BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Episode 1: Pistols 2
Bonus: The Three Governors Controversy 16
Episode 2: Fall, Isaiah, Fall 20
Episode 3: Trial…and Error 30
Episode 4: Thousands of Friends 44
Episode 5: I Found It! 59
Episode 6: I’m Deeply Sorry 74
Bonus: A Conversation with Hank Klibanoff 89
Page 1! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Episode 1: Pistols
Hank Klibanoff: 00:00:10 Somewhere around here is where it happened. Somewhere in this beautiful expanse of Georgia woods. Something terrible, tragic, and long forgotten. Except by those who lived it.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:00:28 As I walk through the dry leaves of this forest the sun flickers through the tall pines like a strobe. We're in Alston, in South Georgia. This land used to be farm owned by a black family, the Nixon family. Three generations of them lived in a wood farm house with a tin roof somewhere on this property 70 years ago. It was a pretty good sized farm, 59 acres. They raised crops, they traveled by horse and wagon, and they relied on a mule named Della.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:01:04 This is where two white men drove up to Isaiah Nixon's farmhouse in the late afternoon of election day in Georgie, September 1948. They had guns in their hands, they had menace in their voices, and they insisted on seeing the farmer, so Isaiah Nixon emerged from the house. His mother, his wife, his children, watched as he stepped down off the porch and walked toward the men.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:01:33 Understand now he knew them. He'd grown up with them, and they had their guns out? Their intent became clear when they asked Isaiah Nixon two questions. Had he voted? And who for?
Hank Klibanoff: 00:01:53 Now, as I walk this land I can't help but wonder where exactly Isaiah Nixon was standing when he answered those two questions, when he refused to take a ride with them, and when one of the white men shot him, one, two, three times in front of his family.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:02:13 I'm gonna tell you that story and more about what happened on this election day in 1948. The history that led up to it, and the history that followed it.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:02:25 But now, in these silent woods, I hear the voices of people who have shared their memories with me about that time, that day, this place.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:02:37 She begged him not to go because she knew the possibility that he was gonna be killed.
James Harris: 00:02:45 They told him that if he knew what was best that he wouldn't vote.
Keith Johnson: 00:02:49 I felt like they probably got away with murder.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:02:54 We know who did it, we know what happened, we know when, and how. We know it was somewhere around here,
Page 2! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
but there is one remaining question. Why? Why did these men, why did so many men like them get away with murder in the South?
Hank Klibanoff: 00:03:14 Who were we? Who were we as a people that we allowed this to happen? That's our search, and this is our story, because when we understand who we were, we can better understand who we are. This is Buried Truths, I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:03:48 It was the mid 1940s. A loaf of bread would cost about 10 cents, a mortgage was about 50 dollars a month, and most Americans made about 2500 dollars a year, but in the South the cost of living wasn't measured just by what you could afford. This is the American South post World War II.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:04:15 Black soldiers who helped liberate Europe from Nazis have returned to find they still have few of the rights and opportunities of whites. Daily behavior is still governed by strictly enforced rules of racial etiquette. Bow the head, step of the sidewalk when whites approach, don't ever look a white woman in the eye, stay out of white schools except to push a mop, don't enter white restaurants except through the back door, stay out of white homes unless you're the help, don't vote with us, don't pray with us, don't drive a nicer car than us, just don't.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:05:01 In Alston Georgia, enter the farmhouse of 28 year old Isaiah Nixon. What we know about him comes mainly from his family, especially his daughter, Dorothy.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:05:20 We were way out in the woods, so when we went into town it was on a wagon, and going to pick up food. Especially flour, and meal, that kind of stuff. They had almost everything else, but if you close your eyes you would have passed through Alston.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:05:41 Alston, Georgia, population 150. Dorothy's dad, her mom, Sally, her five brothers and sisters lived on their farm where they grew tobacco, cotton, and other crops.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:05:53 Dorothy's grandmother also lived with them.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:05:56 They had all kinds of products, they even had a lot of fruit trees, grapevines, apple tree, peach tree, it was just wonderful. The farm was on the left, the timber was on the right, so you could just walk across the street almost away from the house maybe 10 or 12 feet, and you can start with the timber.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:06:23 The timber, the pine trees, Dorothy remembers Isaiah Nixon, buckets and a small chipping tool in hand, disappearing among the pines. The trees were fertile
Page 3! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
sources of turpentine. To harvest it Isaiah Nixon would nail a bucket into the trunk of a tree, then start scraping and chipping the bark until the sap slowly filled the bucket.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:06:52 All those hours on the farm and among the trees, Isaiah Nixon had plenty of time to think about the future of his kids. He wanted them to have more. More fairness, more opportunity, more respect, but ensuring a better life was gonna be tough, because Isaiah Nixon was a black man with aspirations in a white world. In the white supremacist world of this man, Gene Talmadge.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:07:19 Now that is the priorities that veterans are supposed to have in purchasing-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:07:25 Gene Talmadge wanted to be a lawyer, but he never quite made it, so he turned his attention to politics. He ran twice for the state legislature and lost both times. Clearly unpopular locally, what did he do? He ran state wide and became agriculture commissioner. Then he set his political goals even higher. With unbridled ambition his brash rhetorical style started getting him noticed across the South, and eventually on the national stage.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:07:56 You're the ones that I'm counting on to match that solid glump of negro votes that I know is gonna vote against me.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:08:04 Talmadge presented himself as a populist, a fighter for the little guy. Of course as long as the little guy was white.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:08:11 Gene Talmadge was a disruptive force with an angry message.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:08:17 You read the bus decision? Where the Supreme Court held that negroes could sit beside of any people on your buses. Did you read it? It was decided-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:08:28 Wherever Gene Talmadge campaigned was like the circus come to town, and he was the ring master. Wearing his trademark red suspenders he was trailed by believers who were planted in the crowd, sometimes in the trees, to yell out set up questions that Talmadge would answer to roaring applause, hoots, and hollers.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:08:48 He unfurled fiery speeches against government, federal and state, even as he ran for higher and higher offices in Georgia's government. By the early 1940s he'd been elected governor three times, and bin 1946 he was running again for a fourth term.
Singer: 00:09:06 Now let's elect Gene Talmadge, he is the people's friend. He'll see that thing-
Page 4! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:09:13 Gene Talmadge, like many politicians of his time owned a newspaper, The Statesman, and he used his newspaper to drive wedges between people. To rally rural voters he railed against them lyin' Atlanta newspapers.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:09:27 To appeal to poor farmers Talmadge targeted banks and utilities. To create fear among whites, he warned blacks were out to get their jobs. In fact, he warned blacks were out to get just about everything the white man had.
Singer: 00:09:42 We may expect to see our state-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:09:46 No surprise then that when Gene Talmadge was governor the Ku Klux Klan had open access to him and his inner offices. Here's how Gene Talmadge explains his attitude on race in America in his newspaper. He did so in all capital letters. "This is a white man's country, and we must keep it so."
Singer: 00:10:09 So let's elect Gene Talmadge and bring back once again, that wise administration of the red suspendered man. Let's pay the teacher's salary-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:10:26 But politics was far from the mind of Dorothy Nixon back in Alston, Georgia.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:10:31 The whole life was wonderful to me playing in the dirt, and all the little ones running around. We had wood stoves, outhouse, and you know we had pails on the inside at night.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:10:48 She stayed close to her grandmother, Daisy, who owned the farm. Dorothy was in wonder of that life.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:10:54 I helped my grandmother in the vegetable garden next to the house. When the ground broke with sweet potatoes I was excited, and she let me pull them up, and shake off the dirt. Same thing with peanuts. I thought peanuts, for instance, you just go get them. I didn't know they grew in the ground, and it breaks, and you pull it up, and you shake it, so that was the fun part.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:11:19 The fun part, but she still made time for some childhood mischief.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:11:23 We used to go under the house and play, and my oldest sister, we tried to get the grapes and make wine, but we got caught, and we were little so we didn't know what we were doing.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:11:38 How did it taste? The wine?
Dorothy Nixon: 00:11:40 I can't remember.
Page 5! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:11:41 Of course Dorothy still remembers her father, Isaiah Nixon.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:11:51 My father was an only child. My grandmother's only child. Well he used to bring us these really large peppermints, and if you got yours, I mean that was really something. I don't remember him raising his voice or nothing. He was just easy going. Sort of introspective. He wasn't a big man, but he acted like a giant to me.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:12:26 As Dorothy lived her peaceful childhood life on the farm in Alston, over to the West in Columbus, Georgia, was a black man who, like Isaiah Nixon, was looking for a way to move his life forward.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:12:40 In the early 1940s black residents in Georgia weren't allowed to vote when it really counted, and this man wanted to change that. His name was Primus King.
Actor Primus: 00:12:52 This case came up testing the democratic party primaries--
Hank Klibanoff: 00:12:57 He recounted his story late in life in this recording, but it's hard to hear, so we've asked an actor to voice his words. Primus King was a barber and a pastor, and he along with his friends had come up with a plan.
Actor Primus: 00:13:17 This case came up testing the democratic party primaries, and negroes voting. Several talked about it, but nobody was willing to put a bell around the cat's neck. I told them, " I will."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:13:31 The bell around the cat's neck, or who would be the first black voter to challenge the system? Let's take a minute to talk about that system. In the mid 1940s, in Southern states, white politicians used a series of devious schemes to keep blacks from the polls.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:13:48 You've heard about some of them of course, the literacy tests, the poll taxes, here's another. While blacks could vote in the general election, they could not vote in the democratic party primary. The democratic party in Georgia openly called that their all white primary, and what they really meant was their whites only primary.
Actor Primus: 00:14:12 I went in there to vote. When I went in the detectives grabbed me, asked, "What in the hell are you doing nigger?" I said, "I'm going to vote sir." Detective said, "Ain't no niggers voting here today."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:14:29 The democratic party insisted that it was a private club, sort of like a civic association, and it alone could decide who would participate in its activities. That is, who would be allowed to vote in its primary. The explanation to blacks went something like this, "We're gonna let you vote. We're
Page 6! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
gonna let you vote in the general election in November, the final, the most important election when we all decide together." But black Georgians saw that for the trick that it was. They knew the general election was meaningless because in Southern states democrats made up 80 to 90% of the voters, so whoever won the primary would take office in January.
Actor Primus: 00:15:10 So I walked away to a lawyer. It was three blocks.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:15:14 To the office of a while lawyer, Oscar Smith, to make his case.
Actor Primus: 00:15:19 Lawyer said to me, "Primus do you really want to sue the democratic party? Do you know what you're doing?" I told him, "Yes sir, I know."
Actor Primus: 00:15:28 When I got there he said we could sue for 5,000 dollars. We sued, and it came out in the paper that afternoon. "Primus King has sued the democratic party for denying him rights, and privilege to vote because of race and color."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:15:45 That also made Primus King an instant target.
Actor Primus: 00:15:49 Later on an old cracker called me and said, "You must want to be put in the river." I said, "Well they put so many negroes in the river for nothing, I'm willing to go in there for something." He hung up the phone.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:16:10 What were whites so afraid of? Well, the math. In Georgia a third of the counties had black majorities. Political leaders feared losing control, and they were willing to whip whites into a frenzy to hold that power.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:16:25 Here's how Gene Talmadge explained it in his newspaper, The Statesman, "If the door is once opened, and we allow the negro to participate in our primaries, the next move will be to allow them into our schools with our white children.
Actor Primus: 00:16:40 I stood there in court with tears running down my cheeks. I said, "Your honor, I want the right and the privilege to vote for my people."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:16:50 The case was tried in Macon, Georgia. A white federal judge ruled that democrats must let Primus King vote, and then a Southern federal appeals court agreed. Then the United States Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal, giving Primus King a historic win.
Actor Primus: 00:17:07 Primus King had won the case. This negro had won in the South.
Page 7! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:17:13 And with this victory a wave of hope spread throughout the black communities all over Georgia, but it would also set in motion a tragedy. The killing of the farmer in Alston, Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:17:27 This is Buried Truths, and there's so much more to come in this episode, so stay with us. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:17:35 At this point in our story where do we stand? We know that blacks would now be allowed to vote for the first time, in the 1946 democratic primary.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:17:48 This was unwelcome news for Gene Talmadge and his supporters, but not for Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:17:54 In fact, black Georgians immediately began registering to vote. In Chatham County, home to Savannah, democrats were startled to see black registrations soar over night from 1,200 to 7,000. The Atlanta Daily World, a black newspaper, felt giddy enough to run a headline that said, "Talmadge in a Dither."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:18:16 It was around this time that Isaiah got a visit from his good friend Dover Carter. Dover Carter also lived in Alston and he too was a farmer. Mr. Carter had just come from Savannah, where he had attended a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The NAACP.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:18:36 Dover Carter was so taken by their mission to expand black political influence that he decided to start a local chapter back in Alston.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:18:45 One of his early converts, Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:18:55 When the US Supreme Court sided with Primus King it enraged Gene Talmadge because it meant that his political foes, the negroes, could now line up to vote against him, in what had once been an all white primary.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:19:10 What really got Talmadge upset - that stunning decision landed just three weeks before the 1946 primary.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:19:26 Gene Talmadge decided he needed a new strategy to stop blacks from voting. He met with a klansman, the Exalted Cyclops. They discussed what they could do. Talmadge himself came up with an idea. Without speaking, he picked up a pencil, he tore off a piece of paper, and he wrote one word on it. Pistols.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:19:49 I wanna thank the Atlanta Journal for coming out about two months ago and-
Page 8! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:19:56 So now, with just a week to go till election day, Gene Talmadge gave this speech. As you'll hear he was not giving up on the idea of an all white primary.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:20:06 Of a democratic white primary in Georgia.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:20:11 Talmadge spoke during a thunderstorm.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:20:15 Now what do my opponents say? They say that it's the law, and negroes will vote in the primary this year, next Wednesday. What do I say? I say it's the law this year, and some of the negroes will vote. The fewer the better. But I am sure of this, if I'm your governor, they won't vote in our white primary the next four years.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:20:53 And so around this time the Talmadge forces, and voting officials sympathetic to Talmadge, began removing names of black registered voters.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:21:03 The FBI would later estimate that 50,000 blacks in Georgia had been purged or pressured into not registering - some after being peppered with random vague questions about democracy, others after being asked to recite parts of the Constitution. The purge became so obvious that pretty soon FBI agents were swarming Georgia, investigating not just the county voting officials, but Gene Talmadge himself. The big question in the days before the election was which would come first, the election of Gene Talmadge, or his indictment?
Hank Klibanoff: 00:21:45 In the final days of the campaign the intimidation continued. On the Sunday before the 1946 primary, in Fitzgerald, Georgia, black worshipers at eight different churches arrived to find signs on the doors that read, " The first negro to vote in the white primary will never vote again."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:22:10 Election day approached, and then in July 1946, Gene Talmadge won. He'd take the democratic primary, and he'd win in November too, but Gene Talmadge would never live to take office. You might think that after this election the racial violence would take a break, but it didn't. Five days later a mob of white men in Monroe, Georgia, committed what was probably the state's most heinous racial killing. The execution of two black couples at Moore's Ford Bridge.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:22:57 In a case directly related to voting, over in Butler, Georgia, four white men showed up at the family home of a World War II vet, Maceo Snipes. He'd been the only black person to vote in Taylor County. The men called him outside, then shot and killed him.
Page 9! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:23:19 The same week, a young student at Morehouse College sent a letter to the editor to the Atlanta Constitution. He decried the unfair and unequal ways that black citizens were being treated. It was his debut in the national debate over race. He signed his letter M.L. King.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:23:55 Back in Alston, Dover Carter was undaunted. The man who recruited Isaiah Nixon to the NAACP was on a roll. Within just a few months after starting his local chapter, he'd signed up 74 members in and around Alston. He'd seen too much to turn back now.
Aaron Carter: 00:24:14 I remember him telling me stories of actually seeing -
Hank Klibanoff: 00:24:18 This is Dover Carter's son, Aaron.
Aaron Carter: 00:24:20 Actually seeing... and individuals being whipped, and beaten up, and so I think the injustice that he saw was the thing that motivated him.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:24:35 Now Dover Carter was better off than most blacks in Alston. He owned his own farm and he could be seen driving through town in his pickup truck. His son, Aaron, tells us he was serious, religious, and curious.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:24:59 Back during the campaign for governor in 1946 if you listened carefully you might have heard something.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:25:06 I'm proud they are. I wish that our colleges -
Hank Klibanoff: 00:25:09 Gene Talmadge was sick.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:25:15 - had room for more, but they're overcrowded.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:25:16 Gene Talmadge was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver, internal bleeding, and other diseases.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:25:22 In this county, and I've only found one county in Georgia-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:25:27 Yes, Gene Talmadge was an alcoholic, and he was dying, and just before Christmas, in December 1946, weeks after his election, and weeks before he'd become governor again, Gene Talmadge died.
Eugene Talmadge: 00:25:41 Just wait, we'll get to it. Now you know that was about what I announced on. What I announced on -
Hank Klibanoff: 00:25:47 This led to one of the more bizarre political episodes in Georgia's history, because over the next couple of months three different men would claim to be the rightful air to the governor's office. More on that later.
Page 10! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:26:01 For now, here's what's important to know. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled that the lieutenant governor, Melvin Thomson, should take the office. It also ordered a special election for governor for September 1948, but the Talmadge dynasty wasn't going away quietly. One of the candidates running for governor - Gene's son, Herman.
Announcer: 00:26:24 The president of the United States.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:26:30 But you really can't talk about this period in the South without remembering what was happening nationally, and in Washington D.C., as we headed into the next presidential election. Harry Truman had become president after FDR died, and now he was running in his own right, and a very large question was where Truman would take the democratic party, and the White House.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:26:54 Would it be towards civil rights? Or toward the segregationist views of the Southern democrats who controlled the Congress? Truman made his views clear in June of 1947, when he became the first president ever to address the NAACP symbolically on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:27:13 He did it in front of more than 10,000 people.
Harry Truman: 00:27:17 Many of our people still suffer the indignity of insult, the harrowing fear of intimidation, and I regret to say, the threat of physical injury and mob violence.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:27:29 He said the nation could no longer afford a leisurely attack on prejudice and discrimination.
Harry Truman: 00:27:36 We cannot wait another decade, or another generation to eliminate these evils. We must work as never before to cure them now.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:27:46 So Truman speaks of a cure for prejudice and discrimination. Down South this was not gonna be easy. It would take eradication of a lot more than the disease of racism that had afflicted one man, Gene Talmadge. This was a political virus, and it had stricken the deep South for decades. White supremacist politicians had found Southerners an easy mark for their evangelical demagoguery. And what was that all about? Well, it was all designed to win elections by dividing and conquering. By pitting poor whites against poor blacks.
Harry Truman: 00:28:26 I should like to talk to you briefly-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:28:28 Besides Gene Talmadge there was Mississippi's Theodore Bilbo, who publicly said, "The best way to stop blacks from voting on election day was the night before." South
Page 11! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Carolina's Cottonhead Smith, who had walked out of the 1936 democratic national convention because the opening prayer was to be given by a black pastor.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:28:49 These men were only the latest strain of the virus. Before them were Pitchfork Ben Tillman, of South Carolina, Tom Watson in Georgia, James K .Vardaman in Mississippi.
Harry Truman: 00:29:03 The civil rights law-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:29:03 This speech by Harry Truman, to the NAACP, was a direct message to the white Southerners who believed in, and who were still infected by this political virus. "The nation," Truman said, "Could no longer wait for," quote: "The slowest state, or the most backward community."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:29:21 He also cautioned Southerners to not look to their state leaders.
Harry Truman: 00:29:25 Our national government must show the way.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:29:28 The national government, the federal government, and then to close:
Harry Truman: 00:29:32 It is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights. When I say all Americans, I mean all Americans.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:29:53 With this speech Truman turned his back on Southern democratic leaders. More than 650 miles away, in Alston, we can pretty much guess that NAACP members like Isaiah Nixon and his good friend, Dover Carter, heard about Truman's speech and were inspired by it.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:30:16 As Georgia and the nation headed into critical elections in 1948 these farmers continued to meet and encourage blacks to register to vote. But it was still a tense time. Once again, Isaiah Nixon's daughter, Dorothy.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:30:32 It's hard to visualize 1948 as opposed to 1960, '70, '80, '90. In those days if they decide that they were going to abuse black kids, or wives, black men and fathers had no choice. We had no rights.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:30:56 Isaiah Nixon, Dover Carter, and the others in the movement were worried. What if the Talmadge dynasty took back control of the government in the '48 election?
Singer: 00:31:07 The time has come for Georgia to take her rightful place, and we will have a leader when Herman wins the race.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:31:19 Herman Talmadge looked just like his father, and he ran as his father's son. Herman, or as he was more widely known,
Page 12! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Huhmun, assured voters the political dynasty would remain in tact and little would change.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:31:34 In the governor's office, white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, they knew they'd still have a friend in the state's highest office. His appeal? Well, he sounded a lot like his dad. In fact, here's a part of a speech Herman Talmadge had given while campaigning for his father.
Herman Talmadge: 00:31:52 The other candidates for governor are opposed to a white primary. They know that the loss of the white primary will destroy our Southern traditions and principles, yet these self-seeking politicians would sell out their birthright that our grandfathers fought for, for a few votes.
Herman Talmadge: 00:32:16 Remember this-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:32:26 Herman Talmadge clearly is sounding very much like his father, and if you're a black voter in 1948 you're thinking that Herman Talmadge is gonna be just as aggressive in trying to suppress the black vote as his father was.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:32:40 In the closing days Herman Talmadge warned that any blacks who came to polling places with a sample ballot or written guidance on how to vote should be arrested and prosecuted, because, according to Herman Talmadge, any blacks who came to the polls with such a guide, what he called a marked ballot, weren't intelligent enough to vote.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:33:09 As the '48 election day neared, the Klan, in open support of Herman Talmadge, marched through black communities in and around Alston. The tension grew from a simmer to a boil, especially among members of the NAACP, but that wasn't gonna keep them from voting.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:33:28 Isaiah Nixon's daughter, Dorothy, says he certainly wasn't afraid of casting a vote.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:33:34 No, he wasn't afraid, because if he was afraid he would not have gone at all. He would have done what a lot of people did. They did not go and vote because they knew what could happen to them.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:33:51 One of the newest members of the NAACP in Alston was John Harris. He too was a long time friend of Isaiah Nixon and Dover Carter. Now, John Harris was a handy man and also a farmer, and he tells the story of how NAACP members were meeting at a church in Alston just days before the 1948 election when they got a visitor.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:34:18 A white neighbor who walked into the church uninvited. He was carrying something in his hand. He was carrying a whip. John Harris' son, James picks up the story.
Page 13! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
James Harris: 00:34:37 He would come down here when they were meeting, say he would walk in the church, walk from the back to the front with his whip. Said he would walk up the aisle, and on his way out, would take his whip and pop it, and go out the door. They say he never said anything.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:35:03 A whip-
Hank Klibanoff: 00:35:03 A whip at a meeting in a church? It wouldn't work. These black farmers, John Harris, Dover Carter, and Isaiah Nixon were undaunted. Within days they would do something truly courageous, but they would pay a price for it. You got to hear what happens on the next episode of Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Announcer: 00:35:37 CREDITS: Hank Klibanoff is a former reporter, editor, and coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Race Beat. Today he's a professor at Emory University. Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas. The executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Please subscribe to the show, and if you have a moment, leave us a review in Apple Podcast. We'd love to hear what you think, and your review will help others find the show.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:36:05 The idea for this podcast came from a class that I've been teaching at Emory University in Atlanta. That's where I direct the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases project. Over the years, I've asked my students to research stories like the one you're hearing, and what they have found is fascinating, even astonishing. You'll get to hear from a couple of them and you'll get to hear about the hidden history they've uncovered. There was one more thing that I wanted to mention that deserves some extra time. We have a bonus episode about what happened right after Gene Talmadge died. We told you that three men would lay claim to the Governor's office. This tussle over the governorship made national headlines. It was known as the Three Governors controversy and it was just this almost comical moment in Georgia history, and it showed just what the Talmadge clan, that's clan with a C, but frankly also with a K. It showed what the Talmadge clan would do to stay in office. Look for it in a Buried Truths bonus episode coming up in a few days.
Announcer: 00:37:15 We had help on this episode of Buried Truths from the nearly 100 students who've taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases class that Hank Klibanoff teaches, and thanks to Professor Brett Gadsden who helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to two past students who have stayed with the project, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to [email protected].
Page 14! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
You can follow us on social media at Buried Truths Podcast where you'll find photographs and documents related to the case. Thanks to Emory University and its Centers for Digital Scholarship and Faculty Excellence for their support. We had help from the National Archives and Records Administration and from the General Oral History Collection at Columbus State University, and we had additional help from the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia with archive recordings from their Herman Talmadge Collection. Finally, thanks to the actor Rob Cleveland who played the voice of Primus King. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 15! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Bonus: The Three Governors Controversy
Hank Klibanoff: 00:38:29 This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff. I want to tell you a little bit more about the Three Governors Controversy, which I made a reference to in the first episode. Gene Talmadge was elected Governor of Georgia in 1946, but he died before he could take office, and what happened next made national headlines. That's because three men rushed forward and each claimed to be the rightful Governor of Georgia. There was Melvin Thompson.
Melvin Thompson: 00:39:00 My contention is that the people elected me Lieutenant Governor of the State of Georgia knowing that I would succeed . . .
Hank Klibanoff: 00:39:07 The second man was Ellis Arnall.
Ellis Arnall: 00:39:09 I will continue to remain Governor of Georgia.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:39:13 And then there was Herman Talmadge, the son of Gene Talmadge.
Herman Talmadge: 00:39:17 I have accepted my election, have taken my oath of office, and . . .
Hank Klibanoff: 00:39:23 So how did we end up with this almost comical standoff of state leadership? Let's just say it's a good lesson in how the Talmadge political machine operated. The 1946 Democratic Party Primary was hardly a shoo-in for Gene Talmadge. Yes, he had passionate supporters across rural Georgia, two decades worth of campaign experience, and three terms as governor. But Gene Talmadge and his trusted aides were deeply concerned. For one thing, this was the first time blacks in Georgia would be allowed to vote in the Democratic Party Primary. Talmadge and the Ku Klux Klan were doing everything they could to stop it. The FBI had swept into the state to investigate voter intimidation and were hot on Talmadge's trail. How many black voters would turn out? Nobody knew.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:40:15 Another reason Gene Talmadge's disciples were worried: His opponent was James Carmichael, an attractive, well- funded business leader from just outside Atlanta. Carmichael was comfortable campaigning as a racial progressive. Now, Talmadge had always boasted that he can, quote: "Carry any county that ain't got streetcars." Carmichael seemed certain to sweep the vote in urban centers across the state, but Talmadge's inner circle had a more serious, and a much more secret, reason to worry.
Page 16! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:40:48 After many years of hard drinking, Gene Talmadge was dying. But more than Gene Talmadge's life hung in the balance, so did the Talmadge political dynasty upon which so many people depended. He'd been generous with political goodies to legislators, to farmers, to the country folk, and he'd freely handed out government jobs to his family and his friends. In the early 1930s, he was found to have packed the state's payroll with relatives, and he charged personal expenses to the government to the tune of $40,000. Today, that would be nearly $700,000. But none of that, or the FBI, or Carmichael's popularity seemed to matter. In July 1946, Gene Talmadge won the Democratic Party Primary, but only in the strangest way.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:41:47 Now you may not believe this. When all the votes were counted, Gene Talmadge came in second place. Carmichael had 45% of the vote, Talmadge had 43%. Carmichael wins, right? Nope, not in Georgia. The popular vote didn't matter. See, thanks to a tricky little device that rural legislators had built into Georgia's election laws, a device they called the county unit system, votes that were cast in small rural counties counted more than votes cast in large urban counties. I'm serious. This may remind you of the electoral college in our presidential elections, and it should. In Georgia, the county unit system assured that rural interests held control of statewide offices, the Governor or Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Agricultural Commissioner and so on, and it prevailed for 45 years until the early 1960s.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:42:57 But back to 1946. While Gene Talmadge won only 43% of the popular vote, he swept the rural counties across the state and won 60% of the county unit vote. Gene Talmadge wins. He then easily prevails in the rubber stamp general election in November and his dynasty is intact. Except, as we said, he was dying, and die he did in December 1946, just a few weeks before he was supposed to take the oath for his fourth term as Georgia governor.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:43:39 The death of Gene Talmadge led to one of the oddest moments in Southern history, the Three Governors Controversy, in which for two months three men would lay claim to the governor's seat. This is Melvin Thompson who was elected Lieutenant Governor the same day Talmadge was elected governor.
Melvin Thompson: 00:43:57 My contention is that the people elected me Lieutenant Governor of the State of Georgia knowing that I would succeed to the governorship in an emergency which now exists. I have a mandate from the people which I must carry out.
Page 17! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:44:13 That would seem to make sense. Governor-elect dies, Lieutenant Governor gets sworn in and becomes Governor, but that's not what the Talmadge inner circle had in mind. They were holding on to another secret, and they were about to reveal it. Turns out that during the primary campaign privately aware the Gene Talmadge might not live, they'd arranged for 1,000 Talmadge supporters to cast write-in ballots for Gene Talmadge's son, Herman Talmadge.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:44:48 They were relying on a vague and little-known clause in the state's constitution. Gene Talmadge's friends concluded that Herman Talmadge, if he had more write-in votes than anyone else, could become governor by a vote of the legislature. Now, don't ask me how such a provision could ever have been devised to give a write-in candidate equal standing with the candidate on the ballot who got more votes, but it played to their strength. They knew the legislature was in the back pocket of the Talmadges.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:45:23 So of course the Lieutenant Governor, Melvin Thompson, protested. "This was not a monarchy," he said. "Herman Talmadge wasn't even on the ballot and you're going to make him governor now just because of his name, his lineage?" The sitting governor, Ellis Arnall, felt the same way. Now this gets good here. Arnall was a racial moderate who detested anything to do with Talmadge. He wanted Thompson to become governor. So Arnall found another provision in the very same Georgia Constitution to show how he remained governor until a successor was legally chosen. Here's a clip from Ellis Arnall.
Ellis Arnall: 00:46:00 I fear no man. I stand alone without the military to defend the Constitution and laws of Georgia and to preserve the rights of the people to see that the man they intended to be governor is installed, and that this office is not given to a pretender and a usurper.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:46:20 But more surprises lay ahead. When the legislature, at Herman Talmadge's bidding, went through the routine exercise of counting the write-in ballots in order to coronate him, guess what? The Talmadge camp had miscalculated. He had received far fewer than a thousand votes, and even worse for them, he had come in second among those receiving in write-in votes. The succession, the dynasty, appeared doomed.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:46:50 But in a melodramatic moment that would rival any film noir from the 1940s, at the last minute, guess what appears? A box of uncounted write-in votes. And where do you think they came from? Herman Talmadge's home, Telfair County. Those votes put Talmadge in the lead. The legislature wasted no time to call for a vote. This was the
Page 18! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
stuff of theater, of high comedy and low tragedy. The newsreels that Americans saw at the movie theaters at the time dished out a heavy dose of it.
Newsreel Audio: 00:47:28 Talmadge, whose claim to the governorship is supported by the state legislature, presents his side.
Herman Talmadge: 00:47:34 The legislature elected me governor of Georgia by a vote of 161 to 87. I have accepted my election, have taken my oath of office, and am now at my desk attending to the duties of my office.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:47:55 But Ellis Arnall didn't stand down.
Newsreel Audio: 00:47:57 Here Mr. Arnall is denied occupancy of his modest rotunda office in a heated argument with a burly state representative.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:48:07 In March 1947, after two months of wrangling, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Herman Talmadge had no rightful claim on the office. They ruled that Lieutenant Governor Thompson was officially the governor. But, they added, there should be a special election in less than two years' time in the fall of 1948. Melvin Thompson took over the office of governor, but Herman Talmadge was not going away. These two men would soon face each other again in the fateful 1948 special election for governor. We're going to tell you about that in episode two of Buried Truths.
Announcer: 00:48:56 CREDITS: Buried Truths is hosted by Hank Klibanoff, former reporter, editor, and coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Race Beat, and today he's a professor at Emory University. Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas. The executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Please subscribe to the show, and if you have a moment, leave us a review in Apple Podcast. We'd love to hear what you think, and your review will help others find the show. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to this email address, [email protected]. You can also follow us on social media at Buried Truths Podcast. There you'll find photographs and documents related to this case. We had help on this episode from the nearly 100 students who've taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases class that Hank Klibanoff teaches at Emory. Thanks to Professor Brett Gadsden whether helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to 2 former students, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Thanks to Emery University and its Centers for Digital Scholarship and Faculty Excellence for their support. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 19! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Episode 2: Fall, Isaiah, Fall
Hank Klibanoff: 00:50:20 This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff. In Alston, Georgia, a sleepy little farming community in Montgomery County, it's a hot and sunny election morning. There's one major intersection, West Broad Street and Railroad Avenue, and today is voting day, September 8th, 1948. It's a grand occasion for a small town. Communities like this would routinely hang the red, white, and blue bunting and the American flag with 48 stars. Here in Alston, black residents from all over the area will vote. People like Dover Carter, head of the NAACP. Here's his son, Aaron Carter.
Aaron Carter: 00:51:10 I think the injustice that he saw was the thing that motivated him.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:51:17 Another voter today: Isaiah Nixon, the farmer. His daughter, Dorothy, says her dad was absolutely going to vote.
Dorothy Nixon: 00:51:25 He wasn't afraid, because if he was afraid he would not have gone.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:51:30 And another black voter today, John Harris, the handyman. He's the one who shared the story at the end of the last episode about a white man who'd walked uninvited into an NAACP meeting at a black church. He was carrying a whip. We learned about John Harris in this disturbing story from his son James Harris.
James Harris: 00:51:58 So he would walk in the church, walk from the back to the front with his whip. Said he would walk up the aisle and pop it and go out the door. They say he never said anything.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:52:15 Today is a special election for Georgia governor. Two men are running. There's the moderate and incumbent, Melvin Thompson, and he's up against . . . well, he's up against the Talmadge dynasty and the Ku Klux Klan as they seek to regain their power. Only this time, the Talmadge on the ballot is not the late Gene Talmadge, but his son, Hermon Talmadge. But given the way the Talmadge political machine, and the Klan, have been intimidating black voters in South Georgia over the last few weeks, the big question is who's going to show up? Who's going to vote?
Hank Klibanoff: 00:52:50 One of the voters today, John Harris, he's on his way to the polls. Two clusters of men had gathered outside the polling places, one's white, the other black. Now for the white men, this is a place of long held traditions and community. For the black men, it's now a place of opportunity and defiance.
Page 20! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 00:53:25 The first sign of trouble comes with a gesture from a white man sitting in a light blue Ford. That man is Claude Sharpee. He's 6' 2", 225 pounds, and he'd been elected sheriff of Montgomery County. He'd take office in January. Now he's gesturing at a group of black men gathered together. One of them, yes, John Harris, walks over to his car. Now the two men knew each other pretty well, but on this tense day, when these black men were about to test their new legal right to vote, that didn't mean that John Harris could ignore Claude Sharpee's beckoning wave. He had to go visit.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:54:13 Now before we get to what they talked about, let me pause here for a moment to tell you what it meant to be sheriff in the South back then. You know, it'd be hard to have seen news and media accounts of the last 60 years without noticing how rural Southern sheriffs were portrayed, you know, large and in charge, all powerful, corrupt, bullheaded enforcers of the law, and many were. It wasn't an accident that sheriffs were such potent forces.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:54:43 In the rural South, many counties had virtually no other government, no cities. And without a city government or with only small, weak towns, the county was the basic form of local government, sometimes the only form. So instead of several police departments with small jurisdictions, all that fell to the sheriff, so he had a lot of power. He had the power to arrest you. He had the power to look the other way. The power to hand out jobs. The power to deputize just about anyone, a lazy son, a hard drinking cousin, a local klansman.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:55:21 When it came to enforcing the laws of the South, it also meant one other thing, enforcing the customs and the practices of white supremacy. Why? Get this, legislators in southern states were changing laws to require racial segregation, to mandate racial discrimination, and the chief enforcer of these laws and the established ways of southern life, yes, the sheriff.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:55:56 So here, in Alston, this incoming sheriff, Claude Sharpee, sits in his light blue Ford outside the polling place. The black man he's summoned, John Harris, walks up to him. The other black men look on uneasily. Their conversation took place not too far from what today is the town's most colorful icon, a large, red train caboose. It's probably only 50 paces from the old polling place. So I went to the same area, right where these two men spoke, to hear what happened next. To get the story, I spoke with John Harris' son, James.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:56:36 Tell me where we're standing in terms of past history.
Page 21! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
James Harris: 00:56:40 We're standing where the old polling place used to be back in 1948.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:56:46 The polling place is here, and the African-American men who have decided to vote, including your father, are standing . . .
James Harris: 00:56:55 Over here by this service station where it used to be right over here, right in front of us.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:57:00 Can you tell us the story though of what happened?
James Harris: 00:57:03 From what I always heard, was told that Claude Sharpee, he called for my father to come to his car and he wanted to talk with him. He told him that if he knew what was best that he wouldn't vote. So my father said, "You know, well maybe you don't know what's best for me, you know, but I'm going to vote."
Hank Klibanoff: 00:57:25 So John Harris goes back to his friends. He tells them of Claude Sharpee's grim words.
James Harris: 00:57:31 So they asked him, "Well, what are you going to do?" He say, "I came here to vote and I reckon that's what I'm going to do." And so he voted. Man of few words, but when he said something, he meant it.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:57:51 But that warning from Claude Sharpee was enough to put John Harris's wife, Sadie, on high alert. She quickly put the kids in the house, some of them got under the beds. Even in that sweltering south Georgia heat, she began nailing up windows and doors. John Harris's daughter, Rosa, was thirteen at the time, and she remembers that election day in 1948 very well.
Rosa: 00:58:18 That was the year I'd never forget.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:58:21 When I said I was there to talk to her about the election of 1948, her eyes narrowed, she sat straight up, and she looked me in the eye, and she began recalling a lot of detail from 70 years earlier.
Rosa: 00:58:37 Because my mother had us locked in so tight, and it was so hot, that this wood house with windows, but she had it nailed up. She felt that if we were all together, it was all locked in, we would be safe. We'd become prisoners that night.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:59:01 Her mother was hammering in the final nails just as her father, John Harris, returned from casting his vote. Even in the face of that fear that he saw in his wife and his kids, John Harris was not second-guessing his decision to vote.
Page 22! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Rosa: 00:59:16 That was the one thing that my daddy stood firm on is voting. From the day that I can remember until the day he passed, he was always firm on the voting.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:59:35 So with the Harris family locked up in their home and fearful for what might happen next, I want to turn my attention to Dover Carter. Remember now, he was the head of the local chapter of the NAACP, which by 1948 had an impressive 100 members. Dover Carter had been working for 2 years to make voting a reality for the black community here, and now on election day he was all in. He even planned to use his own pickup to shuttle black voters to the polls.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:00:06 Now what I've told you about Dover Carter to this point comes mainly from his children, including his son, Aaron, who tells me that Dover Carter was just a very religious man. He and the other children can recall being awakened at night hearing Dover Carter praying from his bedroom or walking around the house quoting scripture.
Aaron Carter: 01:00:29 He quoted it loud enough that if you was in the house, you heard him.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:00:32 Dover Carter's children described him as a quiet man, strict, serious, with a fairly simple prescription for life.
Aaron Carter: 01:00:40 He was a God fearing man. I think his attitude was that the Lord will protect me.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:00:48 He was in his early 40s and he was responsible for a wife and 10 children. By helping people get to and from the polls on this election day, Dover Carter was putting a lot on the line.
Aaron Carter: 01:01:02 Well, he went on and did what he was asked to do, and that is pick up people and take them back and forth to poll.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:01:10 Now just a few days before this election, Dover Carter faced a direct threat from the Ku Klux Klan. He was walking near his home shortly after a Klan rally had been taking place nearby. A klansman drove by. He pointed a finger at him and said four words meant to intimidate and rattle him, four words that Dover Carter would remember for the rest of his life. Those words, "There he is now."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:01:48 In rallying black voters, Dover Carter's scope wasn't limited just to men. He'd inspired quite a few women to go to the polls as well. So when Dover Carter made his way into Alston to vote, he brought his wife, Bessie Carter, who had cast her vote as well. But the threats and the scare tactics on this election day would not end.
Page 23! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 01:02:16 Through the day, Dover Carter would shuttle more voters to the polls. In the afternoon, he was driving a woman and her son. They were on a winding road in Alston when suddenly a black sedan came up fast from behind and passed him. As Dover Carter came around the curve in the road he saw the same car, and now it was blocking the road. He had no choice but to stop his truck. He saw two white men inside the car. Once again, here's Dover Carter's son, Aaron.
Aaron Carter: 01:02:47 And so the fellas got on the curve and blocked the highway, and so when he got to the curve he had to stop, and that's when they approached him.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:02:55 As they approached, the woman and son riding with Dover Carter ran off leaving him alone in his truck. The two men walked toward him. Dover Carter recognized them. One was 22-year-old Johnnie Johnson. He hauled logs and pulpwood for a living. He had two scars on his face, one running between his eyes and up into his forehead. The other was 34-year-old Thomas Wilson. Wilson was an auto mechanic.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:03:21 These two men, brothers-in-law, knew that Dover Carter had been shuttling people back and forth to the polls. What Johnson and Wilson would do would be exactly what you might expect on this final day of another scruffy, race- baiting political campaign. They'd hear the echo of Gene Talmadge and the more recent call from his son, Herman, to return the Democratic party to its all white purity and to punish those who sullied it. And now, here on this road, these two white men would respond.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:03:59 So Johnnie Johnson approached over Carter's truck with these words, "We're going to beat the hell out of you." Dover Carter had a shotgun in his truck on the floorboard next to him.
Aaron Carter: 01:04:09 He reached down. He had a pump shotgun. He reached down to get that and guy put a gun to his head and told him he touched it he would blow his brains out.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:04:17 The guy was Thomas Wilson. He held his own shotgun on Dover Carter as Johnnie Johnson began a ferocious two- fisted beating that lasted so long that he had to periodically stop and rest. The assault was severe enough to leave Dover Carter with a broken wrist. He was bruised and he was bleeding from the head.
Aaron Carter: 01:04:40 They continued to beat him until he cried out, "Lord, have mercy." And when he cried out, he said it seemed like something came between him and the man and knocked the fella back. And if he hadn't have cried out, "Lord, have
Page 24! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
mercy," he probably would've continued to beat him, probably beat him to death.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:04:59 Johnnie Johnson and Thomas Wilson told Dover Carter they were willing to stop beating him if he promised to not bring any more people to the polls. But that's exactly where Dover Carter would go. He dragged himself back into his pickup truck and he returned to the polling place. There he told election officials of his ordeal and asked for help. Soon he'd make his way home. So let's look at where we stand. The Harris family is huddled in fear inside a boarded up, overheated farmhouse. Dover Carter is bloodied and battered, his wrist is broken, but at least he's home now, and a white doctor has treated him. And yet, at the farmhouse of Isaiah Nixon, the worst was yet to come. We'll bring you that story in a moment. This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:05:58 This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff. Now when we left off, Dover Carter had been stopped on the side of the road by two white men and badly beaten, but he's seen a doctor and is now home. So next, let's look at what happened to Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:06:23 As Isaiah Nixon drove home from the polls on his horse and wagon, we could only imagine how he felt. He joined with other black residents in Alston to cast his vote. He'd brought his mom with him today, Daisy Davis, and she, too, had cast her vote. Now I don't know for certain, but I'm thinking they might have been in a hurry to get home. Isaiah Nixon's wife, Sally, had given birth recently and was home with the six kids. But at the same time, I'm thinking that perhaps they were driving home in silence, quietly pleased. By voting, they'd done what they wanted to do, and they'd done what they needed to do.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:07:07 Later that afternoon, Dorothy Nixon, who as six at the time, was with her grandmother, Daisy, in the garden alongside the farmhouse. They heard a commotion out front. They could see two white men had pulled up in a black car. Well, it was the familiar faces of the Johnson brothers. They were parked in front of the farmhouse. Now their arrival wouldn't ordinarily be a cause for concern. The Johnsons had grown up with Isaiah Nixon. Here's his daughter, Dorothy.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:07:37 My grandmother said they played with my daddy when they were kids. They ate at her table.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:07:44 The men who had just arrived, the ones who played with Isaiah Nixon when they were all kids, were Johnnie Johnson . . he'd just beaten up Dover Carter . . . and his older brother, 32-year-old Jim Atlas Johnson, known to all
Page 25! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
as Jim A. Like his younger brother, he too hauled logs and pulpwood for a living.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:08:08 We heard the commotion. So we could hear really good when they said, "Isaiah, come out here."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:08:14 But it was the way they called out for Isaiah Nixon that concerned Dorothy's grandmother, Daisy.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:08:21 We heard them say, "Isaiah, come out here." Well, my grandmother, I just followed her out. I'm not sure that the voices alerted me that something was wrong necessarily, but it sure alerted her.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:08:35 So potent, so visceral was this call, "Isaiah, come out here," that a neighbor visiting with the Nixons at the time heard the tone of their voice and he literally ran away. Jim A. got out of the car with a revolver in his hand, and Johnnie got out of the other side with a shotgun. Jim A. did all the talking. Isaiah Nixon stepped out of the farmhouse onto the porch. A wire fence separated the Johnson brothers from Isaiah Nixon, but Jim A. climbed over it. Johnnie stood on the other side with his shotgun pointed toward the house.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:09:18 And he came out and they wanted him to come, and he said, "No." So he walked down the steps.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:09:26 Jim A. approached Isaiah Nixon. He had two questions, had he voted, and who did he vote for? Nixon said he reckoned he voted for Mr. Thompson. That was the wrong answer. And now, the Johnson brothers insisted that Isaiah Nixon go for a ride with them.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:09:50 Daddy wouldn't get in the car, wouldn't go with them, and they wanted to take him away.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:09:55 Dorothy's mom, Sally Nixon, who had just given birth 13 days earlier, watched the face off. The men stood just a few feet apart. Isaiah Nixon began backing away.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:10:07 Next thing I know, they were shooting.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:10:10 Isaiah Nixon's mother, his wife, his children, watched as Jim A. Johnson shot Isaiah Nixon three times.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:10:22 He just kept taking bullets. My mother came out, and said, "Fall, Isaiah, fall!"
Hank Klibanoff: 01:10:29 But, Isaiah Nixon, either he couldn't fall, or he wouldn't fall.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:10:34 She said, "Fall!" He fell.
Page 26! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 01:10:41 Jim A. Johnson turned. He climbed back over the wire fence. He got in the car, and the Johnson brothers left.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:10:52 Sally Nixon rushed to her husband's side. He'd been shot twice in the legs, once in the stomach. The grandmother, Daisy, and the children watched as Sally, a small woman who had been on bedrest, did something entirely unexpected.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:11:07 You'd be surprised what adrenaline will do. It's unbelievable, as small as she was. She picked him up.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:11:17 She carried him up the three steps to the farm house porch, then into the house, and onto their bed. Isaiah Nixon was badly wounded. The gunshots, at close range, had pierced his liver, his stomach, his small intestines, his kidney, were all damaged. He needed to get to a hospital. But how? He didn't have a car. His horse and wagon certainly wouldn't cut it. He didn't have a telephone to call anyone.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:11:46 And then after that, it was just a lot of commotion. All I heard was him moaning and moaning.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:11:53 Moaning and moaning. Finally, someone reached a family friend with a car.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:11:59 It seemed like forever before they picked him up. They did before the night was over. They took him.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:12:06 They got Isaiah Nixon in the car, then faced the hard reality that the closest hospital that would take a black man was Claxton Hospital in Dublin, Georgia, two counties and 52 miles away.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:12:24 There was no quick or smooth route to Dublin. Even today you'd still be mostly on state roads, but back then, they weren't fully paved. Today it takes about an hour. Back then, with the life bleeding out of Isaiah Nixon, it would take forever.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:12:49 People have questioned me many times. "How you remember so vividly?" I can see it, now. It was because I lived it, every day, for a long time.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:13:14 Back in Alston, as night falls, John Harris' family is still boarded up in their home. At the Dover Carter farmhouse, friends and relatives were arriving. Many of them, are armed. As his son, Aaron Carter recalls, they would keep watch that entire night.
Aaron Carter: 01:13:33 They was at the front of the house, back of the house, and out in the field. I know that they came to protect him. There
Page 27! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
had to be fear. And there had to be some, how can I say it, some love and concern, that they would put their lives on the line for him.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:13:58 Put their lives on the line to protect Dover Carter from the Ku Klux Klan, or from the guys who beat him up.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:14:08 On the evening of September 8th, 1948, the returns are coming in. It becomes clear, that Herman Talmadge, the Talmadge Dynasty, and the Klan, have prevailed. Herman Talmadge will go on to become governor.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:14:27 The next morning Dover Carter gets out of Alston. His broken wrist and his sore body are a painful reminder of his beating. He's headed to the nearest hospital. That hospital, yes, is the same Claxton Hospital in Dublin where he sees his good friend Isaiah Nixon. No doubt lying in a hospital bed. Nixon, struggling to live, to return to his farm, to see his family, to hold his newborn son.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:14:57 Isaiah Nixon begins to speak. He describes, in detail, how the Johnson brothers came to his farmhouse with their guns out, asked him about his vote, then shot him. Dover Carter is stunned. He's hearing an even more harrowing tale than his own. Nixon's words make an indelible impression. This is a story Dover Carter will never forget. After this conversation, well, Dover Carter has a decision to make. Would he turn around and head back home, back to Alston? Or would he be as courageous as he was when he started that chapter of the NAACP? Or when he watched as the Klansman pointed him out on the street? Or when he stepped into a voting booth for the very first time?
Hank Klibanoff: 01:16:05 For now, I can tell you this. Had Dover Carter not done what he was about to do, I wouldn't be able to share this story with you now, these 70 years later. What Dover Carter did and how we came to know about it, is a pretty astonishing story. That's all on the next episode of Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Announcer: 01:16:45 CREDITS: Buried Truths is hosted by Hank Klibanoff, former reporter, editor, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, "The Race Beat." Today, he's a professor at Emory University. Buried Truths is produced by David Baraosain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas. The executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Please subscribe to the show, and if you have a moment, leave us a review in Apple Podcast. We'd love to hear what you think, and your review will help others find the show. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to this email address: [email protected]. You can also follow us on social
Page 28! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
media, at Buried Truths Podcast. There you'll find photographs and documents related to this case. We had help on this episode from the nearly 100 students, who've taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases Class, that Hank Klibanoff teaches at Emory. Thanks to professor Brett Gadsden, who helped create and teach the corse. Special thanks to two former students, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Thanks to Emory University and its Centers for Digital Scholarship and Faculty Excellence, for their support. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 29! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Episode 3: Trial…and Error
Hank Klibanoff: 01:17:59 This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:18:05 Where are we in the story? Election day, 1948. It started with hope for the black community. Their choice for governor, Melvin Thompson, had lost. The heir apparent to the Talmadge dynasty, still echoing his father's white supremacy, Herman Talmadge, would soon take office. For some of the black men who did vote despite warnings, there were dire consequences. John Harris, the handyman, returned home to find that his wife had nailed up the house with the kids inside. He joined them, fearful of what might happen next. Dover Carter, head of the NAACP, had been stopped on a winding road and severely beaten by two white men. His good friend Isaiah Nixon, the farmer, had been shot three times, was critically injured, and was fighting for his life at a hospital in Dublin, Georgia.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:19:04 Dover Carter goes there, sees Nixon, and hears about his terrifying day.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:19:15 Now, Dover Carter is faced with a decision: Head back home, back to his farm and his family, near Alston, or tell authorities what he's heard. What authority would he tell? Dover Carter remained a man on a mission, but now, having seen Isaiah Nixon struggling to live, his mission had changed, dramatically.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:19:39 Leaving Claxton Hospital, Dover Carter made a critical decision. He headed north, straight to Atlanta. There he went to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the FBI.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:19:57 By doing this, Dover Carter is not just leaving his family for a while. He's taken a major risk. He's been warned not to talk about his beating. Knowing what he now knows about Isaiah Nixon, he decides that he must.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:20:13 He's at the FBI, where he sits with a special agent and begins talking and telling. His conversations with the FBI, well they left a large paper trail, which gives a lot of detail, especially in regard to his severe beating on that winding road. Dover Carter's statement is so vivid, that we've asked an actor to read some passages from it.
Actor Dover: 01:20:46 My name is Dover Carter. I live on a farm outside of Ailey, Georgia. On September 8th, 1948, I drove to Alston.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:20:55 Up to now, what we've told you about Dover Carter's beating comes from his family members. We found a lot of documents the family had never seen. We've got FBI interviews with Dover Carter, a deposition, stacks of memos, and other papers from the NAACP, including
Page 30! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
letters he wrote, letters he received. In all, more than 500 pages.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:21:19 In a couple of instances, for clarity, we've edited Dover Carter's statement and his story.
Actor Dover: 01:21:25 On September 8th, 1948, I drove to Alston, to vote in the Georgia Democratic Primary.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:21:31 On the morning of that election day, you may recall, Dover Carter and his wife nearly had a head on collision. That's because the sheriff-elect, Claude Sharpe, had swerved his light blue Ford into their lane, several times. To avoid an accident, Dover Carter had to take evasive action.
Actor Dover: 01:21:48 I pulled my car onto the shoulder and kept going. When I arrived at the polls, Mr. Sharp also arrived, immediately afterward.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:21:56 Dover Carter was at the polling place so that his wife could vote. The record shows he'd spend the day shuttling black voters to and from the polls.
Actor Dover: 01:22:05 The poll manager, Mr. Marvin McBride...
Hank Klibanoff: 01:22:07 McBride, a white man who is quietly organizing black voters to get them to the polls, he was rounding up those votes for governor Melvin Thompson, that is, against Herman Talmadge.
Actor Dover: 01:22:19 ...Mr. Marvin McBride gave me a list of all the registered colored that had not voted, and requested me to get them to the polls, as quickly as possible.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:22:27 That's what he did. We're not sure how many people he got to the polls, on election day. As the head of the NAACP in Montgomery County, we can guess it was as many as he could possibly get there. Later in the day, Dover Carter was driving on that winding road. He was driving a woman and her son away from the polls after she had voted.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:22:49 That's when two white men, Johnnie Johnson, and his brother-in-law, Thomas Wilson, accelerated past Dover Carter's truck and blocked the road in front of him. The men got out of their car and approached.
Actor Dover: 01:23:01 Thomas Wilson continued to advance toward me, with his gun pointed on me, until he was close enough to point the gun through my right car door to my side. He demanded that I get out the car, stated that they were going to kill me.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:23:14 Seeing this, the passengers in his truck quickly ran off. Johnnie Johnson yanked Dover Carter's door open and
Page 31! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
began striking him. It was a two-fisted assault. With each blow, Dover Carter noticed something. Johnnie Johnson was holding a weapon in each hand.
Actor Dover: 01:23:31 Mr. Johnnie Johnson continued to beat me with a piece of iron fastened to his arm and with fist knucks.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:23:38 Fist knucks, you know, brass knuckles.
Actor Dover: 01:23:40 As they spoke to me, I could not answer both of them at the same time, because Mr. Johnnie Johnson was continuing to beat me, as fast as he could, with both hands, until he stopped to rest a moment. Then, he began attacking me again. He continued to beat me until my head was bloody and my hands were paralyzed.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:23:59 According to Dover Carter's statement to the FBI, a car passed during this incident. A light blue Ford, driven by sheriff-elect, Claude Sharpe.
Actor Dover: 01:24:10 At this time, I noted a blue Ford pass. Mr. Claude Sharpe was driving. Mr. Johnnie Johnson stopped long enough to see who was passing and laughed at Mr. Claude Sharpe.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:24:21 Did you hear that? Johnnie Johnson, while beating Dover Carter, looks up to see who was passing by. He sees Claude Sharpe, and then, he laughs at Claude Sharpe. Picture this, the two men, that's the soon-to-be sheriff, Claude Sharpe, and the man who's beating Dover Carter, Johnnie Johnson, are locking eyes with each other, and then ... Let's listen to what happens next.
Actor Dover: 01:24:43 Mr. Sharpe laughed back. Mr. Johnson continued beating me.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:24:54 That beating continued for about 25 minutes. Eventually, the beating would stop.
Actor Dover: 01:25:01 They demanded that I turn my truck around, go home, and not haul anymore people to the polls, nor be caught at the polls anymore, and they'd better not hear me say anything about this.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:25:13 And so here I got to pause to point out one really important fact: Had Dover Carter abided by this warning, had he just gone home and shut up, we wouldn't know this story. Not just this incident on the road, we wouldn't know about the warning that Claude Sharpe gave John Harris. We wouldn't know the story of the shooting of Isaiah Nixon. All of that would of been lost to history.
Page 32! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 01:25:38 So it's fair to say that this entire podcast was built on the foundation of Dover Carter's courage to tell his stories to federal authorities.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:25:53 After the beating Dover Carter went home. Then, he went to a doctor and was treated for his severe injuries. The one thing he knew is that he'd better remain scarce. Knowing that his family was being taken care of in Alston, he stayed in Atlanta for a while.
Actor Dover: 01:26:11 The reason I came to Atlanta was that I feared that another attempt might of been made on my life.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:26:25 All of this, everything he says, goes into the FBI memos, and soon, the memos will be on their way to the FBI office in Savannah, and to the FBI Headquarters in Washington, DC. Dover Carter also shares his stories with the largest black newspaper in the south, "The Atlanta Daily World."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:26:52 Back in the Claxton Hospital, on September 10th, Isaiah Nixon died. With that, Daisy Davis lost her only child, Sally Nixon lost her husband, and six children lost their father. Among those children, was one who had been born only 15 days earlier, a son, and they had named him, Isaiah Nixon Jr. The death of Isaiah Nixon makes the charges against Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson even more serious. This is not just a shooting. It's a killing. As far as the current sheriff is concerned, Sheriff R. M. McCrimon, this is murder. Keep in mind, that Sheriff McCrimon is only in office for a couple more weeks. Claude Sharpe, who had defeated him a few weeks earlier in the election for sheriff, will soon take his place.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:28:07 Since Sheriff McCrimon still has the power to act, he does. He arrests the two Johnson brothers. He does something else. He makes an important declaration. He says that Isaiah Nixon was shot because he had voted. That declaration from a white sheriff in South Georgia at a time like that was instant news. " The Associated Press" picked it up, released it around the country, and a brief story even made it into "The New York Times."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:28:44 What about Dover Carter? The sheriff made no arrests on that assault, even though Johnnie Johnson and Thomas Wilson wouldn't deny that they'd beaten him. Instead, they'd claimed that Dover Carter tried to provoke them. That he'd accelerated, nearly crashed into the back of their car. These men were going to claim self-defense.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:29:08 Let's stay on this for a second. The two white men, Johnnie Johnson and Thomas Wilson, are saying that Dover Carter, a quiet, prayerful man, a father of 10 children, with a woman and her son in his truck; Dover
Page 33! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Carter, who's trying to go unnoticed all day as he shuttles voters to the polls; Dover Carter, who as head of the NAACP has been building to this day, decided to risk it all by provoking these two armed white men.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:29:39 But wait, what about sheriff-elect, Claude Sharpe? You may remember that Dover Carter said he and his wife were nearly run off the road by him. These same FBI documents include a statement from Claude Sharpe. It reads: "At no time, during the day, did I see Dover Carter driving his car, and I did not, at any time, try to run him off of the road." What about the part of the story that we just heard? That Claude Sharpe drove by and saw the white men beating Dover Carter and laughed? Claude Sharpe would claim he wasn't even on that road that day. He was busy at the voting polls and didn't have time to leave. He also said he wasn't the sheriff at the time. Essentially, he didn't have the authority to intervene. But, he added, "I did not pass by the place where the fight was taking place. If I had passed, I would of stopped to see what was going on."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:30:38 I want to go back to Dover Carter's conversation in Atlanta with the FBI agent. This is really important. As Carter is telling the story of what's happened to him and to Isaiah Nixon, what's the agent listening for? It's simple. A reason to bring federal charges. Back then, it really wouldn't of been much of a federal case just because Isaiah Nixon and Dover Carter were attacked for voting. But the good possibility that the morning attack on Dover Carter and the afternoon shooting of Isaiah Nixon might be part of a conspiracy to deny them their votes, their civil rights, now that was a different matter. Because conspiracy would be a federal crime. After taking Dover Carter's statement, the FBI agent drafts a memo. He sends it by telex to the nation's top cop, FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. The agents writes that the beating and the shooting, quote, "Appear to be related and possibly part of an overall conspiracy." Those magic words, part of an overall conspiracy, land on Hoover's desk. Now, J. Edgar Hoover is well known, even in 1948, for believing that civil rights attacks belong with state and local prosecutors, not with the feds. Decisions over what crimes to prosecute and which ones to leave alone reside with his boss, the attorney general, but Hoover can influence those decisions, and he does.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:32:28 He does so by sending a memo up the chain of command at the Justice Department, but with one glaring omission: He drops that magic word, conspiracy. Instead, Hoover writes to an assistant attorney general, "You may desire to consider these complaints together." He closes by saying, "No investigation is contemplated, unless requested by you." One person deeply concerned about the election day assaults, was Thurgood Marshall, special counsel to the
Page 34! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
NAACP's legal defense fund. This was nearly 20 years before he'd take a seat on the US Supreme court. Thurgood Marshall sent a telegram straight to the governor of Georgia, Melvin Thompson, pushing him to do all he could to prosecute the men who beat Dover Carter and shot Isaiah Nixon on election day.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:33:29 "Use your full authority," he wrote. "Push vigorous prosecution. This type of intimidation, if permitted to go unpunished, will make our Constitution a farce." Now Governor Melvin Thompson, who was still in office for just a few weeks more and would soon be replaced by Herman Talmadge, responded.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:33:50 Melvin Thompson assured Thurgood Marshall that the Nixon killing is, "being pushed vigorously, by the prosecuting authorities." Then, the Governor added something, and this is something Melvin Thompson didn't really have to say, but he said it. "You may be assured of my willingness to do everything I can, as long as I am chief executive, to see that those violating the law are brought to justice."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:34:23 Meanwhile, word that a black farmer in a small Georgia town had been killed, that might not make national news, but when the sheriff announced that Isaiah Nixon was killed for voting, that was different. It resonated in the newsroom of a weekly newspaper, "The Pittsburgh Courier." The Courier was the most widely circulated black newspaper in America. That year, 1948, its circulation hit an astonishing 358,000 copies per week. It traveled from Pittsburgh by the busload to black communities, in every city, town, and crossroads in the south.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:35:09 " The Pittsburgh Courier" dispatched a reporter to Alston, Georgia, to investigate. His name: Alexander Rivera.
AlexanderRivera: 01:35:10 Hello?
Hank Klibanoff: 01:35:12 As a black reporter covering race news during those days in the south, Alexander Rivera had accumulated a lot of fascinating stories - the Isaiah Nixon story, for one. In an interview more than 50 years later, Rivera told the story of that trip. He was seated at his office desk.
AlexanderRivera: 01:35:29 Something happened that had never happened before in my whole life. Something told me, I don't know what the something was, to go dressed as a chauffer.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:35:41 Rivera figured that anyone who saw him dressed as a chauffer would think that he worked for someone important.
Page 35! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
AlexanderRivera: 01:35:46 It was easier traveling.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:35:48 Easier traveling. He drove a conspicuous Buick Roadmaster. Once he arrived in Alston, he sat out to find the home of Isaiah Nixon. He turned to a local man to ask for directions. Something seemed wrong, so Alexander Rivera approached the man cautiously.
AlexanderRivera: 01:36:06 Let me ask you something." You nervous?" "Yeah." I asked him, I said, "Did you know Isaiah Nixon?" He started speaking real fast. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I knew him. Yeah." I said, "You know where he lives?" He said, "Yeah."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:36:24 Rivera offered him $5, the equivalent of about $50 today, by the way. This local man agreed to take Rivera out to the Nixon farmhouse.
AlexanderRivera: 01:36:34 I photographed the family and the kids, interviewed the wife.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:36:39 The story of the killing of Isaiah Nixon would soon make its way to hundreds of thousands of "Pittsburgh Courier" readers.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:36:50 At this point, I got to stress, that there were very few eyewitnesses to the shooting of Isaiah Nixon. There's his daughter, Dorothy, of course, but there's another. I sat with her, and some of her family members at a retirement home.
Sally Nixon: 01:37:03 Look at them, two. Don't they look like twins?
Hank Klibanoff: 01:37:08 She's petite. She has an easy smile. She's 93 years old. It's Isaiah Nixon's wife, Sally Nixon.
Sally Nixon: 01:37:19 It's a privilege to meet all of you.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:37:22 At the time of Isaiah Nixon's death, he was 28, and Sally was 25. I was so happy to hear that she was still alive and so grateful for the opportunity to meet with her. I came with a lot of questions.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:37:38 After you met him, was it long before you decided to get married?
Sally Nixon: 01:37:42 No. (Laughing)
Hank Klibanoff: 01:37:46 He was ready? Sounds like you were, too?
Sally Nixon: 01:37:49 He was a few years older than I was.
Page 36! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 01:37:53 As we talked, Sally is totally delightful. She smiles as she tells me that her late husband was a nice enough fella. He wasn't that tall. He was maybe 5'7".
Hank Klibanoff: 01:38:03 Okay.
Sally Nixon: 01:38:03 Handsome.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:38:03 Yeah, he was handsome. I've seen the pictures.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:38:07 He was also cautious, on voting day in 1948, and he wouldn't let her go to the polls.
Sally Nixon: 01:38:14 I went with him everywhere he go. That day he wouldn't let me go. He didn't know whether he was going to make it back to the house or not.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:38:23 For now, she's happy to reflect and reminisce. We discuss an old photo of her husband. Well actually, it's the only photo of her husband. I tell her that I really like that hat that he's wearing.
Sally Nixon: 01:38:37 He had bought the hat. I buried him in the suit. And I sold his shoes back to the store.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:38:46 He had one suit, and she sold his shoes back to the store. We'll talk again with Isaiah Nixon's wife, Sally, and his daughter, Dorothy. We'll find out what happened, now that two men had been arrested for killing Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:39:02 There are some powerful stories coming up. I hope you'll stay with us. This is Buried Truths.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:39:18 Now to the funeral of Isaiah Nixon. It took place at the Flipper New Hope AME Church in Uvalda, Georgia. The entire Nixon family was there, and that includes Isaiah Nixon's six year old daughter, Dorothy, in a little, white dress.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:39:36 I remember the funeral. I don't remember leaving the house or nothing like that. I just remember getting to the church. I was sitting on the side, because I didn't want to sit up there where my sisters and everybody was. They let me do it. I remember every time my oldest sister looked at the casket and my daddy, she would faint. She just kept fainting, over and over. I remember that. I don't remember crying. I was just sitting there like numb, and even then, angry. Trying to understand, why would somebody kill my daddy?
Dorothy Nixon: 01:40:25 He was good. Why would they shoot him like that? I didn't understand anything about voting, and black/white situations, and that kind of thing. I just knew it was my
Page 37! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
daddy, and I didn't understand. I didn't want to be up there looking, so I just sat in the corner. I did a lot of corner sitting, for years, really. I was very angry.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:40:56 Sitting in the corner, not sitting with her family, at the funeral. Sitting off to the side. This became Dorothy's routine behavior. Her response to just about everything was to go hide and be alone.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:41:10 On the day that they shot him, the same afternoon and night, they'd have to get me from behind the house and bring me in. Days that followed, I'd be under the house or behind the house. If somebody came up, I would run and I would hide. As I was growing up, I was very much alert and knew, I wasn't mentally disturbed, but because I stayed to myself, they called me weird. I wasn't as weird as they thought, I just could not trust people. I didn't want to be around people.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:41:49 Even after the funeral, the pain and anger of all she's seen, just would not end. The nightmares would begin.
Dorothy Nixon: 01:41:59 I saw it over and over again. One of the things that I saw all the time, was hiding behind the house, just shaking, which it did happen. I had nightmares about being behind the house. That was the center theme, most of the time, was hiding behind the house, when people came.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:42:22 The funeral of Isaiah Nixon was well attended. Afterward, the family rode from the church and onto a dirt road, that went on and on, to the cemetery, deep in the woods of Montgomery County. This is not one of those sprawling cemeteries spread over rolling hills. It's a clearing in the woods. From just about anywhere you stand, you can see every grave site and every headstone. It was here, in mid September 1948, that Isaiah Nixon was buried.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:43:08 As Isaiah Nixon is being mourned and buried, state prosecutors are moving forward with the murder case against the Johnson brothers. Meanwhile, attorneys with the FBI and the Justice Department in Washington, Atlanta, and Savannah, they're not quite sure what to do. They've got two incidents, the Dover Carter beating and the Isaiah Nixon killing, with an overlap of family members, and they're being told out of Washington, this isn't a conspiracy. How do they get a foothold on this case?
Hank Klibanoff: 01:43:38 In Washington, lawyers in the Justice Department know that any case that they bring in rural Georgia might backfire. This is actual words from a federal attorney: "That it might inflame local sentiment and undermine the state's murder case." The feds decide to lay low and let the state go first. If needed, the feds can get involved, later.
Page 38! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 01:44:06 The trial for the murder of Isaiah Nixon, the State versus Jim A. Johnson and Johnnie Johnson, took place on November 4th 1948, less than two months after his death. We've searched and found no record of the court proceeding. We've got copies of the indictment. We've got the handwritten names of those in the jury pool, those selected for the jury. Yes, all white, all men, none of whom we could find still alive. There are no records of the proceedings. No court reporter's notes. No transcript. I should add that I always remain hopeful, that whoever was the court reporter at the trial, and took precise notes or maybe even recorded it, put the tapes or the notes in a closet or an attic that will some day be discovered and reveal what was said in the court room.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:45:04 Now remember we have been able to pull together a few hundred pages, some records that provide a fairly authoritative account of what happened. But before we get to the trial, let's have a quick recap as to what happened the day the Johnson brothers showed up at the Nixon farm. Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson asked Isaiah Nixon how he voted. When he told them that he voted for Melvin Thomson, that's when they insisted that he go for a ride with them. Now I've read all this in the documents, but I really wanna hear this story from Sally Nixon, so I asked for her account of what she saw that day.
Sally Nixon: 01:45:43 He said, "No, I'm not going with you, Jim A. You is a white man." Oh, he just loved my family to death, this Jim A. and Johnnie.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:45:51 What's she mean by that? That Jim A Johnson loved Isaiah Nixon, her husband? Well, as it turns out, and this is sort of an old South cultural fact, that black and white could grow up together, that Jim A. Johnson and Isaiah Nixon grew up as kids, played with each other as kids, Jim A. Johnson even had dinner inside the Nixon home. So on this day Sally Nixon is recalling that time, that period, that atmosphere for us, and she remembered what Jim A. said next.
Sally Nixon: 01:46:22 "Come on, go with us." He said, "No, I'm not going with you." "Well we want to just talk with you about what happened today." He said, "Ain't nothing happened, but I just voted."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:46:32 Just voted.
Sally Nixon: 01:46:33 "That's all." Well, if he's not going with his best friend, shoot him. Bam, bam, bam. He voted because black people had never voted before.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:46:49 Voted because black people had never voted before.
Page 39! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Sally Nixon: 01:46:52 He said, "No I ain't going with you." "Well, you voted." He said, "Yeah, I did that for my children."
Hank Klibanoff: 01:46:58 Did that for my children.
Sally Nixon: 01:47:01 Got them sitting right in front there.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:47:03 Motioning to her daughter Dorothy.
Sally Nixon: 01:47:05 She said, "Jim A., why you shoot our daddy?" And they ran.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:47:21 Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson would say that they'd come to Isaiah Nixon's farm house just to offer him a job. That's all. They were there to do him a favor and give him some work, and then, get this, they said Isaiah Nixon pulled a knife on them. That's right. At their trial they were going to claim self-defense. Now you've heard that alibi before in this episode, right? Remember the guys who beat up Dover Carter at gun point? They, too, claimed self-defense, saying that he nearly ran his truck into the car just to provoke them. Now, one of those same men, Johnnie Johnson, along with his brother, Jim A. Johnson are walking into court saying they were threatened a second time on the same day by another black man, Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:48:11 Self-defense. Let's discuss this more. I started off this podcast walking on the Nixon farm where all this took place, asking a question, "Who were we? As a people who were we that we allowed this to happen?" Well, here's who we were. In trial after trial, court room after court room across the South, whites accused of killing blacks could almost absolutely, without fail, win their freedom just by saying they acted in self-defense. It was as if white defendants, who were almost certain to face all white, all male juries, had a secret password that opened the door to freedom every time. But how and why did it work so automatically for white people? Why was this password, self-defense, a sure fire path to freedom? Because, and we white people in the South know this, because after decades of racist demagoguery, of myths about the primitive criminal behavior of black people, myths written into text books, into sermons, into racist jokes, into stories, even into bedtime stories, well, it didn't take a whole lot to convince jurors that even a good man like Isaiah Nixon, even if he was being offered a job, would suddenly revert to some completely primal behavior, and pull out a knife.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:49:48 I had mentioned in an earlier episode a story of a World War II vet, Maceo Snipes, who was shot and killed after he was the only black man to vote in Taylor County in 1946. Now, the man who killed him claimed he'd gone to see Snipes merely to collect a $10 debt, and that Snipes had
Page 40! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
pulled a knife, so he had to shoot him three times. Self- defense. Of course, it worked. You know, when word reached Atlanta that the Johnson brothers were claiming self-defense it was just too much for the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, Ralph McGill.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:50:28 At the time, the newspaper was the largest in the Southeast, and in his column, in which he invoked the killing of Maceo Snipes, McGill wrote these words, "That has a familiar ring. We have heard it when a prisoner was killed in his cell. We heard it two years ago when a negro was called to his door and shot after voting, "in self- defense."" Then Ralph McGill directly addressed the Johnson's alibi, "A man doesn't arm himself with a pistol when he goes to seek a hired hand." Now that sounds logical. Still we had to ask someone who saw it, Isaiah Nixon's daughter, Dorothy. I asked her about the Johnson brother's alibi, and about what she saw that day her father was shot. -- You know there's different stories as to whether your dad had a gun or a knife that they would later make up this thing-
Dorothy Nixon: 01:51:24 Oh, he didn't. He came 'cause he was in the back where my mother was. He came out. He had nothing in his hand. He knew better than that.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:51:41 You've heard me suggest that the bombastic speeches of political leaders like the Talmadges provoked some whites to act out against blacks. These political leaders used heated language spiced with a lot of code words to try to appeal to the nativist instincts of the white supremacist population. So, I'd like you to listen one more time to this clip of Herman Talmadge on the campaign trail. Listen for the direct racial appeal. The part about traditions, about principles, about birthright.
Herman Talmadge: 01:52:14 The other candidates for governor are opposed to a white primary. They know that the loss of the white primary will destroy our Southern traditions and principles, yet these self-seeking politicians would sell out their birthright that our grandfathers fought for, for a few votes.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:52:37 Well, that rhetoric that politicians used to push whites into a state of fear by appealing to their birthright, to their traditions, to their heritage, those code words worked their way into court rooms in defense of the Johnson brothers, and scores of others like them. Back to the trial of the Johnson brothers. The prosecution had lined up eight witnesses, including Isaiah Nixon's wife, Sally, his mother, Daisy Davis, two family friends who had been at the farm and witnessed the shooting, and the sheriff who had said the Johnsons killed Nixon because he voted.
Page 41! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 01:53:24 Now there's no indication in available court records who, if anyone, testified for the defense. Now get this, just days before the trial, the prosecutor who was going to present evidence against the Johnson brothers had to be replaced. He was sick. So, the judge in the case, Eschol Graham, had to quickly pick a substitute prosecutor. He selected a local attorney named N.G. Reeves Jr. Of course, this only gave Reeves very limited time to prepare. Only three days.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:53:57 We know little about the testimony that unfolded at the trial. We know all the prosecution witnesses were not called to testify. We know that Sally Nixon, when she took the stand, was on it for only 15 minutes. We know that the murder trial took about two hours, and jury deliberation took another two. We know, and this is surprising, that Judge Eschol Graham would later say that he didn't remember the issue of voting ever coming up at the trial. Here was the verdict. Jim Atlas Johnson, he's the man who shot Isaiah Nixon, not guilty. As for his brother Johnnie Johnson, a lesser known legal term was used, nolle prossed. Latin for we shall no longer prosecute. In other words, the entire case was over. Back in the retirement home with Sally Nixon, she knows everything I've just told you. She lived it, but one thing that still sticks with me is the nature of childhood friendships at that time and in that place. I grew up in the South, and I saw this. I saw black and white being friendly on the streets, but I had to ask her about that relationship between Jim A. Johnson and Isaiah Nixon. -- It's still hard to understand why two men who thought of themselves as friends would have killed Isaiah Nixon for voting.
Sally Nixon: 01:55:48 It's hard for you to understand. Because you're not like that. Well just know, it wasn't hard for us to understand. We know what kind of people they were. They had two faces, you know what that mean?
Hank Klibanoff: 01:56:06 Tell me.
Sally Nixon: 01:56:06 A good face and...another face.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:56:12 For the Nixon family, the shooting, the death, the verdict, it just changed their world; but stay with us, because things do get better for them. On the next episode, I'll tell you how the Nixon family moves on, how they get support from across the country, how they move into a new home designed by a famous architect, and how Sally Nixon ends up on a popular TV show. This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Announcer: 01:56:53 CREDITS: Hank Klibanoff is a former reporter, editor, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Race Beat. Today, he is a professor at Emory University. Buried
Page 42! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas, the executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Please subscribe to the show, and if you have a moment leave us a review in Apple Podcast. We'd love to hear what you think, and your review will help others find the show. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to [email protected]. You can follow us on social media at buriedtruthspodcast where you'll find photographs and documents related to the case. We appreciate the help we got today from the Southern Oral History Project and the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. They provided that interview with Alexander M. Rivera. We had help on this episode from the nearly 100 students who've taken the Civil Rights Code Case class that Hank Klibanoff teaches.Thanks to Professor Brett Gadsden who helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to two past students who have stayed close to this project, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Thanks to Emory University and its centers for digital scholarship and faculty excellence for their support. Finally, thanks to the actor David Atkins, who played the voice of Dover Carter. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 43! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Episode 4: Thousands of Friends
Hank Klibanoff: 01:58:35 This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff. Where do we stand? You may remember as we finished the last episode that the men accused of killing Isaiah Nixon had been found not guilty by an all white, all male jury. The defendants, the Johnson brothers, had used what I called the secret password. Now that's two simple words that in the rural South had kept white men out of jail for years after being accused of racial attacks. Those words, self- defense. It meant that the men, now free, could go back to their lives. But what about the three black families in this story? That's the family of Isaiah Nixon, the farmer who was shot and killed for voting, Dover Carter, the NAACP leader who was beaten on the side of the road, and John Harris. Let's start our story with him.
Hank Klibanoff: 01:59:35 The John Harris family. Now, you may remember his wife Sadie was the one who boarded up the house the morning of the 1948 election. They decided to stay in Alston and try to make the best out of a bad situation. We told you earlier that John Harris and the sheriff elect, Claude Sharpe, knew each other pretty well, and we had left it at that, but there's more. What we didn't tell you, more specifically, is that John Harris considered Claude Sharpe, now the sheriff elect, to be his friend. But to better understand why, well for that, let's go back to the morning of election day. The moment when Claude Sharpe in his light blue Ford beckons John Harris over. The story is told here by John Harris' son James.
James Harris: 02:00:26 He told me that he, Claude Sharpe, he called for my father to come to his car and he wanted to talk with him. He told him that if he knew what was best, that he wouldn't vote. He shouldn't vote.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:00:41 Now when I saw this in writing in the FBI documents I assumed this was a threat. "If you know what's best for you." But John Harris didn't hear it this way. He heard it more as a friendly warning, a caution, that something was about to go down, and that John Harris should stay away to avoid trouble. He saw it as a friendly warning because John Harris had known Claude Sharpe for years. They knew each other well because John Harris the handyman had worked for Claude Sharpe's father, and while doing so, John Harris had gotten to know the son. The son, Claude Sharpe.
James Harris: 02:01:24 Well, I know for a fact that Claude Sharpe and my father was very good friends.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:01:30 John Harris, now he's 12 years older than Claude Sharpe, he had taught Claude Sharpe how to plow when he was a
Page 44! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
boy. That is, the black guy taught the white kid how to keep the mules straight along the planting row, but it went the other way as well. Claude Sharpe also would claim John Harris as a friend. Sometimes he'd even make reference to their relationship when he was running for sheriff.
James Harris: 02:01:54 When Claude was running for sheriff, when he used to have those rallies, you know he would always say that my father helped raise him, my father taught him how to plow. And Claude would use that when it's election. That's to let the blacks know the relationship he had with black people, so he always used that in his speeches.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:02:27 Now, let's talk about friendship and what it means, friendship across the racial lines in the segregated South. On the surface you could find the occasional good, warm, relationship between blacks and whites at certain points in the history of the rural South. You could see black and white kids chasing each other through the woods wth stick rifles, shouting, swinging off branches into the water filled quarry, but these friendships would break apart.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:02:58 As the children turned to their teenage years they became defined by where they went to school, by where they sat in movie theaters, by where they got jobs. They were also defined by the stern admonitions of their white parents, and those admonitions underscored the conventional wisdom that black people were morally, and intellectually, and socially inferior. But some friendships appear to endure into adulthood. Here's a story James Harris tells about his father John Harris.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:03:37 Sometimes John Harris would have a bit too much to drink, and would get behind the wheel of his car, and on at least two occasions that we know of, Claude Sharpe pulled him over. But it wasn't to give him a ticket, or to carry him back to the jail. On both occasions, the sheriff just drove John Harris back home. But this was not the norm. In these years in the rural South there was no such thing as friendship among equals across racial lines. Friendships, if you could truly call them that, were going to be on the white man's terms.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:04:18 Still, I want to believe James Harris, that his father and Claude Sharpe were genuine friends. Now, James Harris would know this from personal experience. As a high school teen he worked on Claude Sharpe's farm for a few weeks each summer. James Harris says he never saw Claude Sharpe exhibit any evidence of racism. But how does that explain what happened on election day in 1948? Let's go back to the early morning warning, when now sheriff-elect, Claude Sharpe, talks to John Harris, here's James again.
Page 45! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
James Harris: 02:04:53 I guess he knew kind of like what was in the air, so that's why he was more like giving him a warning.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:05:01 He knew what was in the air? Okay, now that leads me to a really nagging question. If Claude Sharpe was a good guy, and if he wasn't racist, and if he wasn't trying to keep blacks from voting, and if he knows that something is in the air, why would he warn only his friend, John Harris? Let's not forget that Dover Carter said that Claude Sharpe tried to run him off the road, and Sharpe passed by Dover Carter's beating without stopping. Of course, Sharpe's excuse at the time was that it didn't happen, but then he added that he didn't get involved because he wasn't sheriff yet.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:05:38 Let's think about that. If Claude Sharpe had stopped those men, who beat up Dover Carter, then one of those same men might not have shown up at Isaiah Nixon's farmhouse a few hours later with a gun. Let's face it, these kinds of friendships across races in the American South, they're just difficult to explain. So when it comes to matters of race, libraries are filled with books by researchers of this period of the South, and what you'll find is that the researchers often came away bewildered. They'd found a region that was a bundle of contradictions built on paradoxes, incongruities woven into absurdities, and inconsistencies masked by...by a smile, and by Southern charm. So there're a couple of other important details here that I want to share with you. They come from James Harris, and he provided a significant detail about Isaiah Nixon's killing that his father learned from Sheriff Claude Sharpe. Sharpe revealed that the Johnson brothers had gone to the Nixon farm only with the intention of scaring Isaiah Nixon.
James Harris: 02:06:59 My father told me Claude told him that their intention was not to kill him. They was gonna get him, take him off in the woods, and beat him.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:07:10 To beat him, in other words, they weren't there to offer Isaiah Nixon a job, and of course, if they weren't there to offer him a job, then it's pretty easy to conclude that Isaiah Nixon didn't pull a knife.
James Harris: 02:07:22 Not necessarily kill him. I can kind of buy that, because that was... for the Klan, you know that's what they would do. They would come get you, take you off, and beat you up.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:07:33 There is absolutely plenty of evidence that the Klan did love to go around and just beat up people, but I have to quickly say, we don't know if Jim A, or Johnnie Johnson or Thomas Wilson were in the Klan. It's just not information
Page 46! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
we have. But this brings me to one nagging question. How did Claude Sharpe know this? How did he know that the Johnson brothers went to Isaiah Nixon's farmhouse only with the plan of beating him up? More than likely, because the men who did it told Claude Sharpe, but they didn't tell him because he was sheriff. They told him because he was their first cousin.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:08:21 The Harris family decides to remain in Alston. Now, let's turn our attention back to Dover Carter. He was the farmer, the NAACP organizer who was beaten on the side of the road in Alston on that election day. You may remember that he drove up to Atlanta and told the FBI all he'd seen, and all he'd learned, and he'd stay in Atlanta for the next three months, and he'd continue working with the NAACP there. But he's thinking of moving, moving north to Philadelphia where his brother lives. When the NAACP heard about what'd happened with Dover Carter they wanted to come to his aid, and they recognized that he could perhaps come to theirs.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:09:02 So, they drafted a press release seeking to raise money around the Dover Carter story, and once they sent it out, the money started coming in. San Jose branch chipped in $15. There was money coming from Orange County, Santa Anna, California, and finally, and this may have been the most gratifying for him, was $20 from the NAACP branch back in Montgomery County, his home county in Georgia. Some of the money from these donations would be used to help Dover Carter and his family, but the money was insufficient to support them, or to calm the fears that had become a constant presence in their lives. Put simply, the Carters could not stay, could not go back to their lives, so Dover Carter returned to the idea of moving North to join his brother. Dover Carter, his wife, and his 10 children got on a train, the Silver Meteor in Atlanta, and traveled north to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:10:17 Meanwhile, what's happened to the Isaiah Nixon family? Within months of his murder, his family would pack up and leave Alston. His widow, his six kids, his mother, they just couldn't stay. They find a tenant, say goodbye to the farm they loved, and head south to Jacksonville, Florida. This move is sudden, and this move is permanent. Even though the Isaiah Nixon family moved to Florida, and Dover Carter's family moved to Pennsylvania, their new lives had some similarities. For starters, they both moved in with family, they lived in crowded conditions. Here's Isaiah Nixon's daughter, Dorothy, talking about her new home in Jacksonville.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:11:05 I think it was just two bedrooms, but I know it was a little house, and I know four of us slept in this little bed, and two
Page 47! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
slept to the top, and two slept to the bottom, so we were just piled up on each other for a while.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:11:20 Now maybe that's a figure of speech, but with the Dover Carter family that would have been literal. In the winter of 1949, Dover Carter moved his wife and 10 children into a West Philadelphia apartment where his brother lived. But his brother had a wife, and five kids, so that's four adults, and 15 kids packed together. One NAACP official visiting the Dover Carter family came away deeply disturbed about their living conditions writing, "It was one of the most shocking scenes imaginable." Shocking because Dover Carter and his family were crammed into one-and-a-half rooms, and because they didn't have access to a kitchen, and because they had one stove. It was used to cook all the food, and heat all the rooms.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:12:18 Soon there were exchanges among local child welfare agencies that maybe the children of Dover and Bessie Carter would be better served if placed with other families. Down South in Jacksonville, Florida, the family of Isaiah Nixon would face the same question, should the children be moved? But both families reached the same conclusion. No, no matter what, the families would get through it together. For the kids, the adjustment to life off the farm out of Georgia, that was pretty tough. New environment, new friends, living in a city, some of the kids would get into fights. Here's Dover Carter's son, Aaron.
Aaron Carter: 02:13:06 Adjusting to the life here in Philly was, I guess, hard for me. Thing was, back then you didn't have counselors. I walked around with a chip on my shoulder, fighting practically every day in the week.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:13:20 Even Dorothy, who, at a young age, was quite a good student, got into an altercation with, of all people, a teacher.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:13:29 The teacher had this math problem that she put on the board, and I told her it was wrong. So, fast me, I walk up to the board and worked the problem correctly. She didn't like that, so she went to her desk and she threw the flower pot at me. She was wrong. Today she'd lose her job. So, I went up and I hit her. Then I got a whipping in front of the teacher.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:14:06 In Philadelphia, Dover Carter was restless, desperate to not be forgotten in a big city. He knew something needed to change. He picked up his pen. Now Dover Carter's handwriting is a slanted, full-bodied cursive. His words and his ideas are packed closely together, so he wrote a three- page letter to Thurgood Marshall. Yes, that Thurgood Marshall, but this was years before he'd become a justice
Page 48! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
on the Supreme Court. At the time Thurgood Marshall was the NAACP's top lawyer, and Dover Carter was writing with a plea for help.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:14:46 Now, Thurgood Marshall's team is well aware of the work that Dover Carter did for the organization, and the beating he suffered back on that winding road in Alston. So, Thurgood Marshall's top aid quickly assigned a Philadelphia attorney to meet him and to talk with Dover Carter. The organization decided they would help the Dover Carter who did so much work for them back in Georgia.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:15:13 The NAACP has arranged for a non-profit group to support the Dover Carter family. Pennsylvania law will not provide public assistance until the family's lived there a year, so the Family Society of Philadelphia stepped in. It provided the equivalent of what today is $470 a week, and it arranged a number of job interviews for Dover Carter. But it appears that the jobs he's being offered are just day laborer jobs, picking berries. This passage from a Dover Carter letter is read here by an actor.
Actor Dover: 02:15:50 Well, I told you when you visited us that I didn't want to work on a farm as a laborer, and I think I had a good reason for this. I have been on a farm most of my life, and I have seen boom and depressions on down, and I think I know who gets the cream, believe it or not. As long as labor are temp as it is now, those farmers are not going to get a living price for a day laborer.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:16:12 The support Dover Carter was receiving from the Family Society of Philadelphia was on shaky ground. He continued to look for work, but his prospects looked bleak.
Actor Dover: 02:16:23 So I found a little water, a job offered only $30 per week working in a café beginning July 11th, 1949. I must keep on digging, although it may be another year before I can find enough water to supply my family. Surely, God will not let me die.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:16:43 For a time Dover Carter had a job at a hospital. He even found a job digging ditches, and he knows that the help from the NAACP is about to dry up. He's frustrated with his job prospects, and no doubt at the turn his life has taken.
Actor Dover: 02:16:59 If you and others would do what you can by the help of Almighty God, we will get a job and a decent living here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where my children can get the benefit of education opportunities as they should.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:17:18 Then that agency that had been helping the Dover Carter family recommends, with much reluctance, that its support
Page 49! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
must come to an end. The last donation it makes to him is about $175, that's nearly $2,000 today. Now Dover Carter seems appreciative, and in a handwritten letter he offers to do future work for the NAACP if needed, and he thanks them for all their support, and they part ways.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:17:57 But around this time Dover Carter would get a sliver of good news. His truck, which had been back in Alston, would be brought to him in Philadelphia. Now this truck would give him more freedom. It would make it easier to look for employment. He'd get a few odd jobs hauling, and then eventually he'd start his own produce business. The many times we interviewed Dover Carter's son, Aaron Carter, he always stressed his dad's faith, talking about how he'd pray for hours at a time. How he'd walk around the house just quoting Bible verses. In fact, Aaron Carter says, one of his father's favorite passages was really very simple, "The Lord will provide."
Hank Klibanoff: 02:18:49 What Dover Carter wouldn't know here, a year after his assault, living in crowded conditions with his wife Sadie, his 10 kids, and a world of uncertainty, was how true this was. He wouldn't know that years from that very moment most of his sons and daughters would finish high school. Some would go on to college, all would be employed, productive, citizens. He wouldn't know that all of his sons would be inspired enough by him to each start their own businesses.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:19:26 What Dover Carter wouldn't know at this low point in his life was that he'd have 31 grandkids. There's an architect, a lawyer, there's a nurse, there's a banker, a missionary, a teacher. What Dover Carter also wouldn't know at this point was that his produce business would grow, and that Dover Carter and his wife and his family would survive.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:20:06 Some more good news coming up after the break. I'm going to tell you what happened to the family of Isaiah Nixon in Florida, and it's going to be as much of a surprise to you as it was to them. This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:20:24 Surviving. It was also on the mind of the family of Isaiah Nixon. His mother Daisy, his wife Sally, and his children including Dorothy had moved south and were now in Jacksonville, Florida. The Nixon family might well have been forgotten if it hadn't been for the work of the Pittsburgh Courier.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:20:50 Back then, most people got their news from newspapers, but white papers tended to ignore the stories of black people. Black people just weren't newsworthy to them. Of course, unless it was to report their crimes. Newspaper
Page 50! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
readers older than 50, you're going to know what I'm talking about here. If two young white men assaulted an elderly woman and took her purse, they appeared in the paper as two young men, but if young black men did that, the headline, the story would focus on two young negro men.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:21:23 The word negro was the equivalent of click bait in headlines in newspapers in the day. Particularly if they could pair with that word rape. So you know, in an earlier episode I talked about how white people were really persuaded to believe that black people were more inclined toward criminality. I'm going to have to tell you ... and I'm not proud of this as a former newspaper person ... but white newspapers in thousands of headlines and stories over 50, 60, I mean, even 100 years ... helped feed that myth. That narrative of black criminality. So what did blacks do? They created their own press. Now, this is back in 1827. It got started in New York with a newspaper called Freedom's Journal. From that point on, scours and scours of black newspapers emerged across the land. Writing upbeat stories about black achievements as well as downbeat stories about white discrimination. Black newspapers began to be known as a fighting press. Foremost among them, the Pittsburgh Courier. Delivered by buses up and down the eastern seaboard.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:22:43 So, I was surprised, and more than mildly surprised, to learn of one white man in Georgia, who was quite familiar with it: Georgia's Herman Talmadge. He read the paper, but with deep concern. Here's part of a radio address he gave in 1946 when campaigning for his father, Gene Talmadge.
Herman Talmadge: 02:23:03 The Pittsburgh Courier and is the largest negro newspaper in the world. I quote from their editorial of April the 13th. Quote, "It is well understood that once Negros start voting in large numbers in states like Georgia and Texas, the Jim Crow laws will be endangered, and the whole elaborate pattern of segregation will be threatened and finally destroyed." Unquote.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:23:47 The Pittsburgh Courier's first publisher and founder was Robert Vann, but he died in 1940. His widow, Jessie Vann, took over as publisher and it was clear ... under her leadership through the 1940s ... that the Pittsburgh Courier loved a good crusade. Here's a couple of examples. It helped to get blacks to support the US entry into World War II. It put baseball player Jackie Robinson in front of Brooklyn Dodger's president Branch Rickey who hired him - made him the first black baseball player in the major leagues, and a year later, the Pittsburgh Courier focused on another crusade: to help the family of Isaiah Nixon.
Page 51! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 02:24:29 Two months after Isaiah Nixon was shot and killed, the Pittsburgh Courier reporter, Alexander Rivera ... you recall ... the guy who dressed as a chauffer? He was back on the story. Alexander Rivera and two other Pittsburgh Courier reporters would write some 40 or more stories and take many photos to help raise awareness of the Nixon's family's circumstances.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:24:56 But the newspaper would do a lot more than that. On January 1st, 1949, the Pittsburgh Courier launched it's New Year's resolution, announced in all capital letters across the top of the newspaper. A NEW HOME FOR THE NIXONS. They established a full-throated campaign to buy property for the Nixons in Jacksonville, to build them a home, and to furnish it.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:25:22 A few days later, the Pittsburgh Courier stretched three photographs of the Nixon family under the headline that read, The Nixon Story: The Worst Kind of Poverty. The Worst Kind of Tragedy. Week after week, Alexander Rivera, Evelyn Cunningham, and Hazel Garland ... all big names in black journalism at the time ... were in and out of Jacksonville writing stories about the Nixons, and week after week, story after story ... many of them overwritten and overwrought ... painted Isaiah Nixon's widow Sally as desperate.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:26:04 But it worked. Money began flowing in. Someone named Eugene Bailey from Ottumwa, Iowa, $5. The Mount Elon Baptist Church in Altoona, Pennsylvania, $11.10. Three anonymous garage attendants in Pittsburgh, 10 bucks. The drive, which had started with about $1300, had nearly doubled that amount a month later. Today, that would be about $25000. So artists, musicians, and athletes start chipping in. The owner of the Harlem Globe Trotters came up with $50. Then he arranged a benefit game and raised $500 for the Nixons.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:26:50 But another surprise lay ahead, an architect wanted to help too. His name, Paul R. Williams. He was better known in Los Angeles where he lived and where he had designed the homes of ... get this ... Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Danny Thomas. Paul Williams, perhaps the most celebrated black architect of his time, agreed to design the Nixon home.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:27:15 Two and a half months into the campaign, the Pittsburgh Courier had raised enough money ... about $47,000 today ... to buy a lot for the house and to start developing plans and drawings. More money came in after that, and pretty soon, it was enough to buy the Nixons some property in Jacksonville, to build them a five room bungalow, and to furnish it. The location was perfect. A
Page 52! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
desirable neighborhood ... as the newspaper put it ... within walking distance of the elementary school where three Nixon children would go to school.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:27:58 It's Christmas, 1949. It's been just over a year since the death of Isaiah Nixon and now his family is about to move into their new home. Here the kids would have their own beds, their own space. Stepping inside, the children looked up to see a large decorated Christmas tree, and a visitor had made her way down to Jacksonville for this moment. It was the publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, Jessie Vann. Here are the exact words Jessie Vann said to the Nixon family.
Jessie Vann: 02:28:48 This is an occasion for which I have been waiting for a long time, and it gives me great pleasure to present to you the keys and deed to this house, which is completely paid for and free of all debt. God has been good to you Mrs. Nixon, for despite the loss of your husband, he has given you thousands of friends. Many of whom you will probably never know, who have rallied to the cause in helping to secure you this home. Make this a house of God. Send your children to Sunday school and church so that they may grow up into fine young men and women and will never forget how kind God has been.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:29:36 Sally Nixon expressed her gratitude, and then sobbed, "I am too happy to say a word."
Hank Klibanoff: 02:29:53 So appreciated was the Pittsburgh Courier that publisher Jessie Vann was featured on this show.
TV Host: 02:29:59 This is Your Life. America's most talked about program is brought to you by...
Hank Klibanoff: 02:30:04 If you're not familiar with this old television program, the premise was simple. They invite a notable person on and have people from that person's past talk about their memories of them. On this particular night, they were showcasing the Pittsburgh Courier and the work of Jessie Vann.
TV Host: 02:30:22 ...getting you here for this surprise. Did you, Mrs. Vann?
Jessie Vann: 02:30:23 No, I certainly didn't. I thought I was here to do a job.
TV Host: 02:30:26 Well, you're...
Hank Klibanoff: 02:30:27 As the show looked back at the life of Jessie Vann, they needed people to not just talk about her but to attest to her character. To do this, the show would usually feature an old friend, a coworker, and in the case of Jessie Vann, they'd bring in someone she had helped. Helped when they were
Page 53! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
down. When they needed a new start. A new home. Yes, on this particular episode, they invited Isaiah Nixon's wife, his widow, Sally Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:30:56 So when we talked to Sally Nixon at her retirement home in Florida, she was excited about seeing the show. She had never seen it. This is Robert Vann.
Sally Nixon: 02:31:04 Yes.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:31:05 This Is Your Life, here.
Sally Nixon: 02:31:07 Ohhhhh!
Hank Klibanoff: 02:31:09 Oh, this was going to fun. You can just tell how happy she was to hear that I had brought a copy of the show. So I opened up my laptop. Some of her family stood behind her, and we all leaned in and watched the show together.
TV Host: 02:31:22 Wow, we have a wonderful audience here at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood tonight. Just like you wonderful people across the nation. Coast to coast.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:31:29 And now to the moment when they revealed to Jessie Vann one of her surprise guests. A voice from behind the curtain speaks anonymously, and it's Sally Nixon.
Sally Nixon: 02:31:41 That woman will never forget it either.
TV Host: 02:31:44 Do you know who that is, Mrs. Vann?
Jessie Vann: 02:31:46 It must be Sally Nixon.
Speaker 5: 02:31:47 The woman you raised funds to help. Now in Jacksonville, Florida - Mrs. Sally Nixon. Would you tell us please, Mrs. Nixon, how Mrs. Vann helped you and your six children?
Sally Nixon: 02:32:04 After my husband got killed in Georgia, Mrs. Vann put a plea in the Pittsburgh Courier to help us.
TV Host: 02:32:12 Yes. A response came from every race in all parts of the country, didn't it Ms. Vann?
Jessie Vann: 02:32:17 May I say, that the people's, our readers, throughout the country contributed.
TV Host: 02:32:24 How was this money used, Mrs. Nixon?
Sally Nixon: 02:32:25 Well, Ms. Vann built us a home and furnished it.
TV Host: 02:32:28 Isn't it.
Sally Nixon: 02:32:29 That was a wonderful Christmas forever.
Page 54! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
TV Host: 02:32:31 I'm sure it was.
Jessie Vann: 02:32:32 Well, the readers of the Courier built it, and the funds that ...
Hank Klibanoff: 02:32:36 Now, even after all these years, Sally Nixon still remembers the generous spirit of Jessie Vann.
Sally Nixon: 02:32:43 They built this home that I raised these children. The Pittsburgh Courier.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:32:52 Right.
TV Host: 02:32:52 Thank you. Goodnight to you ladies and gentlemen till next week at this time on This is Your Life. Goodnight.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:32:54 By many standards, Dorothy Nixon's life really did seem to be improving, but there was no way to get around the reason they'd moved to Florida in the first place. Frankly, the memory of her father's killing made her angry, and she stayed angry. Especially when she began reading and discovering just how much a person's color mattered in America.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:33:18 It was just so painful for me to know how the black man had no power over his wife or his daughters and how they were abused. I read a lot, and...because I was trying to understand of why.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:33:35 But one other frustration would grow in her life. The family would not, could not return to Alston for some time. But when they did go back, when they went to the cemetery where they buried Isaiah Nixon, they came to a terrible realization. They could not find where Isaiah Nixon was buried. They knew they were at the right place. They'd all been at his funeral, but they could not find the exact location of his gravesite. No headstone. No foot marker. No cement slab. Nothing.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:34:15 Sometimes in life, there's a person who helps you out unexpectedly. Not a random one time thing, but a person who watches out for you. Sometimes watches over you. For Dorothy Nixon, that person was her grandmother. Isaiah Nixon's mother, Daisy.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:34:32 If it wasn't for her, I don't think psychologically I would've made it through all of that.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:34:38 Remember, on that election day, when Isaiah Nixon was shot, they both witnessed it. Dorothy lost her father. Daisy lost her only son, and so Daisy understood the foundation of Dorothy's anger.
Page 55! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Dorothy Nixon: 02:34:52 She was the strongest woman I've ever known, and she always told the girls what they could accomplish. She always wanted us to make positive out of what happened to my father, because, she said, we would do him an injustice if we didn't do something with our lives.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:35:17 And so it was with that in mind, that Isaiah Nixon's mother, Daisy, encouraged Dorothy to go to school.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:35:25 My grandmother wanted me to become a nurse, so I did.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:35:29 It would be a turning point, but another lay ahead. All because of a single class she took at Florida A&M.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:35:37 I start to read that beginning psychology course, and I'm saying, "Why do people behave the way they do?" I just started studying, and behind the scenes, I just helped people with the same strength that my grandmother helped me. Then when I took my psych course in nursing, I felt their pain. It sounds really weird, but I felt their pain.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:36:10 Felt their pain, but her pain was still there. Just below the surface... Anger. A real and present anger.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:36:20 For a long time, I just wanted to kill white men, and literally kill. I think it was 1962. I was a sophomore or junior in college when college students started sitting in. I didn't go. My roommate went. My sister went, but I knew if I went out there, I probably would have tried to hurt somebody. So, what could I do that was constructive? So, I ran around with some of my other dorm people, and we collected personal items for the girls that were put in jail and that kind of stuff. That's how I could help. I know I had these strong feelings, but I also knew I had to keep them under control.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:37:13 In school, an early assignment was working with schizophrenic patients. Her instructor told Dorothy about one such patient. A young lady who, for whatever reason, wouldn't talk, and so Dorothy's teacher gave her an assignment that would shape both her grade and her life. Her teacher said that if Dorothy could get the patient to talk before the semester was over, she'd get an A for the course.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:37:39 We did a lot of things together including washing clothes, but she never spoke a word. Then, at the end of my semester, and she used to always stand right up at the elevator waiting on me to get off, and that morning, the elevator opened and she said, "Good morning, Ms. Nixon." I'll never forget that. "Good morning, Ms. Nixon."
Page 56! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 02:38:06 She got her A, and she got a foothold in her career as well because after this incident, Dorothy's psych teacher wanted to have a conversation. The instructor told Dorothy that she would be going back to school soon and would need a replacement, and she wanted Dorothy to be that replacement. Dorothy would go on to get her masters degree in nursing at the University of Maryland and was on her way to a career in psychiatric nursing.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:38:41 While it was nice to learn and grow, to be appreciated by the Pittsburgh Courier and by her teachers, to have that new house, to see her mom on TV, in the back of her mind, Dorothy still knew what she'd lost. Think about it. Her childhood, her farm, her father, and somehow, somehow the family had even lost the exact location of Isaiah Nixon's grave, but instead of retreating as an adult, Dorothy would take on a willingness to truly evolve. That willingness would change her life.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:39:22 Years after Isaiah Nixon's death, someone steps in to unlock the past. It's the FBI and a voice you might not know, but a name you will: Former FBI director, Robert Mueller.
Robert Mueller: 02:39:38 We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot right these wrongs. But we can try to bring a measure of justice to those who remain.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:39:50 That's on the next episode of Buried Truths.
Announcer: 02:39:56 CREDITS: Hank Klibanoff is a former newspaper reporter and editor. He's also coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize book, The Race Beat. Today, he's a professor at Emory University. Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney. Our editor is John Haas. The executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Please subscribe to the show, and if you have a moment, leave us a review in Apple Podcast. We'd love to hear what you think, and your review will help others find Buried Truths. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to stories@buriedtruths. org. You can follow us on social media at buriedtruthspodcasts. There, you'll find photographs and documents related to the case. On this episode, we had help from the nearly 100 students who've taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases class that Hank Klibanoff teaches. Thanks to Professor Brett Gadsden who helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to two past students who've stayed really close to this project, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Thanks to Emory University and its centers for digital scholarship and faculty excellence for their support. The audio that you heard from This is Your Life was courtesy of Ralph Edwards Productions. Thanks to Valerie Jackson who played the
Page 57! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
voice of Jessie Vann, and finally, thanks to the actor David Atkins who played the voice of Dover Carter. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 58! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Episode 5: I Found It!
Hank Klibanoff: 02:41:27 This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff. Dorothy Nixon watched as her father was shot. She watched as her mother struggled to raise a family of six. As Dorothy Nixon grew into adulthood, she'd go on to college. She'd become a psychiatric nurse. She'd get a master's degree, and she'd raise a family of her own. But she fought against sadness, against a tendency to pull away from others, and yes, anger. Today, in her 70s, the memory of what happened to her father is still vivid. It still haunts, and it still hurts.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:42:14 I don't remember crying. I was just sitting there, like, angry. Trying to understand, "Why would somebody kill my daddy?"
Hank Klibanoff: 02:42:21 Now Dorothy would be a grown woman before realizing that all those years she belonged to a large community of black families who had lost fathers, mothers, other family members to racially motivated violence - families that never experienced one minute of justice.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:42:45 Over the past 25, 30 years, many of those cases came to be known through the work of journalists. They investigated and published their findings, especially when it was clear that the Klan and other perpetrators got away with murder. This work led to some fresh criminal investigations and prosecutions. It also led to enough convictions that in 2006, the United States attorney general made an announcement. The FBI would systematically reopen and review unpunished racially motivated murders that fell between the 1940s and the late 1960s in the South.
Robert Mueller: 02:43:27 Good afternoon. The FBI and the Justice Department exist to bring justice to the oppressed and to bring truths to light.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:43:36 It was the new FBI Civil Rights Cold Case Initiative.
Robert Mueller: 02:43:40 Many trails ran cold and many cases were effectively closed, but for the victims, the wounds are never closed.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:43:48 That's former FBI director Robert Mueller. Yes, that Robert Mueller. Now, some of these were very old cases, so he added a word of caution.
Robert Mueller: 02:43:59 We know that some memories may fade, some evidence may be lost, and some witnesses may pass away. We know that no matter how much work we devote to an investigation, we may not always get the result that we're hoping for.
Page 59! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 02:44:12 But Mueller was confident as he cited some of the previous work by the FBI and the Justice Department.
Robert Mueller: 02:44:18 In 2001, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry were convicted of murder for the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. In 2003, Ernest Avants was convicted for the 1966 murder of Ben Chester White. In 2005, Edgar Ray Killin was convicted for his role in the deaths of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964.
Robert Mueller: 02:44:46 These successes have restored our hope and renewed our resolve. Justice had been delayed, but we are determined that justice will not be denied. We'll do everything we can to close these cases and to close this dark chapter in our nation's history.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:45:07 So the FBI partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center to help compile this list of cases to look into. For my class, I was looking at cases from Georgia, but you won't see Isaiah Nixon on that list. I found him through a civil rights cold case project run out of Northeastern University's law school in Boston. It had published a couple of court documents from the Isaiah Nixon case that had gotten me interested. This was in the fall of 2015 as we headed into an election year, and I thought a voting rights case might have some special relevance for my students.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:45:45 To start, I submitted a freedom of information request to the FBI for documents related to the Isaiah Nixon case. The FBI responded that they had nothing, so I appealed. The FBI said it still had nothing, so I wrote to the National Archives. Now, this is all part of a little dance that researchers have to go through, and I found a very dedicated archivist who was able to find 165 pages on Isaiah Nixon. And of course, on Dover Carter, since he's the one who had the courage to speak with the FBI way back in 1948.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:46:21 Later the archivist called me back. He'd found 70 more pages, so in all, 235 pages. Every page un-redacted. So I asked the archivist, where did the paper's come from? "Well," he said, "from the FBI." But I have to tell you, that even if the FBI had reopened the Isaiah Nixon case in 2006, they'd have closed it very quickly. Why? Because they would've discovered that the two men who killed him, Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson had died in the late 1970s. The FBI's not interested in reinvestigating a case in which the perpetrators are dead, but just because the Johnson brother can't be prosecuted doesn't mean they can't be studied.
Page 60! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 02:47:16 So where prosecutors lose interest is often exactly where historians and students of history reengage. To me, to my students, the fact that the men who killed Isaiah Nixon were dead, well, that didn't matter.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:47:29 So let's turn to something that really interested us. This question. Why did Dover Carter never get his day in court? The FBI records that I obtained reveal the answer.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:47:49 When the trial in the Isaiah Nixon case was over, the U.S. Justice Department turned its attention to the beating of Dover Carter. It even ordered an FBI investigation. Now, before we find out more that, let's just recall Dover Carter's account. He told the FBI that he was driving in his truck, driving a woman and her son to the polls, and that's when Johnnie Johnson and his brother-in-law blocked the road with their car. So Dover Carter had to stop his truck. Now can you see this? Their car is blocking his truck. In any case, Dover Carter stopped, the men approached, and started beating him with brass knuckles and an iron tool.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:48:33 They let him go only after he promised to quit driving blacks to the polls. But that's not what the two men told the FBI. They portrayed themselves as the victims, forced to defend themselves. Here's Johnnie Johnson's version, which I found in the FBI records. It's read here by an actor.
Actor Johnnie: 02:48:53 On the 8th of September, 1948 ... the election day in Georgia ... me and Thomas Wilson, my brother-in-law, started at Uvalda. We were getting some parts for a truck. About a mile out of town, a Chevrolet truck made a sudden stop in front of us. Almost causing us to have a wreck. We pulled up to the side of this truck, and I saw it was driven by a nigger known to me as Dover Carter.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:49:16 Now let's pause here for a second. Dover Carter was driving a woman and her son to the polls in his pickup truck, and he slammed on his brakes? And he provoked a fight with two white guys on a day he'd been looking forward to - election day?
Actor Johnnie: 02:49:31 I asked Dover why he stopped in front of us. He said, "I will stop where I damn please." At this remark, I stepped out of the car, and I started toward Carter. He was sitting in his truck. Dover Carter began trying to get a shotgun which he had in the foot of his truck, but he was having trouble getting it, as it seemed to be caught in the clothing of a nigger woman who was sitting in the front seat of the truck with Dover Carter.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:49:55 That woman and her son fled the scene as all of this started.
Page 61! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Actor Johnnie: 02:50:00 Now, as Dover Carter come up with the shotgun, I grabbed the barrel and took it away from him. During this time, I picked up an iron tire tool which was laying on the floor of Dover Carter's truck and began hitting him on the arms and head, making him release the gun.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:50:16 Let's pause one more time. Johnnie Johnson is saying he was fully justified not just because Dover Carter stopped his truck abruptly, but also because Dover Carter said, "I will stop where I damn please." By Johnnie Johnson's reckoning, well, of course, a white man would be justified in attacking a black man for such impertinence. Johnnie Johnson admitted it as much.
Actor Johnnie: 02:50:40 There possibly would not have been any fight had Dover Carter not acted and said what he did.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:50:49 So the FBI conducted a total of 16 interviews like this, all in regard to the Dover Carter beating, and when they were finished, the federal prosecutor who seems to have been running the investigation for the Justice Department down in Savannah, Assistant US Attorney Henry Durrence, summarized the findings and sent them up the chain of command.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:51:12 In this summary, Henry Durrence made only passing reference ... one sentence ... to Dover Carter's version of the events, and of these 16 interviews, Durrence cited only four. It happened to be the four that were the least supportive of Dover Carter's account. Two of those interviews with the woman and her son who Dover Carter had been shuttling to the polls.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:51:37 As we told you, they were frightened, and they had quickly fled the scene. The other two interviews that Henry Durrence summarized and sent to the attorney general for his final decision on what to do in this case were the interviews with the men accused of beating up Dover Carter. So it's probably no surprise who Henry Durrence sided with. " It appears," Durrence wrote, "that the immediate cause of the altercation in which the victim was beating was the sudden stopping of the truck."
Hank Klibanoff: 02:52:14 The sudden stopping of the truck was the reason for all of this? Well, that brings me to one of the other interviews. One of the 16 that the FBI conducted. Now, first, let's just hear again from Johnnie Johnson.
Actor Johnnie: 02:52:28 During the fight, a car passed us, but I do not know who it was as he did not stop.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:52:34 Well, we think we do know who it was. One of the interviews the FBI conducted was with the young white guy
Page 62! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
who'd borrowed his father's car that afternoon, and he corroborated a crucial detail of Dover Carter's version. He told an FBI agent that when he drove by, Dover Carter's truck was behind Johnnie Johnson's car, just short of hitting hit, which means Dover Carter's truck was never in front of Johnnie Johnson's car. In other words, Dover Carter did not slam on his brakes, nor did he try to provoke them.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:53:15 But that contradiction of Johnnie Johnson's statement by a young white man didn't merit a mention in Henry Durrence's letter to the U.S. attorney general. Instead, Henry Durrence wrote that he believed Dover Carter further provoked the white men by reaching under his seat and searching for a weapon. Reading this in the FBI records, I thought of something Dover Carter's son, David, said to me a few months ago. Now David Carter was 14 at the time he saw his father with a battered body, a bloodied head, and a broken wrist. When I told him of Johnnie Johnson's account, David Carter shook his head, and said, "Now, who would believe that?" Well, it appears that Henry Durrence believed Johnnie Johnson's version of the events, or at least that's what he told the attorney general in a letter. We've asked someone to read a portion of it here.
Actor Henry: 02:54:18 No further investigation is warranted. Authority to close this file without prosecution is therefore, respectfully requested.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:54:27 The attorney general's office granted the request and the Dover Carter file was closed. Remember me telling you in an earlier episode about a type of secret password that white people used when they were accused of attacking or even killing black people? Well, that phrase, self-defense, had worked again.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:55:06 In my cold cases class that I teach at Emory University, I encourage my students to be curious. So in the fall of 2015, we started digging for information about the Isaiah Nixon case. Now the students had read and absorbed the FBI records, then they'd found hundreds of NAACP papers and they came up with information about Gene Talmadge and his efforts to suppress voter turnout. They'd even scored every article in the Pittsburgh Courier, the Atlanta newspapers, and plenty more. They'd read books from the period and they'd done legal, genealogical and archival research online and in person, all for the sake of learning more. So it was no surprise when the students located Dorothy Nixon. She was living in Jacksonville, Florida, so we reached out to her.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:55:59 By now in this podcast we've gotten to know Dorothy Nixon pretty well. But back then, when I first reached out, I frankly
Page 63! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
wasn't sure she'd be interested in talking. Many folks in this situation haven't discussed it in decades and they're not gonna start now. Certainly not with a stranger. But Dorothy? Dorothy showed a true willingness to open this chapter of her life. And she also said, without hesitation, that she was willing to help my students in any way she could. So we called her.
Dorothy Nixon: 02:56:31 I do remember sitting on the steps and it was two of us sitting on the steps as I recall.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:56:38 But none of that research, nor the call, had the impact that Dorothy Nixon, by then Dorothy Nixon-Williams, would have when she walked into my classroom in November of 2015. My students were mesmerized by her. She was an eye witness to a shooting, a killing they'd been reading about, studying, trying to put into context, and here's someone who'd lived it all, lived through it all. Dorothy, in turn, came to see that the students had gathered more history about the case, more documents than she knew existed.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:57:21 Indeed, that same day, unbeknownst to Dorothy, I had received a copy of an important document that I knew she had never seen. The document made me excited but nervous, overjoyed to have, but sad to read. When would be the appropriate time to give it to her? I put it inside my coat pocket, I waited until after class, then after dinner, then after I dropped her off at her hotel, and finally I handed it to her. It was a copy of her father's death certificate.
Hank Klibanoff: 02:58:07 After Dorothy came to visit, my students were hooked. Three of them, Lucy Baker, Emily Gaines and Ellie Studdard came up to me quickly after class with wide- eyed, possessed looks. "We're going to Alston." One of them said. Okay, so I try to make field trips a part of the course, but hadn't worked that out quite yet, and Montgomery County's a three hour drive from Atlanta. "Yeah, we're going to Alston. We just wanted you to know," said another. I hesitated. Their instinct was absolutely right. So suddenly I'm thinking, "How can I arrange a van? How can I send out a notice and get all the class involved?," when one of them chimed in, "We're going Friday." Well that was two days away. "Okay." I said. "I'll drive."
Hank Klibanoff: 02:58:58 Forty-eight hours later, I picked the three of them up, and we were off, headed south to the Montgomery County courthouse in Mt. Vernon, Georgia. On a two-lane country road, we whipped past a sign. It signified that we'd crossed into Montgomery County and we couldn't help but notice that the sign was riddled with bullet holes.
Page 64! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 02:59:25 Now, inside the red brick courthouse, we went to the clerk's office to begin our search for any trial records from 1948. We were directed to a stack of old legal documents, sort of the shape of ammo boxes, towering all the way to the ceiling, probably 16 feet high. Lucy, the water polo star, climbed fearlessly up a shaky ladder, stepped onto one set of filing cabinets, then over to another to gain a higher position. She reached well above her head and her fingertips coaxed a box away from the wall. She handed it down, we opened it. Bingo! The very first box contained the papers showing the indictment of the Johnson brothers. The language was full of adverbial flourishes.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:00:13 "Jim A. Johnson and Johnnie Johnson unlawfully, feloniously, and of his malice of forethought, did kill and murder, by shooting the said Isaiah Nixon with a certain pistol, the same being a weapon likely to produce death in the way and manner used at said time and place." Well, you get the message. We kept looking. We saw a massive and unwieldy hard-bound book that listed many criminal cases, and we found several things, among them, the handwritten names of possible jurors.
Lucy Baker: 03:00:45 Let's see, we have Van Braddy, T.A. Blocker, R.L. McAlllister, D.A. McCrae, Jr., B.S. Warnock.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:00:58 What we were looking for is hard to say. Sometimes you just gotta start digging. Sometimes we weren't always sure what we had.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:01:05 There is this book here called Evidence Record. Montgomery County Superior Court, Book number 9. This covers the years 1947...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:01:19 Remember the trial we're interested in was in November 1948. And of course, our greatest hope is to find the transcript of the trial.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:01:29 And then it jumps to 1949 is the next case. So there are no cases in here from 1948, and yet the numbers across the top are consistent. '42, '43, '44, '45, '46, '47, '48, '49, then you jump to ...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:01:46 In other words, the pages are consecutively numbered, so nothing's been torn out or removed from the record.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:02:03 ... '51. So why there's no transcript of the trial of Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson for the killing of Isaiah Nixon? I don't know.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:02:03 Actually, I might know why there's no transcript. This was a criminal trial and the defendant was found not guilty. The government can't appeal Jim A Johnson's acquittal. You
Page 65! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
know, you can't be tried twice for the same crime. So there was no need for the court reporter to produce a transcript. Now, as you've heard me say, that doesn't mean the court reporter during the trial didn't take notes or punch a stenographic tape or make a recording. And maybe, maybe these notes are stored somewhere, in a closet or an attic. Actually, I'm pretty serious about that. If you know someone who might have it, let us know.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:02:41 Let's see. It says that the polling precincts are Mt. Vernon, Alston, Uvalda, Kibbee, Ailey, Tarrytown and Higgston. They will each have voting booths ...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:02:54 The initial trip to Montgomery County stands out for many reasons, but one incredible discovery awaited us. We'll tell you about it after the break. This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:03:13 Okay, so we'll live without a transcript. We may never know what happened at the state trial. But what about at the federal level? I want to tell you what those hundreds of pages of FBI records revealed about how the feds handled the Isaiah Nixon case. Just to remind you, the feds had been interested in pursuing the Isaiah Nixon case before the state trial, but they decided to lay low and let the state go first. If justice wasn't achieved, well, they might then want to bring their own case. So they were waiting to hear the outcome of the state trial from their colleagues down in Savannah, which they got 45 days after the trial ended.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:03:58 And guess who it was in the Savannah office who sent that notification? Henry Durrence. Yes, the same federal prosecutor who had insisted that the Dover Carter case should be closed. Now he's at it again in the Isaiah Nixon case. His notification added this bombshell:
Actor Henry: 03:04:18 This office is of the opinion that further investigation into this matter is not warranted.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:04:23 But the attorney general's office in Washington basically says, "Whoa, wait a minute. There's nothing in the records to show if the trial was legitimate or whether it was more or less a matter of form." Please let me interpret that. The attorney general's office is asking if the white judge and the white jurors, in finding the white defendants not guilty, were simply acting with the routine reflexes of almost all juries in the white supremacist south. There's something else the attorney general's office wants to know. Where are the statements from eye witnesses, or anyone else that would help determine if there was a conspiracy? Conspiracy? Remember that magic word? Just about the only way the feds can bring a criminal case is if they can show that the men who beat Dover Carter and who killed Isaiah Nixon,
Page 66! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
had conspired to deny the two men their basic civil rights. Their voting rights. But the attorney general's office rejected the suggestion by Henry Durrence to close the case. They ordered the Savannah branch of the FBI to investigate whether the state trial was legitimate, fair and just. But the attorney general's office added these words, "This inquiry may be limited." In fact, the letter specifies that if the FBI only wants to interview two people, the prosecutor and Isaiah Nixon's widow Sally, they'll be satisfied in Washington. It becomes clear that this was not going to be a very deep or thorough investigation.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:06:16 Let's take a look at that FBI investigation. There's no evidence the FBI asked for a transcript of the trial. Now, their responsibility is to determine if the trial was legitimate. Yet, nobody wants to read the transcript? When it was only a two hour trial, the transcript couldn't have been that long or costly to produce. And hey, those court reporter's notes? You remember the ones my students and I were looking for in the clerk's office? They would have been available soon after the trial. Wouldn't that have answered most of the questions about whether the trial was legitimate?
Hank Klibanoff: 03:06:54 Here's something else the feds didn't ask about: the jury. I told you before that Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson were tried by an all white jury. But this trial took place 13 years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that keeping blacks off juries because of their race was flat-out unconstitutional. But Georgia and other states had shrugged at that and managed to keep their juries all white.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:07:25 You know, when you think about why the right to vote was so critically important to black citizens, you may think it was for the very obvious reason, they wanted to vote. But it's much bigger than that. See, if whites could keep blacks from registering to vote, they'd also keep them from the pools from which jurors are selected.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:07:49 Another critical thing: agents interviewed the widow, Sally Nixon, and she told them that Isaiah and his mother had voted. But there's no indication that the FBI asked her if she thought the shooting was related to the decision to vote. Now, she'd have said yes, it was. The FBI also interviewed the judge in the Isaiah Nixon case. Eshcol Graham.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:08:11 Now he says he thought the verdict could have gone either way. To the best of his recollection, he says, there was no evidence presented by either side pertaining to the question of Isaiah Nixon voting. Did you get that? The judge, Eshcol Graham, was presiding over a case in which the sheriff arrests two men and says they killed Isaiah Nixon because he voted and the sheriff is even listed as a
Page 67! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
prosecution witness, and the judge says he doesn't recall voting even coming up at the trial? Remember when the Justice Department told the FBI to take a look at the Isaiah Nixon case, it did so with this important caveat, " This inquiry may be limited." And it's quite clear now, reading all the records, it was.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:09:14 I want to go back to the judge, Eschol Graham for a moment. Here's one thing we found that caught our attention. As the FBI is still examining the legitimacy and the fairness of the trial, Henry Durrence weighs in yet again. Remember, he's the Assistant US Attorney at Savannah who seems to be overseeing the investigation. And this time, apparently unsolicited, Henry Durrence decides his bosses up north need to know his opinion of the presiding judge, Eschol Graham. Here's what he wrote:
Actor Henry: 03:09:50 I am personally acquainted with the Honorable Eschol Graham and I know that he is not only an able lawyer and judge, but that he is also an honest, conscientious and courageous man and that he would not countenance anything that would tend to further an injustice in this trial.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:10:07 Ultimately, the federal investigation into the trial of Isaiah Nixon's killers was closed. And while the feds were satisfied there was nothing questionable about the trial,or the judge, my class was not satisfied. We wanted to know more about Judge Graham.
Announcer: 03:10:27 I introduce Judge Graham and ask him to say a few words for us.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:10:33 Let's start with this rally. It's actually a victory celebration for Herman Talmadge in Telfair County, his home county, and here are the announcers running through the names of politicians and dignitaries. Eschol Graham was about to speak and, hey, Claude Sharpe was there.
Announcer: 03:10:50 We have Sheriff Claude Sharpe from Montgomery County.
Audience: 03:10:53 Woo! Yeah!
Hank Klibanoff: 03:10:56 Before we get to what Eschol Graham said here, let's tell you what we found, because it leads us to question whether the presiding judge and therefore the trial, could have been fair and impartial. We found out that in Gene Talmadge's early terms as governor, Eschol Graham was part of his inner circle of unofficial advisors. His so-called Kitchen Cabinet. We also found out that while he was a judge, Eschol Graham wasn't shy about showing up at Talmadge campaign rallies and victory parties such as this one and speaking about the Talmadges, Gene and in this case, Herman.
Page 68! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Eschol Graham: 03:11:32 My friends, I'd love to talk about this boy. I knew him almost since he was born. He used to live right next door to me. He's the son of his daddy.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:11:46 One more example. We found that a couple of days after Herman Talmadge won the 1948 Democratic Party Primary, Judge Eschol Graham showed up in Herman Talmadge's hometown to join the celebration. He spoke there too, and he used that moment to criticize the Georgia Supreme Court for removing Talmadge as interim governor the year before during the Three Governor's Controversy. So why is this speech important? Because Judge Eschol Graham spoke in celebration of Herman Talmadge only a few weeks before he would preside over the trial of the two men who killed Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:12:26 You know, as I read the memos about the FBI examination of the trial, I'm left with some lingering questions. Beyond the questions I've already asked about why the Justice Department limited the inquiry, why the FBI didn't get the trial transcript, why agents didn't question how the jury turned out to be all white men, I wanted to add this question: Why, in a case in which the sheriff said Isaiah Nixon was killed because he voted, and voted against Herman Talmadge, why didn't the FBI look into whether the judge might have brought some long-established bias into the courtroom? Shouldn't FBI agents or Justice Department lawyers have concluded that Eschol Graham could not have been an impartial judge?
Eschol Graham: 03:13:13 Who knows on which side the nigger's bread is buttered?
Audience: 03:13:16 Yeah! Yeah! Right!
Hank Klibanoff: 03:13:19 But there's one more clip from Judge Eschol Graham that I want to play you. It captures as purely as any recording I've heard how middle class and ruling class white supremacists felt about black-white relations in the south.
Eschol Graham: 03:13:32 Herman Talmadge is a friend to the nigger. The southern people are friends to the nigger. If they would let us alone and let us handle the situation, the nigger would be satisfied and we wouldn't be so much annoyed.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:13:52 We wouldn't be so much annoyed? Was that the problem? That word annoyed shows up a lot in history and for the next 20 years from whites who felt that the Civil Rights upheaval was just too much, too fast and a threat to their supremacy.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:14:20 You never know what you'll find unless you look and that's what the three students and I are doing now, driving from the Montgomery County courthouse to the cemetery where
Page 69! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Isaiah Nixon was buried. We start 17 miles out of town, headed to the Old Salem Cemetery.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:14:41 So here we are now at this clearing in the woods. It was student impulses that brought us here today and I decided to join them. In 67 years since Isaiah Nixon was buried here, no one has found his grave site. His mother, some of his children have died not knowing where he rests.
James Harris: 03:15:02 That's his headstone.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:15:04 Right. Your brother's.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:15:06 We've been guided to this cemetery by John Harris' son, James. The students and I, we just want to be here. We just want to share the air, the space, the time, with a man we've studied closely, Isaiah Nixon. And when we get out of our car, the students start drifting slowly through the headstones. I know that James Harris' parents are buried here, so I ask him to show me where they are and we start walking. Now, I don't know why, but instinct leads me to turn on the video camera on my cellphone and then one of my students, Ellie Studdard, yells out something. Now I wasn't completely sure what she was saying, or what she meant, and I didn't want to disturb James Harris as he's walking to his parent's gravesite. But Ellie's words changed everything. Now you have to listen carefully past the sound of footsteps, but here is the moment.
Ellie Studdard: 03:16:16 I found it!
Hank Klibanoff: 03:16:17 I found it. That's right. Ellie Studdard had found the grave site of Isaiah Nixon and her discovery was about to change the world of Dorothy Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:16:30 It says what?
Ellie Studdard: 03:16:31 Isaiah Nixon. It was covered in mud, so now I'm covered in mud.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:16:36 There is an Isaiah Nixon?
Ellie Studdard: 03:16:37 Yeah. That's what I was ... So I saw something that said Isaiah, so I uncovered the date. It said ...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:16:39 When Ellie came to find me, her hands were covered in mud. She'd used them to brush away leaves and underneath that, she'd found a half-inch of mud and she started clearing that. And when she got to the date he'd died, September 10, 1948, she was confident enough to call out to us.
Page 70! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Ellie Studdard: 03:16:55 Yeah. That what I was ... So I saw something that said Isaiah, so I uncovered the date. It said September 10th.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:01 The gravesite had a headstone, but no words had ever been carved on it either the front or the back.
Lucy Baker: 03:17:09 Hi, Isaiah.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:09 Seeing no name on either side of the headstone, there was no way for anyone to know that this was the final resting place of Isaiah Nixon.
Ellie Studdard: 03:17:20 Oh, something else is there. Oh, cool, yeah. I think like, the tombstone must have, or this whole slab must have cracked.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:27 This was news we couldn't keep to ourselves.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:17:31 Hello?
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:32 Hi, Mrs. Williams. It's Hank Klibanoff.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:17:34 How're you?
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:36 Oh, I'm doing wonderfully. I'm here with my students and Mr. Harris.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:17:42 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:42 And we're at Old Salem.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:17:45 Okay.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:45 And we have discovered something.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:17:49 Okay.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:50 We have discovered a gravesite with your father's name on it.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:17:57 Wow.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:17:59 It is-
Dorothy Nixon: 03:18:00 We looked and looked.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:02 It is a stone that says, "Father." And then on the slab, the cement slab, someone has carved into what was then wet cement, his name Isaiah Nixon and it gives his date of birth and the date of his death.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:19 We asked Dorothy if she could FaceTime with us and soon we were connected.
Page 71! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Dorothy Nixon: 03:18:24 I see you.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:25 Okay. Well, you're about to see something else here, which is-
Dorothy Nixon: 03:18:30 Wow.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:31 See Isaiah, and there's Nixon.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:18:36 Yeah.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:38 And then it says April and then you see September?
Dorothy Nixon: 03:18:44 Well I see the S-E-P really well. I see the Isaiah pretty well.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:49 Right. That's 1948.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:18:54 Yes.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:55 Okay.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:18:56 While this might be the initial way she'd see her father's grave, clearly it was not the best way and that was about to change.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:19:05 So anyway, I just wanted to share the moment with you.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:19:14 Oh, this is an awesome one, I'll tell you. I'm walking out because my daughter is coming in...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:19:24 On the final episode of Buried Truths, Dorothy Nixon- Williams visits the grave of her father for the first time in decades, and then an unexpected email arrives. Reading it gives me pause. "I am the nephew of Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson. I would love an opportunity to speak with you." We'll tell you all about it on the next episode of Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff.
Announcer: 03:20:04 CREDITS: Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas and the executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Our production team would love to hear from you. There are a couple of ways you can reach out to us. On Apple Podcasts, you can rate us and leave us a review. That literally helps more people find the show. And if you have questions about the case or want to share your own stories about how this podcast has affected you, send us an email at stories@buriedtruths. org. Please also follow us on social media at Buried Truths Podcast, where you'll find photographs and documents related to the case. Hank Klibanoff is a former newspaper reporter and editor. He's co-author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Race Beat, and today he's a professor at Emory University. On this episode, we had help from the
Page 72! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
nearly 100 students who've taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases class that Hank Klibanoff teaches, and thanks to Professor Brett Gadsden who helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to two past students who you heard from in this episode, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker, for staying really close to the project. Thanks to Emory University and its Centers for Digital Scholarship and Faculty Excellence for their support. And we had additional help with archive recordings from the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia. Thanks to Brian Davis who played the voice of Johnnie Johnson and Tom Maples, who voiced the letters of Henry Durrence. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 73! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Episode 6: I’m Deeply Sorry
Hank Klibanoff: 03:21:34 This is Buried Truths. I'm Hank Klibanoff. There have been many surprising moments during my three year exploration into the life and legacy of Isaiah Nixon. One of the biggest was when my Emory students discovered his grave site. Now that ended a 67 year mystery.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:21:54 There's an Isaiah Nixon?
Ellie Studdard: 03:21:55 Yeah. That's what I was ... So I saw something that said Isaiah, so I uncovered the date, it said September 10, 1948.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:22:03 Wow.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:22:07 The times that Dorothy had visited Alston, she'd stopped by the cemetery where her father was buried, but not since she was six had she known the exact location of her father's final resting place. That was about to change. She drove north from Jacksonville, Florida with her husband of 51 years, Sam Williams, and their son Tony. Their daughter Joy was unable to make the trip. At the same time, I drove south from Atlanta with a van load of students and others from Emory University. The rain was relentless during the three hour drive from Atlanta. It continued as we crossed into Montgomery County and drove into the town of Uvalda, where we met up with Dorothy.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:22:59 My students gathered outside her car like groupies drawn to a rockstar, and she emerged under an umbrella, to extend this high-wattage smile, and then she pulled them close for hugs. Soon, we were part of a small caravan of cars headed to Old Salem Cemetery. Now, that cemetery is at the end of a dirt road that runs three miles into the woods. The rain had made the road a muddy mess. Cars in front of us were slipping one way, cars behind us were sliding another, but soon we arrived in the clearing in the woods that is the cemetery. As if cued up, just as Dorothy stepped out of her car, the rain stopped. It quickly became apparent that this was not going to be a small private Nixon family gathering.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:24:01 Some 10, 15, 20, maybe 25 people had gathered here, and guess who they were? Mostly family members of the men who had stood with Isaiah Nixon and voted in defiance of white supremacy on September 8, 1948. They were the descendants of Dover Carter and John Harris and they had come to bear witness to Dorothy's moment as she reunited with her father. Dorothy began walking toward her father's grave, flanked on both sides by my Emory students, and as she got closer and saw the blank headstone, she paused in astonishment.
Page 74! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Dorothy Nixon: 03:24:47 Well, I'll be damned. Look at that. Mm-mm.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:24:52 She'd seen this headstone before many times, but because it had no name carved into it, no one ever associated it with her father.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:24:59 It was just that close.
Ellie Studdard: 03:25:01 Yep. Yes ma'am.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:25:01 Golly.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:25:07 She moved forward, closer, 'til she was standing over the grave site looking down.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:25:17 How many times did we walk down by here?
Hank Klibanoff: 03:25:20 Dorothy touched the top of the headstone the word Father had been crudely drawn in wet cement. Dorothy knelt, then slowly, lightly traced her fingers over the letters of her father's name. From the I in Isaiah, to the N in Nixon, and then over his date of birth, April 3, 1920 and then over the date of his death.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:25:51 September the 10th.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:25:54 She stood, a bit wobbly, turned to her son Tony, buried her face into his shoulder, and wept.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:26:09 Dorothy had told me earlier that she did not intend to say anything on that day. I felt the occasion shouldn't end without some remarks to commemorate this extraordinary moment. And I had brought a passage from the Book of Isaiah to read, and then Dorothy's son Tony introduced himself.
Tony Williams: 03:26:30 She couldn't speak, but I just wanted to thank Hank and his class. Hank, for making sure that my grandfather's story lives on past her...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:26:39 He smiled and nodded towards his mother.
Tony Williams: 03:26:47 ..., past my daughter. It's rare I'm at a loss for words, but I am. I just wanted to say thank you, and this was very necessary.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:26:57 Then Dorothy was moved to speak. Surrounded by the children and relatives of Dover Carter and John Harris, she decided that this should not be a reenactment of the funeral. I mean, there had been enough sadness right here in 1948. This was, well, this was a celebration, really. Not even of the gravesite discovery, but of what that discovery now allowed. See, it allowed Dorothy to let go.
Page 75! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Dorothy Nixon: 03:27:26 I want to thank all of you all for being here. It's just so awesome. I've never seen a group of students as eager, persistent to find everything that they could about my father. They were sincerely into it. I could see it from the very first time I met them and your faces will always be in my mind. Always. And when I heard the video that Hank sent and then I heard, "I found it! I found it!" It was amazing. They came here not to find Daddy's grave, but just to visit the site in which he was buried, and they found it. That just shows you what a group of students they are.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:28:30 And this led to a really nice moment. As Dorothy's talking, she turns to Ellie Studdard, the student who found her father's grave site and addressed her directly.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:28:41 You have to invite me to your wedding! (Laughter)
Dorothy Nixon: 03:28:44 Yeah. I saw them all on their knees trying to clear off and somebody saying, "Well, I found a bottle of water. I'll go get it and clear off and see." The whole thing to me is just surreal and then looking at this, it's just unreal. I can't say anymore, except all that's coming in my mind is thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:29:23 Clearly, Dorothy is grateful. She's moved, and as you heard, she describes all these events as surreal. Well, she had no idea how surreal this defining story in her life was about to become.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:29:49 You know, the many times I've visited Montgomery County, I also had the opportunity to visit the gravesites of John Harris and Dover Carter. John Harris, the handyman, never left Alston. He lived for another 46 years after that election day when Claude Sharpe warned him not to vote. He died at age 87. He and his wife Sadie, you remember the one who boarded up the house on that election day, well, they're buried at Old Salem Cemetery as well, about 30 yards from Isaiah Nixon.
James Harris: 03:30:21 He was kind of like what they would call a jack of all trades.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:30:26 I stood there with his son James Harris recently as he reflected on his father.
James Harris: 03:30:33 Really, the way he carried himself, he was well respected by both black and white.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:30:40 Standing over the grave of John Harris, I asked James if he could say anything that's on his mind, what would it be?
James Harris: 03:30:48 That I love him. I thank him for the way that he raised us.
Page 76! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 03:31:01 What about Dover Carter, the NCAAP organizer? Now remember, in 1948 he left Montgomery County. He loaded his 10 children on the Silver Meteor train in Atlanta and headed for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I've learned more about him over the years.
Carter daughter: 03:31:18 So, I thank my dad for the heritage and also my mother because she was brave too...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:31:24 In the summer of 2016, I spent a long and wonderful afternoon at a church in West Philadelphia with some 20 family members, including six of the children who were on that train to Philadelphia. Now in their 70s and 80s, they stood up one by one and recalled Dover and Bessie Carter with such love and such passion, often through tears.
Carter son: 03:31:48 He was a strong, stern, stern, man, he was a God-fearing man.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:31:55 Then, a year after I met the family in that church, I attended the Dover family reunion back in Montgomery County. Dover Carter's son, Aaron, allowed me to accompany him to his parents' burial place.
Aaron Carter: 03:32:09 The main highway, because that look like 280 out there.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:32:13 During this drive, Aaron Carter got reflective and then emotional.
Aaron Carter: 03:32:20 They played a major part in my life, and made me the man that I am today. They're still playing a major role because I'm always asking myself when I come across problems, things that happen, I ask myself all the time, "How would pop handle this, what would mom say or do?" So, to that end there, very much a part of my life today.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:32:58 A few minutes later, we arrive at Live Oak Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, Georgia. It's a sweet country church with a small cemetery behind it. As we walked to the gravesite of his parents, Dover and Bessie Carter, a chorus of crickets and cicadas greet us. Now Dover Carter may have fled Alston in fear, but Aaron says his dad always wanted to be buried back in Georgia.
Aaron Carter: 03:33:25 He always wanted to be here. Here's where he wanted to be.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:33:29 Dover Carter lived to age 81, almost 40 years after that fateful election day. His wife, Bessie, well, looking at her headstone I was able to do some fast arithmetic and I smiled. She was born in the year 1910, and she died in 2009. My goodness, she lived 99 years, but wait, this gets better. I need to tell you that in the time I've spent with the
Page 77! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
families of Isaiah Nixon and John Harris and Dover Carter, I've noticed many strong and similar threads. They believe deeply in God. Education is the ticket to a worthy and worthwhile life. And nothing should ever keep them from voting on election day. It's remarkable to learn that Bessie Carter lived long enough to cast her ballot for a black man for president, Barack Obama.
Aaron Carter: 03:34:33 Oh, I think it was one of the proudest minutes of her life. I can imagine how that, looking back, when she wasn't allowed to even vote, but then now she's voting for a black man. It was the crowning part, I think, of her life.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:35:00 Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Bessie Carter would die five days later.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:35:09 When the Carters held this family reunion back in Georgia, I was there. As I stood outside the hall where the dinner was about to start, three women approached. They were striding with smiles and joyful spirits in anticipation of the evening's events. They're three of Dover and Bessie Carter's daughters, Mary, Obadiah, and Bessie. I have just one question for them, standing as we are, not that far from where their dad was brutally beaten, "Why no anger?" There's been no justice, so why no anger? "Their parents were believers," says one. "They taught us the scriptures," says another, "not to keep in our heads, but to keep in our hearts." "It's a matter of praying," says a third sister, "and leaving it in God's hands."
Hank Klibanoff: 03:36:22 My producer asks if there's any kind of poem or song that captures what they're describing. Obadiah blurts out "Yes!" and off they went.
Speaker 11: 03:36:34 (singing) Look where he brought us from. Hmm. Look where he brought us from. Well, he brought me out of darkness, walking in the light. You just look where he brought me from. (joyous laughter) It's okay. It's okay. We didn't know ...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:37:13 After Dorothy Nixon-Williams visit to her father's long lost gravesite, she returned to her home in Jacksonville, where credenzas and tabletops display photos of the Nixon family back in Alston, and the family she raised in Florida. The Wall Street Journal, which had sent a reporter to cover Dorothy's visit, ran a story about it.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:37:35 A few days later, something unexpected and a bit disturbing arrived through email. "My name is Keith Johnson," the email began, "I am a nephew of Jim A. And Johnnie Johnson. I would love an opportunity to speak with you about this case." I felt a sudden tightness. Certainly, we wanted to talk to the family of the Johnson brothers, but
Page 78! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
I had hardly expected them to come to us. I wasn't sure where this guy was coming from. Since this is a student project, I had a student call them. She spoke with him, got some information about his interest, and returned to tell me that he sounded sincere. Then my student told me where he was living, Jacksonville, Florida. The nephew of the men who killed Isaiah Nixon, was living fewer than 10 miles from Dorothy. I'll soon learn that Keith Johnson wants to do something more. He wants to meet Dorothy. He wants to talk with her, and he says, he wants to apologize.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:38:44 Keith Johnson, nephew of Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson, lives less than 10 miles from Dorothy Nixon-Williams, and all these years later, he wants to talk? I called Dorothy and told her that Keith wanted to meet her. I did not say that he wanted to apologize, that's for him to do. Dorothy expressed reluctance to take that step. It just didn't feel right to her. Throughout 2016, both Ellie Studdard, that's the student who had discovered his grave, and I kept in touch with Dorothy and with Keith. Sadly, Dorothy's husband of a half century, Sam, passed away that spring. Toward the end of that year 2016, Dorothy began warming to the idea of meeting Keith. Now, she was saying, "Well, if you and Ellie conclude that Keith's okay, that he's sincere," she might meet him.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:39:45 Well you can go first I don't think you will guide me in a wrong direction, but I'd really prefer you talk to him first.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:39:56 So, in early 2017, a few of us headed down to Jacksonville to meet Keith Johnson.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:00:00 Keith.
Keith Johnson: 03:40:02 Hello. Yeah, come on in.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:40:03 How are you? I'm Hank.
Keith Johnson: 03:40:04 Nice to meet you.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:40:04 Hank Klibanoff.
Keith Johnson: 03:40:04 Nice to meet you.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:40:05 Good to meet you too.
Ellie Studdard: 03:40:06 I'm Ellie.
Keith Johnson: 03:40:08 Nice to meet you.
Ellie Studdard: 03:40:08 Hi.
Page 79! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Keith Johnson: 03:40:08 Come on in.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:40:08 He greets us at the door and we sit at his dining room table, in a house he shares with Chris, his partner of 23 years.
Keith Johnson: 03:40:16 23 years today, in fact. Yeah, so...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:40:19 Keith is an elementary math teacher who's in his mid-50s, and he's looking at old pictures of his uncles, the men who killed Isaiah Nixon.
Keith Johnson: 03:40:27 Jim A. was kind of a larger man. When I say larger, he was heavier. Johnnie, I would say Johnnie was probably about my size, 6 feet tall, like 200 pounds.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:40:38 Keith was born in 1962, 14 years after his uncles killed Isaiah Nixon. Both Johnson brothers died in the late 1970s when Keith was a teenager. Although the whole family lived close to one another, Keith didn't spend too much time with his uncles, who lived and worked on his grandmother's farm.
Keith Johnson: 03:40:58 He would be there, and he would work. But then he would just kind of go away and be gone for a while. Nobody seemed to know where he was. Then he would show back up. Both he and Johnnie were really bad alcoholics. They were ... drank really bad. In fact, that's probably ... that is what they died from.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:41:19 For Keith, the story of Isaiah Nixon started a few years ago when he got a phone call.
Keith Johnson: 03:41:26 I was sitting in that chair, in the family room, and the phone rang, and it was my brother. And ...
Hank Klibanoff: 03:41:31 Craig had seen a story online about how Isaiah, a 28-year- old black man, had been killed outside his home for voting in 1948. And so, Craig calls Keith.
Keith Johnson: 03:41:42 He's like, "Have you ever heard anything about it?" I'm like, "No, I've never heard anything about it." I said, "But I know how I can find out, and so I just start Googling it." I'm like, "Yeah. It's right here." I guess initially I didn't want to believe it, but after doing further research and reading, I was like, "This happened." Initially, I was shocked, embarrassed, even though it happened that long ago, that somebody in our family could've done that. Then I felt like they probably got away with murder.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:42:24 Right away, Keith started talking with everyone in his family about it. He talked to his elderly mother. He talked to a cousin who would've been a young teenager at the time.
Page 80! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
But, these days, few living relatives are old enough to actually remember 1948.
Keith Johnson: 03:42:40 They either don't remember or don't want to talk about it, or, I'm not really sure.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:42:47 What does your instinct tell you?
Keith Johnson: 03:42:48 I think probably more they don't want to talk about it. It's just very strange to me that growing up in such a small community, a close-knit community, that nobody ever talked about it. And maybe that's why they didn't talk about it because they were so close-knit and they didn't really want to discuss it. It was just better left unsaid.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:43:10 No one was saying, "Oh gosh, we knew Jim A. and Johnnie. They would never do that."
Keith Johnson: 03:43:14 I don't think anybody necessarily said they couldn't believe that they would do something like that, but I don't think they would have ever thought that they would do something ... does that make sense? I never really heard anybody say really anything bad about them. I had heard that Jim A. could be mean. I never saw that from him. When I say mean, I don't really know, there's not any specific things that people have said that he had done or would do. They just said that when he was drinking, he sometimes wasn't very nice.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:43:49 I wanted to know how Keith responded to his uncles' claim of self-defense.
Keith Johnson: 03:43:55 Do I really feel like it was self-defense? I didn't really feel like that it was self-defense. Deep in my soul, I know that that was not an act of self-defense. They can say that it was, but why were they there in the first place? You say, "Oh, well the story says they were going to get him to work." Really?
Hank Klibanoff: 03:44:21 And if it was self-defense, Keith asks, why was everybody so secretive about it?
Keith Johnson: 03:44:26 If you were innocent and you did this to save yourself, then why wouldn't you talk about it?
Hank Klibanoff: 03:44:32 No matter what provoked the crime, Keith says, knowing about it now, makes him feel ashamed.
Keith Johnson: 03:44:40 We weren't raised to be racist, or not be kind to people, and treat people with respect. That's not how we were raised and brought up.
Page 81! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 03:44:54 Keith tells us he remembers his grandmother, now that's Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson's mother, welcoming people in need into the Johnson home, white and black.
Keith Johnson: 03:45:05 She would just take people in, like people that ... like drifters or whoever, that needed a place to stay or needed food or whatever. She would take ... So, I mean, what you consider to be good, kind, wholesome people. That's why I guess too, well you don't really expect something like that to happen in your family, that close.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:45:26 The more I talked to Keith, the more confident I am that he is truly remorseful. Not just from his words, but from his actions. See, it turns out that Keith had already, a few years ago, reached out to Isaiah Nixon's widow, Sally. Keith explains how he went to her home to apologize, face to face. He figured he knew the answer to the first question on his mind.
Keith Johnson: 03:45:50 Did anybody ever say they were sorry that that happened, from our family? Did anybody ever apologize to them? I just wanted to do that. I wanted to be able to tell her, that I was sorry for the pain and suffering that someone in my family caused her and her family.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:46:06 Incidentally, I later talked to Dorothy about this. She says her mother did once mention that a man from the Johnson family did come and meet with her once, to say he was sorry. But Dorothy at the time, thought her elderly mother was probably just confused, and she didn't believe her.
Keith Johnson: 03:46:23 I think my sadness is for his family though. It's for, especially when I met Mrs. Nixon, and I'm like uh, here this lady, what she had to go through, like witnessing that, and having to live through that with her small kids, and having to raise her kids by herself without her husband or without their dad, and the sadness comes from that. It's just really sad and it's a horrible thing for them to have had to go through.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:46:49 Now, for the same reasons, he wants to meet with Dorothy. Keith wants to tell her the exact same thing. He wants to tell her that he's sorry. The next morning, I'm at Dorothy's home. I'm with my student, Ellie, and with a producer. We tell Dorothy that we think he's genuine. He's sincere. So, is Dorothy ready now? She looks back on the past year.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:47:17 You know, I just wasn't ready.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:47:21 And now?
Dorothy Nixon: 03:47:22 Now, I'm ready to meet him.
Page 82! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 03:47:35 Keith Johnson wants to apologize for what his uncles did. Well, what does an apology mean?
Hank Klibanoff: 03:47:45 In recent decades, in the civil rights cold cases where no justice was, or will ever be achieved, a sense of closure has become the next best thing. But, it's a distant second. When Robert Muller said the FBI would reopen and examine unpunished, racially-motivated murders, he didn't promise justice. Instead, he hoped to bring closure to the families. Families of many victims received their closure in letters from the Justice Department. Most of the letters included the words, "We regret to inform you." And many of the letters said that the people responsible for the death, and they did say death, not murder, were themselves now dead, so there would be no further investigation.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:48:35 Now, Dorothy has known for a long time that her family would never receive justice, but an apology from someone in the Johnson family, that might help. Now keep in mind, this nation has never tackled its history of white supremacy and violence, through any sort of truth and reconciliation proceedings, the way South Africa did in the 1990s. So, an apology, well, it's better than nothing.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:49:05 Here's one example of many apologies that have been offered in recent years. In Mississippi, a klansman who helped abduct and torture two black 19-year-olds in 1964 revealed the truth at a trial 42 years later. That testimony led to the conviction of the klansman who'd actually killed those young men. From the witness stand, the klansman who told the truth, then turned, unexpectedly by the way, to the families of the victims, and he apologized for his role. The families personally forgave him.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:49:45 In recent years, a handful of police chiefs in the South have also offered apologies. In 1940, in LaGrange, Georgia, a lynch mob invaded a city jail, grabbed a black man named Austin Callaway, then drove him out of town, where they shot and killed him. In 2017, LaGrange police chief, Lou Dekmar, apologized.
Lou Dekmar: 03:50:08 I sincerely regret and denounce the role our police department played in Austin's lynching, both through our action and our inaction, and for that, I'm profoundly sorry. It should never have happened.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:50:25 Now, some of these people from the 1940s, '50s, '60s, they may not apologize but instead take actions that might put them on the right side of history.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:50:42 Remember Henry Durrence the assistant US attorney in Savannah? The one who seemed so intent on discouraging the Justice Department from investigating the
Page 83! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Dover Carter and Isaiah Nixon cases? More than a decade later, in 1961, Henry Durance was a state judge in southeast Georgia, and he made news when he named the first black person to a county board of voter registration.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:51:10 In the South, and well beyond it, right now we're seeing a lot of state and local governments, as well as universities, grappling awkwardly with their histories. They're weighing whether and when and how to apologize. The University of Mississippi has decided to retitle a building that's named after James K. Vardaman. Now, he was a former governor and US senator, and his racist views, the university said, were morally odious.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:51:40 Georgia surprised a lot of people when it removed the statue of white supremacist Tom Watson from the state capitol grounds a couple of years ago and replaced him with a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Georgia governor Nathan Deal spoke at the event to commemorate the statue of Dr. King.
Nathan Deal: 03:52:01 Our actions here today symbolize the evolved mindset of our state as we continue to reconcile our history and our hearts.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:52:20 Some changes of names and removals of monuments and other symbols of the past have been going on longer than most people realize. The most dominant monument inside the Mississippi State Capitol when I arrived there as a newspaper reporter in 1973, was a statue of former governor and U.S. Senator, Theodore Bilbo. Bilbo advocated shipping black Americans back to Africa. When the all-white primary was struck down, he famously said that "the only way now to stop blacks from voting was the night before." That prominent statue of Bilbo, it was removed in 1982 because it was offensive. A few months ago in Jacksonville, Mississippi, I returned to the capital and was looking for it. What happened to the statue? And I found it, in the most far away, difficult-to-find legislative hearing room. There he was, standing alone, in the dark.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:53:25 We're at the point, it seems, when the history we know, see, and teach, is changing in two important ways. We are pushing historically significant white supremacists off their pedestals and hiding them in dark corners. At the same time, we're bringing forth more visibly the stories of the unknown victims of that period. People like Isaiah Nixon, Dover Carter, John Harris, who were killed, beaten, and harassed, just because they tried to vote. And yet, with all these attempts to square up with the past, another starker reality is this, attempts to suppress black voters are on the upswing. Since 2010, 20 states have adopted restrictive
Page 84! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
voting laws. What some democrats in the South did in the 1940s, some republicans are doing today - purging voter roles, curtailing the number of voting days and hours, closing or moving polling places, discriminatory redistricting. And of course, pushing for voter IDs, with the argument, as yet unproven, that it is necessary to overcome pervasive voter fraud.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:54:42 I began this podcast saying that when we understand who we were, we can better understand who we are. We're struggling today with loud echoes from our history. I would just point out, as this podcast has, that black voters have some experience in this field. White politicians for a long time have given them reason to be suspicious. Black voters can calculate from experience, how these changes in voting procedures would, and already do, disproportionately restrict the black vote more than the white vote, in the same way that the all white primary did. Given our history, it's going to be hard to convince black voters that there's not a hidden motive behind these moves. We can't change our history, but we can let it guide us to understanding.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:55:45 Dorothy Nixon-Williams has said she's ready to welcome Keith Johnson at her home, but uncertain. The image of his uncles arriving at her farm, calling out for her father, shooting him, hearing her mother screaming, "Fall, Isaiah, fall." All of that is still vivid in her mind. And now this man who's about to arrive at her home is close kin to the men who did it.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:56:13 I have no idea what I'm going to say to Mr. Johnson, but I do know that he has nothing to do with what his relatives did 67 years ago. I realize that and so, I know I'm not going to treat him as if he did. I can honestly say, I don't know what I'm going to say to him. I'm just going to be myself.
Keith Johnson: 03:56:42 Hey.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:56:43 When Keith Johnson arrives, he's understandably nervous.
Keith Johnson: 03:56:47 May I give you a hug?
Dorothy Nixon: 03:56:48 Sure.
Keith Johnson: 03:56:49 So nice to meet you.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:56:51 You looked like you were a hugger.
Keith Johnson: 03:56:53 Thanks for meeting me. I really appreciate it.
Page 85! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Hank Klibanoff: 03:56:54 They moved toward two sofas. Keith tells Dorothy she looks like her mother, which brings a smile to Dorothy's face, and then he gets straight to it.
Keith Johnson: 03:57:04 I wanted to meet you just to express how sorry I am for my family, for what members of my family put your family through. I just found out about everything that happened, I guess about three or four years ago. It was almost like it was a big family secret in our family that nobody ever spoke of it, and when I found out about it and found out that your mom lived here, I just I wanted to meet her and tell her how sorry that I was for what my family put your family through. I just felt like, deep in my soul, that had probably never been said to your family before.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:57:45 You're the very first person that's said that, but you the first person I met from the family. And you don't share any responsible for that.
Keith Johnson: 03:57:59 I guess kind of in a way I do feel something responsibility. I feel a lot of embarrassment and remorse that they did that.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:58:13 At this moment, Dorothy becomes the psychiatric nurse she's trained to be. Her eyes never leave his. She nods her head and she shows she's listening. Yes, he's there for her, but she knows, this man across from her needs to be heard and understood. Keith, in response, opens up.
Keith Johnson: 03:58:38 It's just a horrible thing that they did, horrible thing and it's unexcusable. I'm just deeply sorry.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:58:48 I don't know what to say or ...
Keith Johnson: 03:58:51 You don't have to say anything.
Dorothy Nixon: 03:59:00 ... Except it's great to meet you and to get a picture of you. It's been a tough road. it's really been pretty tough.
Hank Klibanoff: 03:59:07 Dorothy is curious about a few things, had he ever heard about this growing up? "No," Keith says.
Keith Johnson: 03:59:14 So, I grew up around there but-
Dorothy Nixon: 03:59:15 So, there's nobody living today that's old, old age that remembers that?
Keith Johnson: 03:59:20 That ... well, my mom. But, my mom has no really recollection of it because she, when I asked her about it, when I found out about it, I was like, " Do you remember this happening?" I said, "Did Dad ever talk about it," and she said she remembered when it happened, but she said my dad never talked about it. She said that he was embarrassed by it, so he just never really spoke about it.
Page 86! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Dorothy Nixon: 03:59:46 Just listening to you, you do sound like a very good person. And there are many things that happen in our families that we are not proud of at times and so forth. I would apologize too just like you did, that you had family members that could do something so horrific, but you can't carry that burden that somebody else did, does that make sense to you?
Keith Johnson: 04:00:12 It does.
Dorothy Nixon: 04:00:14 I hope just after meeting me and so forth, it will resolve some of that.
Keith Johnson: 04:00:19 I think being able to meet your mom that day and just express that to her and then being able to express it to you. I just felt like it was something that needed to be done because it had not been done.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:00:32 Dorothy listens, looks away, where I'm not sure, then turns back to Keith. She becomes self-analytical in a way I'd not heard before.
Dorothy Nixon: 04:00:42 You need to find some resolution somewhere. I think I did myself an injustice to wait as long as I did to reach that point, you know.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:00:51 She smiles.
Dorothy Nixon: 04:00:54 But I feel okay.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:00:57 He reaches out, takes her hand, and squeezes gently. Dorothy's eyes light up and that high wattage smile returns. As Keith leaves, Dorothy stands in the doorway and waves.
Keith Johnson: 04:01:12 All right. You have a good rest of your day. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.
Dorothy Nixon: 04:01:16 All right. You too.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:01:17 Keith gets in his car, turns around a corner, and he's gone. But I'm happy to say that Keith and Dorothy are still in touch today.
Dorothy Nixon: 04:01:33 At this point in my life, all of this happened for a purpose. Right now, I feel very comfortable. I don't feel any animosity or anything like that. I feel at peace. I really do with that. I've accepted it and that's good. It's good for me and it's good for the family too.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:01:59 Good for her, good for the family, and for Isaiah Nixon. At the cemetery where he's buried, at that clearing in the woods, at the end of three miles of dirt road, at Isaiah
Page 87! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Nixon's gravesite, the slab with his name crudely etched by a finger in wet cement is fully cleaned and clear. The old headstone, well, it's been removed and in its place, Isaiah Nixon's family has placed a new and beautiful headstone. It's made of Georgia granite and it radiates respect. Underneath ann etching of hands folded in prayer, the headstone gives the dates of his birth and of his death and then, in all capital letters, it reads, "IN LOVING MEMORY, ISAIAH NIXON, FATHER, OUR HERO."
Announcer: 04:03:12 CREDITS: Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas, and the executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Our production team would love to hear from you. There are a couple ways you can reach out to us. On Apple Podcasts, you can rate us and leave us a review, that literally helps more people find the show. If you have questions about the case or want to share your own stories about how this podcast has affected you, send us an email, [email protected]. Please also follow us on social media at Buried Truths Podcasts, where you'll find photographs and documents related to the case. Hank Klibanoff is a former newspaper reporter and editor. He's co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Race Beat, and today he's a professor at Emory University. On this episode, we had help from the nearly 100 students who've taken the civil rights cold cases class that Hank Klibanoff teaches. Thanks to professor Brett Gadston who helped create and teach the course. Thanks to Emory University and its center for digital scholarship and faculty excellence for their support. Special thanks to two past students, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Buried Truths Is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 88! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Bonus: A Conversation with Hank Klibanoff
Announcer: 04:04:56 Welcome to a special extra episode of Buried Truths. For those of you who've had questions about our host, Hank Klibanoff, how he got interested in civil rights cold cases, why he wanted to tell this story, what led to the creation of this podcast, we thought we'd take a moment to fill you in. WABE in Atlanta produced the podcast, and one of their reporters, Ross Terrell, recently spoke with Hank. Here's the conversation.
Ross Terrell: 04:05:20 Hey Hank, thanks for joining us to sit down to talk about the backstory behind the Buried Truths podcast. How are you doing?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:05:25 I'm doing great today, thank you.
Ross Terrell: 04:05:27 So, to get started, tell me a little bit about your interests in these cold cases. What got you started in this podcast and wanting to tell these stories?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:05:34 You know, it's like anything. It's sometimes hard to know when it all really began. In recent years, it began when journalists across the South began investigating a bunch of these stories. Now there's one journalist in Jackson, Mississippi, Jerry Mitchell, he's been doing this for 20, 25 years, and has had a hand in the reopening of the Medgar Evers ... the killing of Medgar Evers, and the Birmingham Church bombing, and another fellow named Ernest Avants, convicted of killing Ben Chester White. There have been ... and Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg. So, he's done quite a few.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:06:11 But as time has gone on, other journalists got interested in it and saw there were great opportunities to ultimately bring justice, or at least to bring closure to families. And so, several of these journalists went to the Center for Investigative Reporting, now Reveal at the Center for Investigative Reporting in California, and said, "Can you help get us some support?" And they were able to get some financial support, and they called me and asked me if I would help coordinate the various journalists across the South. At the time, I was managing editor of the AJC, and I really didn't have the time.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:06:47 But, when I left the AJC, almost exactly 10 years ago, I called them back up and said I would be interested, 'cause I just think these are compelling stories. So, I worked with journalists over in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama ... no one was looking at Georgia. I decided that I would do that myself in some way, form, or fashion. That way, form, or fashion became sort of concentrated in a course that I teach at Emory University.
Page 89! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Ross Terrell: 04:07:21 Which is titled ...
Hank Klibanoff: 04:07:23 The Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project. And so in 2011 I had applied to Emory for a endowed chair position, and was quite fortunate to get that position. One of my pitches was that if I 'd come to Emory, I'd like start teaching history in a different way. And it's through these ... teaching history through these unpunished, unresolved racially motivated murders that took place in Georgia history.
Ross Terrell: 04:07:55 So you talk about your teaching background and your students help out with this podcast, how does your teaching background play into telling these stories, when you mix that with journalism?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:08:06 Well, if anything, I have a journalism background more than teaching. I was a reporter and a editor for 35 years, 36 years, in Mississippi, at the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Enquirer, and here at the Atlanta Journal Constitution. So, I knew a lot more about journalism than I did about teaching.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:08:28 I was fortunate to pair up at Emory with a professor, Brett Gadsden, who was in the African American studies department, and later also the history department, and he and I decided, let's teach it as a course together. It was a magical combination in many ways, 'cause he brought to it all the knowledge and skill of a classically trained historian...his bachelor's and his masters, and his PhD in history ... and I, at the same time, had written a book of history, and I had learned a lot of the history, but I would never have called myself a historian. I was a journalist. So, I brought to the class some journalistic writing techniques and journalistic reporting techniques that meant developing resources that perhaps a classic historian wouldn't always know. There were plenty of things he brought to the classroom that I didn't know. And it was a real nice duet that we had going there for several years.
Ross Terrell: 04:09:37 What role did your students play in this?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:09:40 Well, it evolved. The first class we had was only five students, let me just say that. And the second class we taught was only six, but over time it caught on, and the next thing, we had 11 students, and 14. And now we ... we cap it at 16, 15 or 16. We've had that for years now.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:10:01 The students come in knowing very little. They may have broad brush knowledge of civil rights, or of African American history, or Southern history, but this is all new knowledge to most of them. Our textbook, almost inevitably ... and I mean, case after case, is records that I've obtained from the government, from the federal
Page 90! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
government, through the Federal Freedom of Information Act. And so, I will hand them, the students, on opening day, 230 pages of redacted pages from the FBI case file on the James Brazier case, a man killed in 1958 for driving a brand new car. Or I hand them 200 pages, or 119 pages on this case, or that case. Sometimes it's redacted, sometimes not.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:10:54 And then there's a method after that to how we bring the students up to speed. They have to read that. They have to read it thoroughly. They build a timeline of everything that happened, and it's an evolving timeline. They're adding to the timeline pretty much the first half of the semester, and developing character studies, and trying to figure out what do we know, and what don't we know, and what do we want to know that we don't know.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:11:18 And that becomes ... they sort of figure out the path from there. It's the same thing I learned in a newsroom, and I maybe had forgotten a little bit. In the newsroom, I learned as a reporter to trust my own instincts, and was fortunate to have editors who went with me on that. As an editor, I learned to trust my reporters' instincts. I think the reporters would say that. They might disagree. And I've learned, at Emory, in the classroom, how to trust the students' instincts.
Ross Terrell: 04:11:50 I want to go back to the title of this podcast, Buried Truths, specifically the word Truth, why do you call it that? Why do you call it Buried Truths?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:12:00 Well, there is a truth that has eluded recognition, and reckoning. You know? You can go and look at the whole case of the one, the first season, Isaiah Nixon. You learn that Isaiah Nixon was shot and killed in September of 1948, on election day. And by, according to the sheriff, according to eye witnesses, according to other people, he was killed because he voted. He was active in the NAACP. It was the same day that the head of the NAACP was brutally beaten. And others were warned. He ultimately was killed late that day. According to the testimony, and the sheriff, and others, the two white men who showed up said, "We have two questions. Did you vote?" "Yes, I reckon I did." "Who did you vote for?" And he told them. And it wasn't the candidate they wanted.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:12:54 So, the truth never had its day. The truth never had its reckoning. And this is a way of bringing truth. As you'll hear in the podcast there are others, including one very surprising person who absolutely agrees that justice was denied because the truth didn't come out.
Page 91! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
Ross Terrell: 04:13:16 This is ... for people who may not know it ... a lot of investigative journalism, but in a podcast form. And when you talk about having a class, and having those students, sometimes younger minds can perceive stories a lot differently. How do you try to use that to your benefit, when looking at these civil rights cases, when you have people growing up now in the age of a number of Black Lives Matter, and a number of perceived civil rights violations? How does that help you in telling these stories?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:13:47 That's a really good question. I started this course with Brett in 2011, which is before Trayvon Martin. And Brett Gadsden was terrific at this as a partner. If I refer to Brett in the past tense, it's only 'cause he's moved to Northwestern, and he's teaching there.
Ross Terrell: 04:14:05 Okay. So, he's still with us?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:14:06 He's still with us, right.
Ross Terrell: 04:14:08 Okay.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:14:08 Right. This was before this sort of eruption of cases, of African Americans coming under attack for seemingly minimal or no misdeed ... or, put it another way, in which excessive force was used in these cases. So, this was not about ... this was not a response to any of that. This was just looking ... this was a history course ... not necessarily as a historian would look at it, but as a journalist would look at it ... or the two of them in combination, which is a better way to put it.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:14:45 I, actually, studiously avoided bringing up these cases as we went forward into the other semesters to see if the students would. And it would come up occasionally, toward the end of the semester, but at that point, no one had to connect the dots. I didn't have to connect the dots for them. It's there. You can not hear the story of A.C. Hall in Macon, killed in 1962, by two police officers, without immediately thinking, if you know this case, of the Chicago case of Laquan McDonald. That was the one where the police withheld the video for, I think it was over a year, and denied they shot him in the back. And then you look at the video, and they said he turned to the right, and they thought he had a gun while he was running. He turns toward them. They thought he had a gun, so they shot him. But the video discredits that claim. But, you can not think of ... learn about A.C. Hall without thinking of the Laquan McDonald story.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:15:43 The one pattern that I've seen with students is that they come in, they are fascinated, first of all, to be sitting there with a textbook that is old FBI records. And it's an insider
Page 92! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
glimpse that they're getting. And I think the students just had no idea how...the details of what went on...they have a broad brush understanding what racism was like, and sometimes it does get reduced to that iconic image of two water fountains with white and colored signs over them. And in fact, when I make my presentations, I say, "You know, you gotta dig beneath that. That's just a quick and easy symbol. That's a lollipop for understanding. It's inviting you to go deeper, and so that's what we're going to do."
Hank Klibanoff: 04:16:32 Most of these cases, the records just become mesmerizing to the students, and then they start finding records that I've never seen, you know? How'd you find? I mean one student went down, on one case, to the National Archives Atlanta, down in Morrow, and found 2,000 to 3,000 pages that we had not known existed of transcript from a civil trial. And it was unbelievable. It was Indiana Jones discovering whatever that thing was with all the gold, right? Because the Q and A of the transcripts, the question and answers, the examination, and cross-examination just revealed so much, not just about the case, but about the life and times of these people. I'm not ... without going into detail in the story, I mean, these white cops were insanely jealous that there was a black man who could afford a brand new car, and they couldn't. They kept harassing him, harassing him, and ultimately killed him. Sure enough, you find during the trial ... during the testimony, reading the transcript, that indeed, he did make more money than they did. He was working five jobs.
Ross Terrell: 04:17:49 Looking at that, I mean ... you grew up in Alabama.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:17:51 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ross Terrell: 04:17:52 I grew up here in Georgia. Are there truths happening now that you think are being buried, that 10 years, 20 years down the line, somebody will have to come back and look at more than just that iconic photo and actually dig deeper and find out what happened?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:18:07 Boy, I tell you ... I have to say, the verdicts that we've seen come down ... from afar, I haven't read all the testimony. I'm not live streaming the cases. You know? But, from what I read ... and I read ... I get three newspapers a day, still, and I read a lot online, and I follow it ... and almost each and every time, I am astonished at the acquittals. I am astonished when, in most cases, police officers are found not guilty of what they did. If you listen to the first season of Buried Truths, you see what that was about. You can see how, in the 1940s, there was just this presumption of black criminality. It was just part of everything ... I, I was born something like six months after Isaiah Nixon was killed, so
Page 93! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
I'm raised in that ... I'm marinated in that culture, to believe that blacks were inferior, that ... you know, I have childhood books to look at, which just make fun of black people. And even though my parents were saying, "Don't believe that stuff," okay? And they were very open-minded, and didn't want me to ever disrespect anybody, but they were always a counterpoint to what was out there. And so, if you're predisposed to believe in black criminality, and you're faced as a juror in a case in which two white police officers claim that they did something in self-defense, there's a tendency to believe it, especially when the attorneys played on their whiteness, and on their white heritage, and would say ... I mean, you can look at the transcript of what the lawyers said, defending the two white men who killed Emmett Till, and they both said ... they appealed to the juror's Anglo-Saxon heritage. You know, "Don't abandon your heritage. Your forefathers will spin in their graves if you can't bring back a verdict of not guilty." And they used those languages. They used those words, you know like "birthright," and "heritage," as code words.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:20:24 What I don't know about today is whether the lawyers are ... I mean, the juries are never going to be all white today, anymore ... but, I'm not sure what it is that they're saying, that's triggering these verdicts, these exculpatory verdicts, for the white police officers. I believe it has a lot to do with the fear that they felt, and they didn't know, and it was not ... they weren't intending to kill anybody. They were ... whatever it was, in the heat of the moment, and defending themselves. I would believe it's still a self- defense alibi.
Ross Terrell: 04:20:59 And mentioning growing up and having those books, and your parents as a counterpoint, I mean, the obvious in telling these stories when you talk about civil rights cold cases is you are a white man.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:21:09 Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ross Terrell: 04:21:10 Did you find it difficult to discover information, or to get people to talk, or want to share stories with you, having your race being the first thing they see, and why isn't a black man telling these stories? Did you ever feel some type of animosity?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:21:26 I would say that I, in the cases that we've looked into, have never faced any animosity. I've almost always faced ... from the African Americans now ... I've almost always faced an openness, in the Isaiah Nixon case, the case ... season one of Buried Truths that this episode is tied to. The families, the descendants, of the African Americans who so boldly decided they were going to vote, and organize people to vote, and did so, and who paid a price
Page 94! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
for it, they were totally open, totally available, and totally appreciative that they were going to learn something. I mean, it's not as if back in 1948, the FBI came around to the home of Dover Carter, or Isaiah Nixon, or John Harrison and said, "Well, we're going to tell you what we found here." They didn't. And that happens in case, after case, after case, that I'm familiar with across the South. There was never any attempt ... the FBI ... even conscious FBI agents didn't feel a need to then circle back and tell the families of the victims what they found, or what they didn't find, or the status of the case. So this is all new information for most of these families.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:22:47 There is hostility from some whites, and I've seen it. Generally, it's no longer expresses itself as hostility, but a real charming, gentlemanly response, "Well, let me see what I can find for you on that ... " and then never try. Call them, "Did you find anything?" "No, we're still looking." "Okay, did you find?" "No, we're still looking ... " you know? Just doesn't ever happen.
Ross Terrell: 04:23:08 You hit on the 50% of history is stories, telling stories. But, the other half, I think, is history is our version of a time capsule, and how that's captured, and talking about years, and archives, and how we look at things, why is it so important to tell these stories now? I mean, is the timing perfect because it's 2018, or should these have been stories that were told 10 years ago?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:23:35 Well, I think they should've been told 70 years ago. I think the story of Isaiah Nixon, and Dover Carter, and John Harris should've been told in 1948. I mean, the killing of Isaiah Nixon wasn't even mentioned in the local newspaper in his hometown, because black people weren't news.
Ross Terrell: 04:23:53 When you talk about wanting to inspire students, ignite something in them, at the end of the podcast connecting the dots, having the voting rights, do you think this has been successful?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:24:05 One thing we discover is we want to ignite the students, but it's not about igniting their passions. Not at all. Although you can't help it, you hear these stories and you can't help do that. But, it's about igniting their brains. The distinction is that when students are handing in their earliest papers, and they ... I call it, there's a sudden excess of ... the sudden flurry of adverbial excess, you know? They just...using "outrageously" all the time, you know? And then, "when James Brazier outrageously was stopped for a fifth time in two weeks," you know? Or, "when Jim A. Johnson outrageously pulled out his gun ... there's a lot of emotion that they pump into those first papers. And we just
Page 95! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
sit there and scratch those words out and say, "That is not what we're doing here."
Hank Klibanoff: 04:24:59 And when students get off on their soap box, that is not what we're doing. We are writing history here, and if you want to ... history can be persuasive. History can be ... is to clarify, and illuminate, and elucidate, and if you think the truth ... you have an angle on the truth, which our podcast seems to have, then you can present it that way. But, you've got to support everything you say, and everything you write.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:25:28 I like to see them come at it with passion, but I'm real clear to them, "I need you to do the brain work here." And they do.
Ross Terrell: 04:25:37 Now, this next question is going to sound like a therapist and "how does this make you feel," but I want to look at then, the point of, when you're seeing these civil rights cases that played out, and like you said, the murder that's not even in the paper, and when you see the students who are putting this emotion into it, and it's hard to look at those, and look at what's happening now, knowing history repeats itself, in a lot of ways ... when you see everything that's happening now, and when you were growing up, and what happened then, how do you feel when you walk away from this podcast? When you go home, and you just reflect on all the files, all the things that were buried, what type of emotions do you experience?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:26:19 Some of that comes through in the podcast, when I found myself ... and under the incredible direction and tutelage of Dave Barasoain, the producer, and sometimes I would have to say, under his great restraint, just to let me riff. And some of that riff, you hear in the opening meditation, as I'm walking through the woods on the farmland that Isaiah Nixon's family still owns. And I ask that question, "Who were we? Who were we as a people that we allowed this to happen?" I get emotional about these things. I get emotional about the cases, about the instances of what happened, about all that stuff. I get emotional when I think about the broad brush of history that kind of swept these people up, and no one was there to take the time to record their lives, and the meaning that they had. That's why the remarkable turn of events in episode five in which students discover something the family had lost for 67 years, and that's Isaiah Nixon's gravesite, when that happened... it's unbelievable how emotional that is, for everybody.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:27:42 And yet, the most important discovery is not what you found, but what you learned. It's not what you came upon, but what you walked away with. And I'm not just being glib with that. I mean, that's ... I'm overjoyed by that discovery.
Page 96! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
It reconnected so many people. It's what got the family of the men who killed him to want to talk with us. And it changed the lives of those students who did it. I'm hoping that we all walk away realizing, this was just an unspeakably horrible time in history, and we were, as people, and I'm talking about our forebearers, and there was unspeakably horrific actions by people who thought they were doing the right thing. For what? I don't know. White purity? And they were getting leadership at the top of the government, throughout ... not necessarily the national government, but the state government ... that this was okay.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:28:46 I'm hoping the students will be ignited to keep looking at history, and see what the patterns are. You'll see in this podcast, we reveal a lot of patterns. There's a pattern to the way white people responded to black people. There's a pattern to the way black people responded to white people, and yet, it was a different pattern, from what the white people said it was. The white people said, "Oh, the black people are responding violently to us," and there was so little evidence of that.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:29:18 I would say it's the same today, this whole idea of voter ID, The reason that we are told we need voter ID, and all these other limitations, is because of pervasive voter fraud. And there's just been no evidence of that. And look, I say this having led an entire newsroom, a 600 person newsroom, into an investigation of voter fraud in Philadelphia, that changed the outcome of an election, led to a federal judge overturning the election, and that fraud was perpetrated by Democrats. I mean, it was just an egregious example of the Democrats trying to steal elections, to take control of the state government in Harrisburg. I know it can happen. But, other than that one, I have not seen any others that are significant enough.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:30:11 So, what I'm trying to say is, I hope students learn to be extremely inquisitive and demanding, and almost prosecutorial in their questions about what public figures say.
Ross Terrell: 04:30:26 When you talk about Isaiah Nixon, Emmett Till, MLK, and even today with Trayvon Martin - all lives that, to us, we say were cut short, but that's one thing that they have in common is they left a legacy of some sort. What do you want the legacy of this podcast to be?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:30:44 I think, you know, different constituencies I sort of want to come away with different messages. I think for white people it's an opportunity to look quite closely at who we were, and try to draw any parallels to today, and ask themselves is that what we want? The greatest parallel
Page 97! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
that one might look at it is whether we follow blindly, whether we're following blindly, and just buying into what someone says without questioning it, without, as I say, having a prosecutorial approach to it. I don't mean a cynical approach, but to go at them skeptically.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:31:24 So, that's the universal message I think we can all come away from, because I think if people had asked those questions back in the 1940s, "Wait, are you saying all this about black people? And this, and this ... " I think if they had looked closely, they would realize they're being had.
Ross Terrell: 04:31:41 For the people who are listening to this podcast now, what do you want this to do for them? Is it to inspire change? To make people more aware? To educate? How should the response to this podcast look?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:31:52 You know, I have no agenda. I didn't come at this ... I don't come at this class that I teach with an agenda. It's a way of awakening in young minds something that I wished had been more awakened in me, and that is a love for history, and an appreciation for history. And, an understanding that history can lead to incredible stories. These are incredible stories. If listeners listen to Buried Truths, and if they like the stories, all they're hearing is history, you know? They're not hearing anything more than history. Now, presentation matters. I know that. There's some fabulous historians ... extremely wonderful historians, who have trouble telling stories. Okay? There are also journalists who have trouble telling stories. Okay?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:32:48 So, it's something that can, no matter how much history you learned, and how much history you teach, it can fall flat. And I wanted to teach a class that was different, that didn't fall flat. I wouldn't know how to teach history the way a classic historian teaches it. The only way you can do it, is by involving people who can go off and learn it, and bring it back in. I think that's a great way to learn, to let the students go find things.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:33:14 And, they're learning ... you know, one of the first notes I got from a student, about the podcast, is ... I don't want to call him a kid, he's not now. He graduated in I think 2011, or 2012, and he went to Detroit, and he's in the mortgage business. He sent a note saying how much he loved the class. He says, "I have gone into the mortgage business, and it's unbelievable what I learned in your class as far as research skills that have advanced my career." How to come at a problem believing the answer is there. And in the cases of a history question, that the answers are lying in some file, in some attic, in some closet. And so, that was my ... my goal was to ignite that ... what ignites me, to
Page 98! of !99 BURIED TRUTHS SEASON 1 Transcript
discover there's an archive somewhere that has an answer that ... you know.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:34:16 So, I don't have an agenda, a political agenda on this. At the same time, there are times when we do connect the dots, as you're saying. We do that in this podcast, at the very end, we connect dots. This is a voting rights case. No one would've called it that way, by the way, in 1948. You wouldn't hear the phrase "voting rights" but that's exactly what it was. A man's killed for voting. This is, what 17 years before the Voting Rights Act passed?
Hank Klibanoff: 04:34:47 That was not my goal, but now that I see how history's turning out, and I see that what, 20 states are making moves to suppress the vote even more, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that. I think it would be irresponsible if we didn't mention that there are echos in history, and there are echos in the history of voter suppression that are worth mentioning.
Ross Terrell: 04:35:12 Well, Hank, thank you for this conversation. Thank you for coming in and sitting with us, and discussing some of your motivations, and your background in Buried Truths. We really appreciate it.
Hank Klibanoff: 04:35:21 Thank you, Ross. I sure appreciate it, as well.
Announcer: 04:35:23 CREDITS: That was Buried Truths host Hank Klibanoff in conversation with WABE reporter, Ross Terrell. Remember, please go to surveynerds.com/buriedtruths to take our survey. Follow us on social media. We're @BuriedTruthsPodcast, to see documents, photos, and videos related to Isaiah Nixon's story. And if you haven't already reviewed the show on Apple Podcasts, please take a moment to do so. It'll help more people find us. Thanks for listening. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.
Page 99! of !99