According to Mother, Diana Pitney moved to Cottonwood in 1982 when her sons were young—she estimated about five and seven years of age. Perhaps older, she said, or perhaps younger, but not by much. Alfred Pitney, whose family had ties to the Klan, had gone to Atlanta and had returned married and the new father of two very rambunctious sons. Alfred adopted the boys, who Mother estimated to now be in their thirties. Neither son, to her knowledge, was married and—as far as she knew—they both continued to live with Alfred and Diana. “Mae-Jo would know,” she said. “Ask her.”
I told her I would.
Diana, Mother said, was at least twenty years Alfred’s junior. It was rumored, she continued—not that she repeated rumors—that Diana and Alfred had separate bedrooms, which was why they’d never had biological children between the two of them. “Uncle Jim used to say that wasn’t true,” she said. “He told me once that when a man is as mean as Alfred Pitney, he doesn’t have sons, he has demons, and the good Lord knew Cottonwood didn’t need any more demons.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, I suppose, that . . . well, I don’t know Jo-Lynn! Why don’t you go ask your aunt Stella?”
I didn’t respond except to say, “Go on.”
“What else do you want to know?”
“Who was Alfred’s father?”
“Earl Pitney. Now, him I remember. Not that I don’t remember Alfred. Alfred was a year younger than me and used to brag all the time about how bad his father was and how he was going to do thus and such. A real menace in the school. He was expelled so many times I’m not even sure he graduated, though I guess he must have. Today they would say he had ADD or some such, but in those days we just said he did bad things.”
“Like what?”
Mother waved her hand in the air. “Oh, I don’t know. That was so long ago, Jo-Lynn. Why do you want to know all this?”
I walked over to the table where the Henry Hawkins photo still lay and, walking back to the sofa, said, “Mother, what do you know about the Jewish population in Cottonwood? Back when you were growing up there?”
“The Jewish population? There wasn’t a Jewish population, Jo-Lynn. This was Cottonwood.”
I turned the photo side of the picture toward her and my father and said, “I have reason to believe that Henry Hawkins was Jewish.”
“Jewish?” my father asked, suddenly a part of the conversation.
“Whatever gave you a notion as crazy as that? Not that there’s anything wrong with being Jewish, mind you. Jesus himself was Jewish.”
“Yes, Mother, I know. But as to Henry Hawkins . . . all I can say right now is that I’ve got a hunch. A pretty solid hunch, but just a hunch nonetheless.”
“And this hunch is based on?” Daddy asked.
I pressed my lips together. “I’d rather not say at this time. But, Daddy, I wouldn’t even say it here in the privacy of this room if I didn’t suspect it were so.” Just as I said the words, my cell phone—buried in the crevices of my purse and my purse still in the foyer—rang.
I stood. “Probably Evan.” I glanced at my watch. “He’s due home about now.”
I walked into the hall, retrieved my phone—which by now had stopped ringing—saw that the call was from Evan, and then said, “I’m going to call him back upstairs in my room.”
They both nodded as I turned and bounded up the stairs.
I elected not to say anything to Evan about my day other than, “Oh, nothing much. I’m at Mother and Daddy’s now. Thought I’d stop by and visit. I’ll probably spend the night here and go back tomorrow. Gas prices and all that.”
He seemed unfazed, instead telling me that he and Everett had talked during half of his trip back to Druid Hills and that Everett, like Evan, was excited about the prospects of getting the M Michaels account. “Who knows where this could lead,” he added, then—for good measure—threw in, “Everett says to tell you to hurry home.”
The words stopped my breathing until I managed to say, “And why is that?”
“Oh . . . well . . . I stopped by their place on the way home and he says I’m looking much better since my time with you.” He chuckled. “I have to agree with him. Hurry home.”
“Or maybe you can hurry back to Cottonwood,” I said, my voice timid and unsure.
“What does that mean?”
I felt funny somehow, then. My ears clogged, my head spun, and I could hear my heart beating from deep inside me. Finally I said, “I mean, wouldn’t you be coming back here before I’ll get back there?” Now, I decided, was not the time to tell him how much at home I’d come to feel and that I wanted desperately to stay in Cottonwood when it was finished.
“Oh, sure,” he answered. “Of course I’ll be coming back there. If we get the nod from Mark.”
“You know you will. He seems quite taken with you, and if you give him the right specs, well then there’s no doubt you’ll get the job.”
“Yeah, I feel that way too,” my husband said.
When I went back downstairs my father was standing in front of the fireplace and my mother was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Mother?” I asked.
“She’s cleaning away the dishes in the kitchen.”
He pointed to the sofa where I’d been sitting earlier. Next to the faint indentation of where I’d sat was a book. “What’s this?” I asked, picking it up.
“I remembered that when you went upstairs. It has a lot of information I think you’re fishing for but not quite using the right bait.”
I looked from my father to the cover of the book. Its title, Knights of Terror, was written in red. The background was the commonly used white hood of a Klansman. I looked back at my father. “Why do you think I want to know about this?” I asked.
“Alfred Pitney? Hawkins being Jewish? Even I know about Alfred Pitney’s reputation, and I’m not from around here.” He took a step toward me. “What are you looking for, Jo-Jo?”
I smiled at him. “Jo-Jo” was an endearment he’d used for me when I was a child. I hadn’t heard it in years and it made me feel warm and safe. “Daddy,” I answered, shaking my head, “I really can’t say right now.”
From the kitchen the faint sounds of Mother “closing up shop” could be heard.
“Best hide that,” Daddy said, “before your mother sees it. If she thinks for one second you’re wanting to know about the Klan, there’s not a torture technique she won’t try to drive it out of you.”
I nodded, dashed out of the room, and managed to drop the book into my hobo purse before the tap-tap-tap of Mother’s shoe heels hit the marble floor of the entryway.
Before we went to bed we watched a little television, made small talk, and then said good night. I prepared for bed quickly, then propped up in bed with the book Daddy had given me. I opened the book to the middle, where the story of Viola Liuzzo, a thirty-nine-year-old white civil rights activist from Michigan who, horrified by the news reports of the attacks against marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge and against the concerns and wishes of her husband, drove to Alabama to volunteer as marchers—along with Dr. Martin Luther King— came to protest. She went alone and in her own car, the story said, leaving at home a husband and five children.
I inhaled deeply. Mrs. Liuzzo and I had something in common, I thought. Though I had not come to Cottonwood because of my convictions about civil rights, I’d come against my husband’s protests. “Sometimes,” I said aloud and to no one, “a woman has to do what’s in her heart, no matter what.”
I returned to the story. It was March 25, 1965, and Mrs. Liuzzo—along with a nineteen-year-old African American named Leroy Moton—had just heard Dr. King deliver a speech. “How long will it take?” he asked the enraptured crowd. “Not long,” he answered. “Because mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Together—and with others—Viola and Leroy ferried marchers from Montgomery to Selma. With a load of passengers dropped off, she and Leroy headed back to Montgomery for another load. When they stopped at a traffic light, another car—a blue Ford— pulled alongside.
Ford, I thought, closing my burning eyes. Henry Ford was well known for his anti-Semitism. I breathed out heavily. “How is it,” I spoke aloud, praying in nothing above a whisper, “that so much ignorance can survive in a land where men came to worship you freely?”
I continued reading. For twenty miles the blue Ford, filled with four Klansmen, chased Liuzzo’s car, at times up to one hundred miles per hour. I felt my heart race, wondered at what might have gone through the mind of this young wife and mother, what words screamed between her and Leroy or the two of them toward the maniacs giving chase might have occurred. I shuddered but kept reading.
After twenty miles the Ford overtook Liuzzo’s Oldsmobile. As they sped along the highway, Viola Liuzzo turned her head to look at the Ford, staring in the face the coldhearted man who would then murder her by sending two bullets into her head. Liuzzo fell against the wheel, and Moton—splattered with blood—grabbed the wheel, turned the car to the right, and applied the brakes. They soared down and up a ditch then came to rest against a roadside fence. Leroy Moton faked death until it was safe for him to leave the car. He ran until he was picked up by a fellow marcher.
Inside the blue Ford was Gary Thomas Rowe, an FBI informant who later aided in the arrest of the three others.
I sat a little straighter and kept reading. A trial began May 3, 1965, and an all-white jury was selected. It ended in a mistrial. Days later the three men took part in a parade that ended with a standing ovation for them.
I sighed in disgust.
It wasn’t until October of that year that another trial was set, another all-white jury selected, and—two days later—an acquittal was handed down.
Eventually justice prevailed. In a federal trial the men were charged with conspiracy under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. By the year’s end, the three men were found guilty and each sentenced to ten years in prison.
Viola Liuzzo had not died in vain. In addition to her murderers being convicted, her death helped aid in the resulting Voting Rights Act being passed by Congress.
After finishing the story, I flipped to the index and looked for information concerning the Klan and Jews. I read for another hour, then fell asleep with the book spread wide over my heart.