Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America

Eleventh Loop: A Verdict - Mobile, February 1987

ELEVENTH LOOP AVERDICT Mobile, February 1987 He was soaked down in blood. By February 1987, the civil trial was in full swing. Morris Dees entered the Mobile courtroom, offering his opening statement to the jury, explaining the case in its simplest terms. “This case started, actually, in Birmingham, Alabama. A murder took place up there, [perpetrated by] a black man named Josephus Anderson . It’s got nothing to do with this case or this Klan. But that’s how this case got started. He killed a police officer [Sergeant Gene Ballard], or so he was charged with—and he’s later been convicted of that—but he killed a police officer in a pretty gruesome manner. And apparently that caught the attention of the Klan.” Dees went on to explain that Anderson’s jury consisted of “11 blacks and 1 white. And the Klan expected them to find him not guilty when he was being tried.” “You’re going to hear Mr. Knowles get on the stand and testify about what they did to this young man [Michael Donald],” Dees continued. “But first they had a reason to do it. And their reason just wasn’t revenge . They wanted to send a message to black people in the State 146 ELEVENTH LOOP of Alabama that if blacks were going to sit on a jury and judge white people—caseswhereblackpeoplearechargedwithkillingwhitepeople, they better watch out if they didn’t rule right, because this Klan group has got a goal. And that goal is white supremacy.” Dees claimed that the murderers “all knew what they were doing. They had a plan and they did it.” He continued: Now, they hung that body up there [on Herndon Avenue]. Daylight came. It was almost like Christmas. You will see. Waiting for daylight to come to go look under the tree. Somebody found the body and started screaming in the neighborhood, an old man going to get his early morning paper, and when he did, he knocked on the door of Mr. Henry Hays, in the house that Mr. Henry Hays lived in, knocked on the door and said: There’s a body hanging out there. And do you know what? Do you know what Henry Hays did? He got on the telephone. He didn’t dial 911. He already had the number written down. Channel 5 Television. Television cameras, I believe, beat the police to the scene. And he called his daddy down in Theodore—and it’s a long ways down there—and he got there before the police did, or about the time. Dees’s eloquence painted a vivid picture to the jury, and when it was Bennie Jack Hays’s turn to speak on his son’s behalf, he knew he was outmatched. Ladies and gentleman, I’m B. J. Hays. I was the Titan of this Klavern at the time. And I want to tell you the truth from my point and what I feel about other people that has been named here. I cannot build you up a story like Mr. Dees has built, because I’m just not qualified for it. But I can tell you the truth, what I actually know . . . And all of this stuff here Mr. Dees has come up with I have heard, I have never in my life heard "
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 anybody planning or talking about hanging or hurting anyone. And as far as the Klan, that is absolutely a no-no to even allow that to be discussed in a Klavern or in a meeting or anywhere in presence. We don’t know—we don’t want it. Because it’s radical, it’s stupid. And everything that happened to the fellow was one of the awfulest things I ever saw. And nobody being a decent human being could be proud of that I don’t care who he is. Bennie Jack recounted the events of that morning, how his son Henry had called him and told him to come over to Herndon Avenue. “And so I did go over there,” Bennie Jack explained to the courtroom . “And what it looked like actually up close, I have no idea. But nobody could have been proud of it.” After acknowledging that Donald’s body had been publicly displayed just feet from his son’s apartment, Bennie Jack Hays continued: “A man would be—or women would be—a totally—nut to hang a...