“What is one thing you wish you could say to young Ray after his death sentence was handed down?”
“I would tell him that hope is a choice, and to pace himself. I don’t think I would tell him that it was going to take thirty years for the truth to be known.”
—Anthony Ray Hinton
FEBRUARY 1985
On February 23, 1985, someone robbed Mrs. Winner’s Chicken & Biscuits restaurant, stole $2,200, and killed the manager, John Davidson. Someone took a son away from his parents and a husband away from his wife. There were no fingerprints. No eyewitnesses. No DNA. Anyone could have done it.
Somebody got away with murder.
JULY 1985
By the summer of 1985, Ray knew that he couldn’t go on working at The Brass Works any longer. Always having to work on Saturdays was taking a toll. After five days at work, Saturdays were for potlucks at church, barbecues with friends, running errands with his mom or taking her fishing, and college football. His church was always looking for men on Saturdays to help with car washes and building repairs, and Ray hated that he couldn’t help his church family.
Monday through Friday, Ray worked as hard as he could—always showed up on time and gave it his best—but come Saturday, it was like a switch flipped, and he knew he wasn’t doing his employer justice. Eventually, he left, with no hard feelings.
Ray had just turned twenty-nine, and he still didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up. He knew he didn’t want to be a coal miner. He definitely knew he didn’t want to be in prison. He wasn’t cut out to be a deckhand on a tug hauling coal up and down the river.
Ray just wanted to make a living, pay his bills, buy a nice car, get married, and have children. (He was hoping that future wife would be willing to live at his mama’s house; he wouldn’t leave his mom on her own.) Ray’s mother never once rushed him to figure things out. She just loved him absolutely and unconditionally, the way she always did.
In the meantime, Ray made plans to work for a company called Manpower, which provided temporary labor to businesses around Birmingham. Manpower wasn’t going to be a whole lot of money, but it was something, and he was optimistic that moving from business to business and doing different jobs would help him learn what it was he wanted to do with his life. Ray had been out of high school ten years, but he still loved to learn new things, to talk to new people, and go to new places. He thought about opening up a restaurant where he could serve people the food his mama had been making for so long—she’d taught Ray to cook everything she made him. Her cooking lessons always began with, “If it makes you happy, you’d better be able to make it yourself. I don’t see no wife on your arm anytime soon.”
Ray’s mama always had a way of getting her point across.
Ray and his family celebrated the Fourth of July in 1985 like they did every year—an endless supply of mouth-watering barbecue, friends from church, and sweet tea by the gallon. There was no bigger holiday in Alabama than the Fourth. Fireworks, watermelon, gunnysack races, egg tosses, and kids running around while grown-ups squirted them with water from a hose. Black people and white people may have been separate throughout the year, but something about the Fourth brought neighborhoods and people together like nothing else. To Ray it felt like the one time of year it seemed like all of Birmingham fell in love with each other.
This Fourth, Ray’s mom wore her best white hat and her blue dress with red piping at the sleeves. Ray watched her laugh with the ladies from church and felt a joy so big he couldn’t even contain it. In just a few weeks, he would be off parole, and all those mistakes from his past would be put to rest. He had a new girlfriend, and he was hopeful that his start at Manpower the next day would lead to something bigger.
Ray turned to Lester and said, “This holiday feels just like the Pledge of Allegiance.”
“Man, what do you mean?”
“You know, one nation under God with liberty and justice for all. Everything today feels like that. Hopeful. Like justice and freedom and anything is possible. You know?”
“I guess so. It kind of just feels like another hot Fourth of July, but I see what you mean.”
Ray felt such a love for Lester and for his mom in her dress and hat and for Alabama and for hot days in July with sweet tea that cools you from the inside out that he was actually at a loss for words.
Then he swallowed a lump in his throat that had come up out of nowhere. “Just feels like change is in the air,” Ray said. “I don’t know.” Lester looked up at an overcast sky and laughed.
“Feels like thunder to me.”
Ray’s mom had asked him to cut the front lawn, but all Ray wanted to do was drink something cool in the shade of his mama’s living room.
“I’ll cut that grass tomorrow,” he said, settling down on the couch.
She looked at him in that quiet way she had that meant business. “Now, I’m trying my best to see how you get to ‘I’ll cut it tomorrow’ from my telling you to cut it now.”
Ray and his siblings had grown up knowing that once they were told to do something, they rarely got out of doing it. But if anyone had a chance of sweet-talking their mama, it was Ray.
Not today.
A few moments later, Ray cranked up the old lawn mower and started running through Bible verses in his head. He had to pick something to recite later that day at church, and he wanted to look good for both God and his girlfriend. As he went back and forth across the front lawn, he finally settled on one that seemed perfect for the day—Philippians 2:14–15. He knew it would make his mama smile to hear him read the beginning of the verse: “Do all things without grumbling or disputing.”
Suddenly, Ray looked up and saw two white men standing on the back porch. They were staring at him, and neither was smiling. He cut off the lawn mower as the rest of the verse ran through his mind: “So that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent children of God, above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world.”
“Anthony Ray Hinton?” One man took a step toward him, yelling his name. Ray noticed that both men each held a hand over the gun at his side. “Police!”
Ray had no idea why there were two policemen on his mama’s porch, but he wasn’t afraid. He had always been taught: If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have no reason to fear and certainly no reason to run. Ray hadn’t done anything wrong since he’d gotten out of jail, and he’d kept up his regular parole check-ins. There was nothing to be afraid of.
“We need to talk to you.” They flanked Ray on both sides and sort of nudged him down the driveway to their car. It was then that he felt a little twinge at the back of his shoulder blades, and his stomach churned.
“Am I going to jail?”
They patted him down and cuffed his hands behind his back. “I didn’t do anything,” Ray said loudly. As they started to open up the back door of their car, Ray spoke up again. “What’s this about?”
“They will tell you when we get you to Bessemer.”
“Can I go in and tell my mom that I’m leaving?” Whatever this was about, Ray knew it would get cleared up fast. He hadn’t done anything wrong.
They walked him up to the side door, and he yelled for his mom.
She opened the door, and Ray and the police officers took a step in.
“They are arresting me. Taking me to jail. Don’t worry. I didn’t do anything. Don’t worry.” Ray spoke fast because he could see the confusion on her face, and he didn’t want her to start yelling at the police or start crying. Just like that, they turned him around and walked him back to the car. A sergeant named Cole introduced himself and read him his rights.
Then they asked to search his car, and his bedroom. Ray said yes; he had nothing to hide. Maybe this would all be cleared up and he could avoid a trip to jail.
Ray sat with an officer in the car while the other guy searched his car and his room. A few moments later, he walked back out to the car with nothing in his hands. They hadn’t found anything. Ray was hoping this meant he could go.
Ray’s mom was behind the officer and she started yelling just like she used to do during one of his baseball games.
“That’s my baby! That’s my baby!”
Only she wasn’t cheering, she was crying, almost sobbing, and Ray’s hands were behind his back, so he yelled as loud as he could as they swung the car out at the bottom of the driveway.
“It’s okay, Mama! It’s going to be okay.”
As the police car started down the road, away from his mother, Ray felt like his heart was going to crack in two pieces. “It’s okay,” he mumbled. “It’s all going to be okay.”
This was all going to work itself out. Ray hadn’t done anything wrong. That was the truth, and the truth would set him free so that he could go back home and put his arms around his mama. The police officers weren’t speaking and neither would Ray until somebody told him what this was about. Once they told him, he would clear it up, and he would be out of the cuffs and back home.
Home.
Ray just wanted to go home.