IT LOOKED AS IF half of America had come to tiny Eudora for the conclusion of the White Raiders Trial.
Outside the courthouse that morning, hundreds and hundreds of spectators jammed the town square. Little boys had climbed trees for a better view of the action. Photographers muscled their tripods through the crowds, jostling for the best angles. A few of the more enterprising had bought out Russell Hardware’s entire stock of ladders to get an over-the-heads-of-the-crowd view.
Judge Everett Corbett had petitioned Governor Vardaman for state militiamen from Jackson to keep order. The soldiers had set up temporary wooden fences along the sidewalk in front of the courthouse to control the spectators who’d been flooding into Eudora by train, carriage, horseback, and on foot.
Inside the courtroom there was no question who was in control: Judge Everett Corbett.
During the course of the trial, he had expelled four colored women from the gallery for reacting too loudly. He had found three reporters in contempt of court for referring in unflattering terms to his dictatorial ways. And he had sent an old colored man to jail for shouting, “The Lord hates a liar!” during one defendant’s testimony.
The first thing my father did on the trial’s last morning reaffirmed his imperial status.
“Now we are ready to deliver this case to the jury,” he said. “The testimony has been passionate on both sides. Tempers have run high. Outside interest has been remarkable by any standard. And thus, gentlemen of the jury, we have come to the crux of the matter. You have to let the facts speak for themselves. You will now hear from the prosecutor, Mr. Curtis, his last and best argument about how you’ll decide. Then you’ll hear the same from Mr. Lewis. And finally, it will be entirely up to you, the jury, to make your decision, as the framers of the Constitution intended. Mr. Curtis?”
Jonah rose with an impassive face. “Your Honor, the jury has heard quite a lot from me in this trial. More than enough, I think. So I’m going to let my colleague Mr. Benjamin Corbett deliver the summation for the state.”