan was
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: fresh out of law school, full of righteous anger and idealism.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: And I remember going into his cell with him and
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: mister Hallowell when holliwa said, we're going to see the
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: local judge here. Then we will drive to Atlanta and
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: we will go to see the Chief Justice, Supreme Court,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: the Attorney General, the Governor, and the Board of part
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: in pro.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: It was the beginning of the apprenticeship of Vernon Jordan.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: And that's when mister Hallowell put me on the case
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: and we went to Brunswick, Georgia, which I'll never forget.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: The federal district judge there began the case by asking
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: when is the execution schedule, and they said tomorrow morning,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: your honor. So he listened to the state Attorney. As
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: he listened to mister Hallowell, and I remember him saying,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: justice delayed is justice denied. And we drove from Brunswick
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: after he refused to stay the execution, from Brunswick, Georgia,
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: to Atlanta. That's when it was all two highways. I
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: did the driving, and we ended up and the chambers
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: of the Chief Justice. And he walked in and says,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: sees me, and he said, son, where did you play basketball?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: And I said, mister Chief Justice, we're not here to
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: talk about where I played basketball. We're here about the
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: life from Nathaniel Johnson. He said that color Bar went
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: out there on that road and raped that woman. I
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: don't wanna hear about that. We then go from his
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: chambers to the next bill where the Attorney General was.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Secretary picks up the phone and says to the Attorney General,
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: mister Attorney General, they had two boys out here to
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: see you. The Attorney General of Georgia, Henry Neal, did
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: not invite us into his office. He came out and
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: stood behind the secretary's desk and said that the governor
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: was out of town, and the governor would not stay
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: the execution, and we left and went to the Board
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: of Partnering Paroles. And as we walked in the door,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: he said, hallowell, you're too late. Nathaniel Johnson is on
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: his way to the electric chair.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: There was nothing more for them to do.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: I said, missus Hall, I would like to have the
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: rest of the day off. He said fine. And I
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: had on a light beige has spelled suit that I
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: had gotten for graduation, and I walked down Hunter Street home.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: It was eighty five ninety degrees in Atlanta, and I'm
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: walking alone thinking what I had just witnessed, thinking about
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: the first time I saw him, and thinking about seeing
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: him the night before he died. And I just walked
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: home crying. It's the only time in my eighty one
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: years that I can remember losing control and just urinated
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: all over myself on my brand new beige suit. I
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: remember that as vivid is. I see you right now.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: When Vernon Jordan told me the story of Nathaniel Johnson,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: the first thing I thought about was Harperly's classic To
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Kill a Mockingbird, the book every American child reads in
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: middle school.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Now, Maylow suppose you tell us just what happened? Huh?
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: It tells the same basic story, right.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: I was sitting on the porch and he come along.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: The Jim Crow South, a black man named Tom Robinson
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: accused of rape by a white woman, may La Yule, and.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: I turned around it before I know what he's on me.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: But Tom Robinson's lawyer, Atticus Finch, is white, which of
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: course changes everything. Finch addresses an all male, all white
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: jury men just like him, So what does he do?
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: He puts Robinson on the stand and has him talk
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: about all the ways in which Mayella Hill try to
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: trap him.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: Tom. Were you acquainted with Mayellow Violet Eule? I had
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: to pass her place going to in front of the
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: field every day.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Robinson says, he just happened to be walking by Mayella's house.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: She asks him to come in and help her dismantle
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: a piece of furniture. Then she hugs him around the waist.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: Scared miss and I hoped down and turned the tails.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: How was the only thing under Atticus Finch's careful direction?
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Robinson then says, one more thing. And by the way,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: if you've watched the famous Gregory Peck movie version of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: To Kill a Mockingbird, the one you're in hearing. You
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: won't find these lines. Here's how it's originally written. She
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: reached up and kissed me on the side of the face.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: She says. She never kissed a grown man before, and
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: she might as well kiss a nigger. She says, what
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: her papa do to her don't count. She says, kiss
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: me back, nigger. I say, miss Mayella, let me out
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: of here, and I tried to run, but she got
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: her back to the door and I had to push her.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I don't want to harm her, mister Finch, and I say,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: let me pass. But just when I say it, mister
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: yule Yonder hollered through a window. What did he say?
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Tom Robinson shut his eyes tight. He says, you goddamn whore.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I'll kill you. In his summation to the court, Arakas
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Finch says she knew full well the enormity of her offense,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: but because her desires were stronger than the code she
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: was breaking, she persisted in breaking it. He's saying she
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: wanted it, and not only that. When he has Tom
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Robinson drop that little bit about she says that what
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: her papa do to her don't count. He's accusing her
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: of incest. Finch is offering his fellow white men on
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the jury a choice. He says, Look, you can act
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: as white people and enforce your power against black people,
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: or you can act as men and enforce the power
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: of your gender against women. Atticus Finch gets an awful
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: out of love. But when I read that book, all
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: I could think was he's just telling them, don't be racist,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: be sexist. That might be a good argument in the moment,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: but it's not especially noble. When Vernon Jordan is walking
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: through the streets of Atlanta with that humiliating stain spreading
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: down his beige suit, he knows he doesn't have the
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: same freedom that Antticus Finch has. Finch is free to
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: say whatever he wants to the jury, that's the privilege
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: of his race and position, but Jordan is powerless. That's
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: also why Nathaniel Johnson didn't even bother to defend himself
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: in court. He said, I know the truth, but what's
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the point. Remember what Johnson said, I would say that
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: the reason I won't give this statement, which would run
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the facts down on what really happened and everything to
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: keep from bringing a disturbment in a century of colored
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: and white at this time. I don't want to be
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: responsible for it. When you went on those rounds, was
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: no one interested in hearing the facts of the case.
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: No, that includes a federal district judge, That includes a
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: local judge in Redesville, the chief Justice, the attorney general,
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: and the board department paroles. It was over, it was done.
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Do you think they honestly believed it was a case
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: of rape or do you think that they.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: It didn't matter. It was a white woman and a
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: black man, a black man doing something that was out
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: of the question in the South, and the court opponted
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: lawyer had to know that it was a consensual relationship.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's just a kind of They weren't even
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: going to the trouble of thinking it's true.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Nobody was interested in justice.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: Everyone went on with their lives, the judges, the attorney general,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the lawyers. It takes time to unravel the truth in
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: situations where one side has all the power. Nobody had
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: the time. The trial transcript of the Johnson case in
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: the Georgia archives looks like it's never been touched. I
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: don't even know where he's buried. I wouldn't know how
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: to look for the grave of someone nobody remembers, executed
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: half a century ago. All that's left are one man's memories.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Did you ever meet the accuser?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: I never did. The word is that after he died,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: that the white lady went around to black churches and
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: asked forgiveness.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Revision's History is produced by Emil LaBelle and Jacob Smith,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: with Camille Baptista, Stephanie Daniel, and Siomarra Martinez White. Our
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: editor is Julia Barton. Lawn Williams is our engineer. Original
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: music by Luis Sciarra. Special thanks to Andy Bauers and
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberger. Panoply, I'm Malcolm Gladwell.