Abstract

The White Hand of Justice

Deep South juries still will not convict a white man for murdering a Negro or another white man who pleads the Negro's cause. The acquittal of Deputy Sheriff Thomas Coleman in Hayneville, Ala, in the slaying of theology student Jonathan Daniels has only confirmed what already had been demonstrated in trial after trial. But the current exclamations of outrage, the scurrying about for remedy on the part of reasonable Americans, might lead an outsider to think that some new phenomenon of injustice had suddenly appeared. It is, of course, as much a part of the judicial scene as juries themselves, and this furnishes the key to cause and possible remedy. The ghostly ranks of those who have died in the South for human rights can never be wholly avenged, nor should vengeance be the driving purpose. But a dynamic and democratic justice that can punish can also by example give pause to those who would strike the defenseless. The South has seen enough martyrdom. The conscience of this Republic can bear no more.