The Color of the Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Post-World War II South

1. The Columbia Story

THE COLUMBIA STORY CONFRONTATION For Gladys Stephenson, getting the children's radio repaired was a trying experience. A 37-year-old domestic worker and mother offour, Stephenson lived in a black working-class neighborhood in the West End in Columbia, a small Middle Tennessee town located about forty-three miles south of Nashville. She had sent the radio in for repairs in early January 1946. Her eldest son James would soon be home from the Navy, and she may have wanted it in working condition for his return; certainly, the other children were clamoring for it. When Stephenson's 17-year-old son, John Robert, carried the radio to the repair shop at Caster-Knott, a department store situated on the southeast corner of the Columbia square, he was told by LaVal LaPointe, the service shop manager, that repairs would cost between $8 and $lO.l About a month later when John Stephenson returned to the store to pick up the radio, he learned that it had been sold to a farmer who worked for John Calhoun Fleming Sf. Fleming was the father of William "Billy" Fleming, a 28-year-old Army veteran who began apprenticing in radio repair under the GI Bill at Caster-Knott around December 1, 1945, just a few months after his discharge from service. Although the store had a policy that permitted the sale ofan item brought in for repair and not picked up within thirty days, radios were scarce, the younger Fleming later admitted, and none other than Stephenson's had ever been sold. Upon learning ofthe sale of her children's radio, Gladys Stephenson made her first trip to CasterKnott , where she conversed with LaPointe. Rather than the $8 to $lO orig- James Stephenson (Courtesy ofNAACP) inally estimated for repairing it, the shop manager now said charges would be $13.75, with batteries needed to make it play bringing the cost to $17.50' Stephenson informed LaPointe that she could not pay the latter amount but would pay the former. He promised to retrieve the radio. A week or so later John Stephenson, accompanied by his 19-year-old brother James who was now home from service, returned to the store. According to LaPointe, he "went into considerable detail" to explain to James the work that had been done on the radio. The older Stephenson responded that he felt the charges were too high and that because he was "a radio man in the Navy," he could make the necessary repairs. Stephenson then asked LaPointe to remove the new tubes and to charge him only for the labor involved. LaPointe refused, saying that this would require the removal ofsome additional parts and would "take all of the profit out of the repair job." James at that point paid LaPointe the $13.75 and left the store without comment.2 When Gladys arrived home from work that afternoon and discovered that the radio still would not play and that it had no electric cord, she was quite upset. The next day, Friday, February 22nd, she informed her employer Evelyn Watkins Sowell, a Columbia widow, of her difficulties. Sowell called Caster-Knott and spoke with someone who said that Gladys should return to the store and an adjustment would be made. On Saturday, the 23rd, Gladys returned, only to be told that the manager was in Nashville and she would have to come back another time to see him.. 8 The Columbia Story On February 25, 1946, between 9:30 and 10:00 A.M., Gladys Stephenson and her son James made a final, fateful trip to the radio repair shop at CasterKnott . Exasperated, Gladys announced upon their arrival, "Here I am with the same radio." LaPointe then commented that he had "had quite a bit of trouble with that radio," and Gladys responded, "Yes, you have, because it has not given satisfaction.'" Gladys Stephenson and LaVal LaPointe then engaged in what one store clerk termed "aloud argumentative conversation " in which Stephenson insisted that the radio had always plaved on electric current; LaPointe informed her that it would not do so now without additional parts, and she responded that she felt as ifshe had already paid for those parts. She also added that she did not wish him to do any further work OIl the radio beyond the reattachment of the electric cord.4 Throughout the discussion, James Stephenson and Billy Fleming rcmained...