Roadside Justice

With the release of Till in 2022, the movie celebrating Mamie Till-Mobley’s role in the Civil Rights movement, many Americans learned about one of the most important stories in the history of the period. Accurately told, that story is as close to a battle between good and evil as one can find. An innocent Black youth violates an unwritten rule of racial control; he pays with his life, taken by two white men (almost certainly with the help of others), who commit unspeakable acts of cruelty. The injustice became even clearer when an all-white male jury acquitted two obviously guilty murderers. Those events captured the attention of many people who grew up in that era, helping to mobilize support for racial equality. History seldom provides such clear stories of heroes and villains.One unfortunate offshoot of that narrative was the creation of a one-dimensional view of Mississippi as a place where good and evil were color-coded and where the justice system worked only in favor of whites at the expense of Black Mississippians. Brown’s Roadhouse Justice tells a more complex, nuanced story about Mississippi justice centered on Hattie Lee Barnes, a young Black woman working in a roadhouse outside McComb, Mississippi. Rob Lee, the bar’s owner, was a rough character who would later attempt to murder two witnesses to a death that took place in his bar.In the early morning hours of April 17, 1951, three white men who had been drinking in the bar returned to the scene after the bar closed. Lamar Craft, a twenty-two-year-old from a prominent local family, tried to climb through Barnes’ bedroom window in the back of the bar. Despite the efforts of his family to change the narrative, Craft’s intent was clear; it became part of the public record. He was there to rape Barnes. She shot him, killing him as he was entering her bedroom window.What followed was the highly unusual acquittal of a Black woman who had shot a white man. Some of the people involved in the case showed great tenacity, including Joe Pigott, Barnes’ twenty-eight-year-old court-appointed attorney with a newly minted law degree. Another local figure urging justice for Barnes was Charles Gordon, a local news reporter who wrote numerous stories supporting her. While neither claimed to be a Civil Rights activist, each acted with courage in advancing justice for Barnes. Tom Brady, the trial judge (and later a state Supreme Court justice), directed the verdict of acquittal in Barnes’ favor. Although Brady was to become an important member of the White Citizens Council, he was able to find for a Black defendant who killed a prominent white man, even in an era of Jim Crow.Other people come across less favorably. Despite her acquittal, Barnes was detained for an extended time, presumably in protective custody awaiting Lee’s trial. By comparison, Lee spent his time free on bail, while awaiting trial for attempting to shoot two witnesses. Craft’s family pressured Barnes to recant her statements that she shot him. The family wanted to shift blame to Lee so that they could deny that their relative attempted to rape a Black woman. The family’s attorney was allowed to participate in “interviews” of Barnes to pressure her to lie by naming bar owner Lee as the shooter.Even this brief overview suggests that Barnes’ case provides insight into the vagaries of Jim Crow justice in the 1950s. But how does it fit into the larger narrative? Barnes left Mississippi as soon as possible and never resurfaced. With little education and few resources, she did not attempt to become part of the burgeoning Civil Rights movement. Nonetheless, her case tells us a great deal about the deprivation of civil rights and perseverance in the face of it.The happier result, an acquittal procured through dogged efforts of a white attorney and a white news reporter, makes the story more palatable for those of us who believe in the integrative ideal. Brown’s statement to an interviewer best summarizes how we should view this compelling tale: In shades of gray, Barnes was acquitted, but “[i]n a just system, Barnes would not have needed the intervention of men such as that attorney, Joe Pigott, and that reporter, Charles Gordon. The Mississippi legal system was chancy and capricious. Barnes no doubt valued the advocacy of those men, but she, like other Black Mississippians, obviously would have preferred a social order built upon fairer lines.”1

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