Blood in Their
Eyes
by
Grif Stockley
Reviewed by: John P. Gill
I miss Gideon Page, the
hero of Grif Stockley's previous novels. Gideon Page is my kind of lawyer
standing alone against the odds, against the establishment and
winning for the little guy. That is what mainstream Arkansas lawyers
do today. So Blood in Their Eyes is required reading for every
Arkansas lawyer, because this time Grif Stockley reviews the work of
a real Gideon Page, a black lawyer named Scipio Jones who read law to
become licensed and became one of Arkansas' outstanding lawyers. Jones
is credited with one of the most important cases in American history,
Moore v. Dempsey 261 U.S. 86(1923), and standing alone many times,
saved the lives of 12 innocent, albeit convicted, black sharecroppers
from Elaine, Arkansas.
The Elaine race riot, as history until
now has called it, is an awful blemish on Arkansas history. It is such
a blemish that most historians have treated it lightly or shied away
from it. But Grif Stockley, an outstanding Arkansas lawyer in his own
right, is not known for shying away from much of anything, and he tackles
the issue head on in his first writing on Arkansas history. In typical
lawyer fashion Stockley analyzes the facts and writes his brief in Blood
in Their Eyes. The death toll of white citizens is easily verified
from the court and newspaper records. Five men were killed. According
to the trial transcripts, affidavits, and research by Stockley, some
of the white men were apparently killed by other white men in their
frenzy to shoot black citizens of Phillips County. The black death toll
has never been verified, and even Stockley's laborious analysis of the
facts fails to document the number. It is somewhere between 20 and 856;
the total will likely never be known. But Stockley, exhibiting his experience
as a lawyer, analyzes the facts and identifies the events as a massacre,
not a riot, because even 20 deaths fit that description in the events
Stockley brings to light, namely, shooting unarmed blacks with their
hands in the air, and burying many in unmarked graves. Without saying
so, Stockley's description of the events matches those recently reported
in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Blood in Their Eyes reports the
events which started on the night of September 30, 1919 at the Hopp
Spur Church in Phillips County, near Elaine, Arkansas, where a group
of black sharecroppers had gathered for a meeting of the Progressive
Farmers and Household Union. Farming conditions in the Arkansas Delta
in 1919 are not what they are today, and the sharecroppers, with grievances
over cotton prices paid by their white landlords, attended the meeting.
Why armed guards were posted outside the church is unclear. An automobile
carrying a Deputy Sheriff, a Railroad Detective for the Missouri Pacific,
and a Trustee from the Phillips County Jail stopped in front of the
church about 11:00 p.m. and the shooting started. Who shot first and
why is unclear, but Stockley gives a trial lawyers' analysis of the
questions and answers. When the shooting stopped, a white peace officer
was dead. By morning hundreds, perhaps thousands, of armed men from
both sides of the Mississippi River converged on Elaine, and a group
of armed blacks exchanged gunfire. The following day battle-hardened
veterans from the battle of the Marne stationed at Camp Pike arrived,
with Governor Charles Borough in the lead.
Blood in Their Eyes sorts out many
of the historical reports of this event, and Stockley disagrees with
many of them unsupported by the evidence. But, his astonishing conclusion
that the Camp Pike veterans themselves participated in the slaughter
of innocent American Citizens is a new chapter in this tragic event.
Twelve sharecroppers were tried for murder
of five whites (no whites were arrested) and Stockley laboriously reviewed
trial transcripts, Supreme Court briefs, correspondence, and court opinions
to find historical facts and support his writing. His legal analysis
is a new and very much needed addition to the reports of other historians.
In several instances he demonstrates the power of circumstantial evidence,
and throughout his book, Stockley demonstrates his outstanding skills
as a lawyer in this analysis of the records. Perhaps if historians had
started where Stockley excels, much of the written history of this event
would be different. No lawyer, nor anyone else who loves freedom in
a democratic society, can read these events without getting sick to
their stomach. American Citizens were tried for murder in an Arkansas
courtroom less than 30 days after their arrest, defended predominately
by attorneys who called no witnesses, failed to strike any juror for
bias, and in general make no closing arguments. The jury was out for
eight minutes on the first trial. As many as three separate trials are
held by the same judge in a single day and all defendant's were found
guilty and sentenced to death. One of the Defendant's attorneys later
urged the Governor to carry out the death sentences.
A must read portion of the book is Stockley's
cross examination-like juxtaposition of Prosecutor John Miller's statements
in 1919 and his later statements as a retired U.S. District Judge.
The Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed all
of the convictions, and the fictional Gideon Page never had the challenges
that the real life Scipio Jones experienced. Jones was not hired until
late November, after all 12 have been convicted. He was retained by
black Little Rock citizens to work with a white attorney George W. Murphy,
employed by the NAACP, and later as co counsel with Edgar L. McHaney,
another white attorney. Although he was prohibited from arguing the
case, it was through Jones' efforts, that Moore v. Dempsey, for
the first time, permitted collateral attack, thru habeus corpus, on
a state appellate court decision. All 12 Defendants were finally freed
five years after their conviction, through a maze of motions, appeals,
retrials, and executive clemency that only a skilled lawyer could manage.
The author frequently exhibits skill as
an historical novelist; as an example he inserts that the Governor's
wife "could have easily persuaded" the Governor to see Birth
of a Nation, which played in Little Rock at the time. Perhaps an historical
novel will be the next expression of his extraordinary talent. In the
meantime, Stockley's in depth research and compelling arguments make
Blood in Their Eyes worthwhile reading for every lawyer who aspires
to try lawsuits.
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