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

Thirteenth Loop: A Retelling - Mobile, Present Day

THIRTEENTH LOOP A RETELLING Mobile, Present Day This is a reminder to put away our prejudices, to be inclusive of everyone and to love our neighbors. If we examine any situation closely enough, there’s always some new clue worth uncovering. But history makes it too easy to search for clues in the aftermath, reading yesterday’s newspapers in search of the tea leaves of tomorrow. In the wake of tragedy, everything transforms into signs, symbols, forebodings of things to come. Logic is replaced with possibility, truths with hunches, conviction with circumstance. Everything becomes uncanny. Such as the coincidence that on the day the Mobile Register printed the story of Michael’s hanging, they also printed a story related to his murderers—a Klan protest in Connecticut that had left a few Klansmen bloodied. Or that just deeper into that section of the paper, a Kodak advertisement had the bolded phrase “Hang Them Up” (referring to print enlargements) eerily close to the story of Michael’s fate. Or that the following day, March 22, the paper reported the legend 186 THIRTEENTH LOOP of Dead Man’s Tree—a supposedly haunted lynching tree in Baldwin County, the same county where Donald was killed. According to reporter Michael Wilson, even Police Chief Wilbur Williams was stretching the boundaries of logic, “studying the fact that March 21, 1981, was the first night in 100 years that a full moon rose over the first night of spring, and he wondered in frustration if it mattered .” As Williams can attest, when examining any story closely enough, we find ourselves grasping for connections, resorting to the alignment of stars and horoscopes for clues. We begin substituting fiction for facts, inklings for interviews, examining crystal balls and tarot cards to fill in all the blanks. And suddenly, even the landscape of Michael Donald’s murder takes on new, personal significance. Less than twenty-four hours after Michael Donald was murdered in Baldwin County, a tornado touched down on the scene of the murder, destroying the nearby trees and limbs. “Golf-ball sized hail rained down . . .” “Heavy, high winds caused widespread power outages . . .” W. L. Patterson of the Alabama Power Company noted the many trees that had fallen onto the lines, how his employees worked deep into Saturday night as the storms raged all around them. If the storm had hit just twenty-four hours prior, perhaps Hays and Knowles might have stayed inside the warmth of the Herndon apartment instead, played another hand of cards. Or perhaps Michael Donald might have been the one to stay inside to grumble about his losing Jags. All it might have taken was a gust of wind or some rain. A ripple of thunder. A game gone into overtime, one more second on the play clock. TherearecountlessscenariosinwhichMichaelDonaldnever walked "
3&5&--*/(

 past the Buick Wildcat, was never asked for directions, was never held with a knife to his throat. And yet, like all tragedies, somehow all the conditions allowed for the worst-case scenario to play out. t Only three men know what actually occurred on the night of March 20, 1981. Two of those men are dead. Theonewhoremains—Tiger Knowles—hasnowbeenreleasedfrom prison, though he remains unavailable for comment. It is difficult to decipher the mystery of Tiger Knowles, whether he is a victim of “racism and hatred” as Richard Cohen suggested, or quite to the contrary, nothing more than a cold-blooded murderer. Perhaps the answer involves a question of intent. While Rick Kerger contends that his client Henry Hays as well as Hays’s accomplice Tiger Knowles intended to harass a black man, he remains firm in his conviction that the pair had no intention of killing anybody. Nevertheless, when Kerger asked Knowles if he agreed with that statement, Knowles answered, “No, I believe we were going to kill him,” dooming his accomplice in the process. t In 1981, the year Michael Donald was found hanging from a tree, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the fortieth president of the United States of America, Walter Cronkite retired, and Robert Redford’s Ordinary People won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Pope John Paul II was shot. Ronald Regan was shot. Wayne Williams was charged with 188 THIRTEENTH LOOP the Atlanta murders. And just three years later, The Cosby Show would become one of the most popular shows on television right around the same time Henry Hays received his sentencing...