The criminal courtroom has always been a place where the law focuses on the individual. The defense lawyers in Wright’s and Motley’s novels try unsuccessfully to force the legal process to focus on the relationship between society and the alleged criminal. The black rage defense has succeeded in the same endeavor. Although this book concentrates on African Americans, it also discusses cases in which the environmental defense has been extended to a Native American who killed a policeman, and to a poor white ex-convict who robbed six banks.
There has been growing criticism of the political separation of the races in the United States. Social critic Todd Gitlin, in his book The Twilight of Common Dreams, writes that we have developed an “obsession with difference” and have fallen into “identity politics” in which cultural and political debates pit race against race, gender against gender, and lifestyle against lifestyle. Although the black rage defense, by its very name, emphasizes race, it is actually an attempt to bring all Americans closer together. Its premise is that although there are essential differences in the ways people grow up, there are profound underlying similarities in their responses to deprivation, violence, and injustice. Closing our eyes to the impact on social behavior of factors such as racism and poverty takes us down the path to ever more prisons and executions. We will be locked into these and other fruitless responses to crime unless we cross racial and class barriers in order to understand the social forces that contribute to crime. The black rage defense plays one small part in the very large and important movement to break down those barriers.
Chapter 1 The Black Rage Defense, 1846: The Trial of William Freeman
The sword comes into the world because of justice delayed and justice denied.
—The Talmud, Pirkei; Avot 5:11
The first recorded black rage defense took place in 1846. The parties involved included the son of an ex-slave and the wealthiest family in Cayuga County, New York. The prosecutor was the son of a U.S. president, and the defense lawyer was a former governor of New York. The trial was described as “one of the most interesting and extraordinary criminal trials that ever occurred in our country.”1 It is a story of oppression and blood. It is a story of race and America.
William Freeman was born in a little settlement called New Guinea, a half mile from the town of Auburn, New York, in the year 1824. His father, James, a former slave, had been able to purchase his freedom in 1815. His mother, Sally, was part Native American, part African American, and was said to have some French blood. Therefore, William, or Bill as he was called, was considered a “quadroon of Tartar and African descent with a visage strongly marked with the distinctive features of the North American Indian.”
Sally’s tribe was virtually wiped out in the area near Berkshire, Massachusetts. She was a house servant and was sent to work in Auburn in 1817. There she and James were married, and William was born. Just three years after Bill was born, his father fell off the dock where he was working in Albany and died from the injuries. As was the custom with black children, Bill was sent to work as a servant boy for a white family when he was only seven years old. When he was nine he was transferred to the family of Ethan Warden, but he was fired because “of an uncontrollable disposition for play with other colored boys, which rendered his services valueless.”
Bill was then sent to work in the home of a judge. But he often left the estate to play in the countryside. He was so good at figuring out how to get away that this skill was blamed on his Indian heritage.
In the winter he worked doing household chores for a family named Lynch. When he was truant in his duties, Mrs. Lynch would whip him. Finally, unable to bear these whippings, the little boy escaped from the house and in his night clothes, in the freezing New York winter, fled home to his mother.
As Bill grew up he worked many places in and around Auburn, sometimes in private homes, sometimes as a waiter in local hotels. He was an intelligent, friendly, honest teenager who occasionally drank, as did his mother. When he was sixteen, however, an event took place that changed his life forever.
A woman named Martha Godfrey, in a town five miles from Auburn, had one of her horses stolen. Bill, who had been in the area, was arrested. After an examination by the magistrate, however, he was released. Weeks later the horse was found in a nearby county. It had been sold by a black man named Jack Furman. Furman knew that Bill had been a suspect and blamed the theft on him. Bill was again arrested. After a month in jail, frightened and desperate, he managed to break the lock of his cell, and he and another prisoner escaped. His cellmate was captured almost immediately, but Bill reached the woods and for two weeks was able to avoid the search parties. Finally, he was caught in a nearby town and returned to jail. Two months later he went on trial for larceny and breaking jail.
There were only three witnesses for the prosecution. Mrs. Godfrey testified to the loss and recovery of her horse. Mr. Doty, a neighbor, testified that he saw a Negro on the horse the night it was stolen. Jack Furman said that he went to the stable with Bill and saw him steal it. Bill testified that he was innocent and that he had only broken out of jail because he had heard Furman was going to lie about him in order to avoid prosecution.
The jury convicted Bill, and he was sentenced to five years at one of two large penitentiaries in New York, the State Prison at Auburn. Charges against Furman were dismissed. Evidence was later discovered that placed Bill at a different location on the night the horse was stolen. Furman, in the meantime, was arrested for another horse theft and was tried and sentenced to prison. But it was too late for Bill; he had been shipped off to what would become a nightmare of tragic proportions.
When sixteen-year-old Bill arrived at the prison he began to weep. Every person has a little place in his or her soul where hope is kept alive. Even though Bill had lived under an unjust system, some small part of him believed in justice. He was aware that new evidence had been found proving he was nowhere near the stable of the stolen horse, so Bill waited to be set free, but no relief came. The eyes of justice were indeed, in the words of the poet Langston Hughes, “two festering sores.”2 How long can a man—or a sixteen-year-old boy—be in a prison cell wondering why he has been locked away for a crime he did not commit, without terrible changes taking place in his psyche?
Bill had been sentenced to hard labor. The prison had many shops where convicts worked under the supervision of private contractors. For two years Bill worked, mainly filing iron for plating. As time went on Bill became less intimidated and more angry. He resolved to struggle for the justice he felt he deserved. He told his bosses he should not have to work because he had done nothing to deserve being locked up in prison. The response he received was threats of punishment. So Bill worked less and less, which created hostility among his bosses, who viewed him as ignorant and incorrigible.
The keeper of the shop where Bill worked most of the time was a man named James Tyler. Tyler did not like Bill’s attitude and felt he was not doing enough work. He repeatedly threatened Bill with punishment. One day Tyler told Bill he didn’t want to hear any more excuses about being imprisoned. He said he was done trying to talk to him and was going to flog him. He ordered Bill to take off his clothes, and then turned around to get a cat-o’-nine-tails. Tyler later claimed that at this point Bill attacked him, and that during the fight Bill got hold of a knife. This was never confirmed by any other witnesses. But one thing was clear: Tyler hit Bill on the left side of his head with a large board that broke into pieces from the force of the blow. Tyler denied that the blow could have hurt Bill. Years later, however, a medical examination confirmed that the force of the board on Bill’s left ear had broken the ear drum and permanently damaged his left temporal bone.
Bill was now deaf in his left ear. His spirit seemed broken. He worked carrying yarn to and from the dye shop. He became sullen, morose, and easily provoked. He had two fights with other convicts over minor disputes, and both times Bill was flogged. The second time, the whipping was so bad that he could put his fingers into the hole that had been cut between his ribs.
His mental condition deteriorated. Prison