Covington, Ga., April 8—John S. Williams, Jasper County planter, was willing to sacrifice the “convict lives” of 11 negroes on his farm to his own security and price of position, the jury trying him for murder of one of them was told here today by former Congressman Howard.
Only those negroes who had been bailed out of jail, and whom he said Williams held on the farm by force to work out their debts, were subject to this “dreadful contagion of death,” he said in making the closing argument for the state.
Green F. Johnson followed with the final plea for acquittal and it appeared that the judge’s charge would be completed and the case in the hands of the jury before night.
Howard contended that, even if the jury didn’t believe the statement of Clyde Manning, negro farm boss, that he helped Williams kill the men, the fact that they were killed and that Williams alone had the motive remained. Mr. Johnson assailed Manning as a confessed liar and an admitted murder who, on his own statement, knocked a nigger in the head as he “would an ox.”
Manning’s ignorance had allowed him to believe he “was as guilty as Williams” of peonage and that furnished him a motive for the killings, he declared.
Manning had termed the Department of Justice agents, whose peonage investigation preceded the killings, “United States protectors” and Johnson’s reference to this caused a laugh in the packed court room—the first occasion necessitating even a formal rap for order during the day.
Williams got his sons away from the farms before the killings started, Howard argued, and Johnson replied in his speech that Williams’ sons were not on trial and also argued the jury to remember Williams himself was being tried for only one of the alleged murders.
The trial has been shortened by the presentation of only one witness for the defense, Williams taking the stand in his own behalf yesterday as the only attempt by his attorneys to refute the testimony of the state’s star witness, Clyde Manning, negro boss on the Williams’ Farm, that the 11 negroes were killed at the defendant\s orders. Asserting his “absolute innocence” of the murder charge, Williams, who was not sworn and therefore, under the Georgia law, not subjected to crossed examination, declared in his statement to the jury he held Manning as the man having a “probable motive” for the killings. Defense counsel later sought to support this statement by telling the jury that Manning, ignorant of the penalty for peonage, had become alarmed at the Federal investigation.
Closing argument for the prosecution will be made today by W.M. Howard, former congressman from Georgia, while Green F. Johnson of Monticello, Ga., chief counsel for the defense, will make final plea for acquittal. Privilege of opening and closing argument was given the defense by reason of its having introduced the defendant as its only witness.
Barring a mistrial, there are three possible verdicts, according to opening argument of both sides, acquittal or conviction of murder, with a chance of the latter being accompanied by a recommendation for mercy which would automatically change the death penalty to life imprisonment.
Should Williams be acquitted of the present charge, he would not be free, Solicitor General Brand announced he wold be held for trial on two other murder items returned against him in this county in connection with the death of three negroes.
The courtroom was packed to capacity again today, spectators standing shoulder to shoulder in the aisles and in the space between the spectators’ seats and the railing of the bar. High school students were given the morning off from school to hear the closing arguments.
Mr. Howard, closing for the state, named the 11 farm hands killed and pointed out all came from jails in Atlanta or Macon, except one who was bailed out of jail in Monticello, and all worked for Williams or his sons.
The Williams farm and those adjoining operated by his sons were referred to as the plague spot by Mr. Howard. The others on the place seemed immune, he added, “and seemed able to live and move on the Williams plantation without getting this dreadful contagion or disease of death.”
The 11 negroes taken from jails to work on the farms met death within the 12 days from February 24 to March 8, he said, and added he would look for a cause for this “scourge of death” as physicians look for the cause of a pestilence.
Mr. Howard then turned to the subject of peonage and briefly outlined its origin in Mexico and traced it to the South. Federal laws were made against it, he said, and told of investigations by Department of Justice agents on the Williams place February 18.
Mr. Howard did not make the direct charge that peonage was the cause of the “scourge of death,” seeming to leave the jury to draw its own conclusions.
Mr. Howard turned to the defense’s claim that Clyde Manning, believing he was as guilty as Williams was,” of the peonage charges, might have killed the men. The speaker denounced such an idea as unfeasible and, his voice rising to a high pitch for the first time launched into a discussion of motive.
If the jury did not want to believe Manning’s story accusing Williams and left it out, the attorney continued, the fact that the killings took place remained and the reasons for them remained.
Against his own price and position in life, the defendant was pictured as caring nothing for “these convict lives” as long as there are rivers and ravines to hid their bodies.
As between Williams and Manning having a reason for the killings, Mr. Howard asked:
“Did Clyde have any sons to protect? Did he own any property? Did he make any contracts with these stockade negroes?”
Speaking as those he were the defendant, the attorney declared:
“In the midst of these foul, outrageous murders, I content myself with saying I know nothing about the three in Newton county. As to the others in Jasper county, I will explain them at the proper time.”
“The man who knows about the Yellow River murders knows about the pasture murders, and, if I he can explain one, he can explain all,” Howard declared.
A recess of 10 minutes followed the close of the address, which the crowd, filling every available inch of standing room, heard in deep silence.
Mr. Johnson started the final argument as soon as the recess was up, outlining in a quiet tone what he proposed to do in his address.
Mr. Johnson praised the address of Howard, and added “As for my friend, Mr. Brand, the distinguished solicitor general, just between you and me, gentlemen of the jury, confidentially, I can’t escape the conviction that Mr. Brand has not got a square deal.”
“Just beginning his term of office and having worked up his first big case, he was about to reap the reward of his labors and had visions possibly of honors from it—of the governorship even—when this Atlanta crowd got busy and sent these distinguished men to take his place.”
Referring to Howard having conducted the examination of witnesses and having made the closing speech, he declared the former congressman did not apear, as did the solicitor general or the assistant attorney general, to be doing their duty as sworn officers of the state, but as the paid attorney of “private prosecutors.”
The “men who guaranteed the fund to pay Howard had the right to do so,” he said, and added they had the right to do so,” he said, and added they had the right to hire another lawyer to uphold “this splendid character—Clyde Manning.”
“I would suggest, however, they might well clean up their own house first.”
Referring to the Atlanta race riot of 1906, he said no one hired lawyers to punish the slayers “of more than 100 unfortunate negroes.”
Mr. Johnson then made a plea that Williams, for whom he had sought a postponement of trial, had not been given sufficient time to prepare his defense. He asked the jury to remember this when it retired “especially when you run up against suspicious facts and circumstances unexplained.”
Johnson referred to the testimony of Manning as that of a “confessed liar and an admitted murderer,” who, on his admission, “knocked a nigger in the head as he would an ox.”
Scientists and travelers now, he said, that in Africa there are peaceable tribes and fierce tribes, even cannibals, among the negroes.
“I am willing to venture that way back there Clyde Manning’s ancestors were cannibals,” Johnson declared.
Manning’s motive for the killings, he said, was due to his ignorance and the fact that, in “his disturbed and cunning brain, this man (pointing to the Federal agent) had sown the seeds of fear.”
Manning, the attorney said, had been told “he was as guilty as Williams” and did not have education enough to know better.
Reference to Manning’s having terms the Department of Justice agents “United States protectors” caused the first act on the part of spectators during the day that necessitated a rap for order. It was a spontaneous laugh that subsides at once.
If the 11 negroes had been killed over a period of 12 days, as Manning said, some of them would have gotten wind of the earlier killings and would have “fled like rats from a sinking ship. And remember, too, not one of Manning’s family was touched. Remember that.”
From The Charlotte News, Friday evening, April 8, 1921
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