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By the early 1960s, Hollowell was increasingly taking on cases in remote areas of Georgia that covered the spectrum from defending the rights of blacks guaranteed by the United States Constitution to defending blacks from an oppressive criminal justice system. His willingness to take on civil rights cases and his reputation for success led to his involvement in virtually every case in the state that involved civil rights violations. John Ruffin, one of the few attorneys who practiced civil rights law in Georgia in the 1960s and later chief justice of the Georgia Court of Appeals, observed that it was difficult to think of a civil rights case during that period that Donald Hollowell did not impact. Ruffin noted: “Whether [Hollowell] did the main work, in terms of preparation at the trial level or not, Donald Hollowell’s name had to be on the pleadings. And everybody that practiced civil rights law wanted Don Hollowell’s physical presence there because he was such a persuasive and gentlemanly lawyer.” In one particularly egregious denial of due process, a few months before the Albany Movement, James Fair, a black man in Early County, was arrested, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in a rape and murder case—all within sixty-three hours. Hollowell and C. B. King, with the assistance of law clerk Vernon Jordan, traveled to Reidsville, Georgia, to represent the defenseless Fair. [ C h a p t e r S e v e n Turning the Tide Hollowell’s March across Georgia turning the tide [ 161 On Sunday, May 15, 1960, at about one o’clock in the morning, Blakely, Georgia, police arrested Fair for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl last seen in Fair’s company. Later in the day, Fair was taken to the sheriff ’s office, where he allegedly made a full confession before the Early County sheriff and deputies. Without delay, on the following day the Early County grand jury indicted Fair for both the rape and the murder of the child. On Tuesday, May 17, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, upon adjournment of the grand jury, the judge ordered Fair to court for the purpose of arraignment . Before five o’clock that afternoon, without having access to private legal counsel, a court-appointed lawyer, or even the presence of friends and family, Fair entered a plea of guilty, and Judge W. I. Geer swiftly imposed the death sentence. Geer, an openly segregationist judge, had included in his campaign platform the declaration that he did not want the support of blacks. Objecting to the lightning speed of Fair’s trial and the absence of any legal representation, Hollowell, C. B. King, and Vernon E. Jordan, in association with the naacp, filed a habeas corpus petition in the Reidsville City Court contending that Fair had not been afforded due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. During the habeas corpus hearing, Fair testified that he did not commit the crimes, but after being cursed, threatened , and told, “Nigger, you deserve to be tarred and feathered” by Sheriff Sid Howell, he pled guilty. Fair stated that he pled guilty because he was frightened by Howell’s purported reputation for violence; moreover, Howell had told him that he had previously been able to get a black man a life sentence rather than the death sentence because the man pled guilty. Under cross-examination by Hollowell, Sid Howell’s son, Sid Howell Jr., admitted that his father had shot several men, and Blakely police chief G. H. Owens conceded that Sheriff Howell had “killed several, black and white” during his twenty-four-year tenure as sheriff. Alice Fair, Fair’s mother, also testified that she had telephoned Sheriff Howell regarding traveling from Bayonne, New Jersey, to Georgia to secure legal counsel for her son. She related to the court that Howell responded, “It’s no need to you coming down getting a lawyer, because you couldn’t get a white lawyer in the State of Georgia to take the case and a nigger didn’t have a chance.” Despite Fair’s and his mother’s testimony, witness statements regarding Sheriff Howell’s propensity for violence, and Hollowell and King’s pleadings on Fair’s behalf, habeas corpus judge R. L. Carr ruled against Fair. In addition to the segregated courtroom where court officials relegated blacks to seats in the balcony, every day at the lunch break when white court [3.133...

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