ATTENDANCE EVEN GREATER THAN OPENING DAY

LILLIE HAD BEEN FRIENDS with Alice for years, but in the months before the murder, it was as if she hardly knew her. When Freda cut off contact with Alice, Jo had done the same with Lillie, but her exile came with no explanation. Without any knowledge of Alice and Freda’s foiled elopement, the sudden severing of friendship with the Wards, especially with Jo, had been a great loss for Lillie—and a baffling one. She was confused and hurt, but her close-knit family offered solace, as did other friends. At that point, Lillie was far more concerned about Alice, who seemed altogether changed.

But nothing in Alice’s dark and brooding moods could have prepared Lillie for the events of that late afternoon in January. She had no idea that, while she lingered behind in the buggy, an old friend was being murdered at the hands of another.

“Oh! What have you done to her?” Lillie cried from the buggy as Alice barreled up the hill.

Alice climbed back into her seat and roughly steered the buggy away, ignoring Lillie’s questions. She rode with only one hand on the reins, while the other she shoved deep into her dress pocket, desperately fishing around for the razor, and, in the process, bloodying Freda’s last letter to her. Alice feared she had dropped it during the melee—and she wasn’t done with it.

Had everything gone as planned, Alice would have first cut Freda, and then herself, so that the two lovers could bleed out in each other’s arms in one final—and eternal—embrace. But Jo and the growing crowd had interfered, and in the ensuing struggle, Alice had lost track of the razor. Only days later, when her sisters searched the buggy, did the murder weapon reappear. By that time, she and Lillie would be together once again, this time as cellmates in jail.

Having safely maneuvered the buggy onto Court Street after the murder, Alice finally answered Lillie’s question.

“I have cut Freda’s throat,” she said.

“No, you haven’t—have you?” Lillie cried in disbelief.

“Yes, I have,” she said.

Alice had given up on the razor, and countered with her own alarming question. “What is the quickest way I can kill myself?”

“Don’t do it while you are here with me,” Lillie pleaded, still piecing together what was happening. “Go home and tell your mother what you have done.”

“Is there much blood on my face?” Alice asked, to which Lillie answered yes, as she held her young nephew close. Alice was covered in blood, a steady stream dripping down her face and onto her coatdress.

“Take my handkerchief out of my pocket,” Alice ordered, “and wipe it off.” But as Lillie moved a finely woven cloth toward her friend’s face, a new realization came to Alice.

“Oh, no,” she said now. “It’s Freda’s blood. Leave it there. I love her so.”⁵⁹

“LADIES TO THE RIGHT, AND GENTS TO THE LEFT,” bellowed Judge DuBose.⁶⁰ It was as if he were directing revelers in a dance hall, and not throngs of voyeurs at the habeas corpus hearing of a teenaged girl. The question of whether Lillie Johnson would be escorted back to Alice Mitchell’s jail cell or returned to her family was to be determined, and nobody wanted to miss a minute of the show.

It did not matter that no verdict would be handed down on that day in late February, 1892, or that an appearance by Alice was in no way guaranteed. Lillie may have been a minor character in the same-sex love murder, but it was still the hottest ticket in town. In the days before every American household had a radio and television, entertainment options were scarce; just like a theater troupe passing through town, a sensational trial offered a rare and brief spectacle. If the day’s show starred Lillie, then people happily turned their attention to her.

It had been a month since the grand jury indicted Alice and Lillie, and weeks since the arraignment, but the public’s interest had not waned in the least. Every moment of this case was unfolding like a serial drama, and the eager audience wanted to see the story progress.

Records of the grand jury proceedings have been lost, and its deliberations were closed to the public, but we know at least one witness testified that Lillie had been present during the murder—and had done nothing to prevent it. When Alice herself confessed to the authorities, she revealed that it was Lillie who had directed her home, to tell her mother of the murder, rather than advising her to proceed immediately to the police station and surrender. Under Tennessee law, that was enough evidence to charge Lillie with “aiding and abetting” Alice Mitchell in the murder of Freda Ward. It was on the basis of that testimony that she was taken into custody and held without bail.

Lillie’s attorneys argued that the grand jury lacked sufficient evidence to warrant their client’s arrest, but in order to prove it, they would have to call their own witnesses to the stand. It would be the first time that testimony was heard in an open courtroom, and that was what the public had come for.

But the show had been delayed until construction work on the courthouse was completed. Well aware that the case had become a national obsession, and that the local economy was getting a boost from the influx of visitors in town, Judge DuBose’s unorthodox request to expand the Criminal Court in Shelby County was granted—even though it took almost a full month to do so. Every few days, the court date was pushed back once again by the construction project. But Judge DuBose was enjoying the frenzy and attention, making full use of the time. His name appeared in the newspapers every single day; family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and assorted others called on him at the courthouse and at his home at nearly every hour in pursuit of information. He had no hesitation about continually postponing the trial date to accommodate all corners—especially members of the press.

Knowing that the press was in control of the day-to-day public narrative of the trial, Judge DuBose made sure journalists had the best seats in the house. He ordered a special section of box seats for the press, a move that immediately set off squabbles among the reporters over which paper deserved the best spot. But even with the expanded space and the reserved seating, demand quickly overwhelmed the room. Reporters who managed to secure box seats were quick to mock those who scrambled around them.

The clamoring crowds gathered at the courthouse and the general public’s frantic curiosity in the trial were becoming the case’s main storylines. “Another Day of Thrilling Interest in the Criminal Court, The Attendance Was Even Greater Than on Opening Day, Opera Glasses Leveled on the Cowering Defendant Witness,” exclaimed the Memphis Appeal Avalanche.

It did not take long for one newspaper to distinguish itself from the pack. It was not the Appeal Avalanche, the Commercial, nor the big out-of-towners, like the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle. Judge DuBose’s former employer, the Memphis Public Ledger, was by far the most popular news outlet. It was available at the conclusion of each eventful day in court, however inconclusive, with exhaustive commentary on every detail of the unfolding case, keeping readers coming back for more.

According to the Public Ledger, Judge DuBose’s courtroom had quickly become the most democratic public place in all of Memphis. By the time President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Tennessee had abolished slavery and returned to the Union fold, but Jim Crow laws helped maintain the South’s rigid, deeply entrenched racial hierarchy. These segregation laws mandated that African Americans were kept “separate and equal”—meaning separate and unequal. They ensured systematic economic, educational, and social disadvantages well after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed.⁶¹ But in this rare instance—the theater that was Judge DuBose’s courtroom—people from across class, race, and gender lines shared a space.⁶² They sat side-by-side as they would in almost no other setting in Memphis.

Staid Matrons and their young daughters sat check by jowl with women of doubtful character and women whose lack of all character was blazoned on their faces as plain as a pikestaff. There were white and black, mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons and a sprinkling of the genus whose class has never been distinctly defined—all eager to see two of their sex in peril of their lives, and hoping, perhaps, to hear something excitingly naughty.”⁶³

Female spectators, who DuBose separated from the male spectators, featured prominently in print. The press, who were almost all white and male, never failed to describe the women’s craning necks, distracting bonnet plumes, and artificial flowers—all with a palpable degree of disdain.

“The best place for ladies to sit during the trial is about four feet from the hearthstone,” the Avalanche Appeal complained.

Judge DuBose himself took the lead on that front, constantly reminding women, lest they forget, that their continued attendance in the courtroom was at his discretion, and he could easily have them removed. But behind these displays of white male authority was a distinct anxiety about white male authority; the press and the judge made a point of asserting their power precisely because they were unnerved by the prospect of women watching courtroom proceedings and drawing their own conclusions. Alternate domesticities, such as two women coupling and sharing a home—and even the general notion of females expressing passion—were considered inappropriate for the “fairer sex,” especially for ladies of the higher classes. It was no coincidence that female witnesses went to great lengths to dress conservatively, donning capes and jackets over their dresses, and often covering their faces with heavy veils removed only upon request. And at that point, they further exaggerated modest affectations, bowing their heads until they were again told otherwise.

It was one thing to allow women inside the courtroom—seated apart from men, of course—but no individual woman’s place was secure. Judge DuBose took a particular dislike to one Sarah Davis, whom the press quickly nicknamed “Buckskin Lou.” Her greatest transgression seemed to be in occupying a seat between two white women even though she looked “like a Mexican,” and wore a dress with a bright print. Judge DuBose criticized her each day of Lillie’s habeas corpus hearing, until finally, he expelled her. Like everyone else in the courtroom, Sarah Davis had worked hard to secure a seat, showing up early and claiming a spot amid the tussle, and she was not about to give it up without a fight. After the court adjourned, she waited for the judge, and a heated scene quickly ensued, much to the delight of reporters standing nearby.

“Go away, woman; I don’t want to talk to you,” Dubose said. “I won’t go away. I know my rights. I won’t be ordered out.” “Mr. Officer,” said the judge, “take this woman to jail.”⁶⁴

Judge DuBose took every opportunity to exercise his authority over the court’s eager spectators, which only deepened the tensions in and around the Criminal Court, and heightened the public’s already anxious anticipation to see defendants and witnesses in person.

And then, it finally happened: Alice Mitchell and Lillie Johnson entered the courtroom, leaning heavily on the strong arms of their escorts, George Mitchell and J.M. Johnson, respectively. Either their older female relatives were absent, or the women had become so skilled in the art of self-effacement that not a single newsman noted their presence.