The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson: The Baseball Legend's Battle for Civil Rights during World War II

The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson

BOOKS

BY MICHAEL LEE LANNING

The Only War We Had: A Platoon Leader’s Journal of Vietnam

Vietnam 1969–1970: A Company Commander’s Journal

Inside the LRRPs: Rangers in Vietnam

Inside Force Recon: Recon Marines in Vietnam (with Ray W. Stubbe)

The Battles of Peace

Inside the VC and NVA: The Real Story of North Vietnam’s Armed Forces (with Dan Cragg)

Vietnam at the Movies

Senseless Secrets: The Failures of U.S. Military Intelligence from George Washington to the Present

The Military 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Military Leaders of All Time

The African-American Soldier: From Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell

Inside the Crosshairs: Snipers in Vietnam

Defenders of Liberty: African-Americans in the Revolutionary War

Blood Warriors: American Military Elites

The Battle 100: The Stories behind History’s Most Influential Battles

Mercenaries: Soldiers of Fortune, from Ancient Greece to Today’s Private Military Companies

The Civil War 100: The Stories behind the Most Influential Battles, People, and Events in the War between the States

The Revolutionary War 100: The Stories behind the Most Influential Battles, People, and Events of the American Revolution

At War with Cancer (with Linda Moore-Lanning)

Tours of Duty: Vietnam War Stories

Tony Buzbee: Defining Moments

Texas Aggies in Vietnam: War Stories

Double T Double Cross Double Take: The Firing of Coach Mike Leach

The Veterans Cemeteries of Texas

Dear Allyanna: An Old Soldier’s Last Letter to His Granddaughter

The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson

The Baseball Legend’s Battle for Civil Rights during World War II

Michael Lee Lanning

Guilford, Connecticut

Published by Stackpole Books

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

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Lanham, MD 20706

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Copyright © 2020 by Michael Lee Lanning

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Names: Lanning, Michael Lee, author.

Title: The court-martial of Jackie Robinson : the baseball legend’s battle for civil rights during World War II / Michael Lee Lanning.

Description: Guilford, Connecticut : Stackpole Books, [2020] | Includes index. | Summary: Eleven years before Rosa Parks resisted going to the back of the bus, a young black second lieutenant, hungry to fight Nazis in Europe, refused to move to the back of a U.S. Army bus in Texas and found himself court-martialed. The defiant soldier was Jack Roosevelt Robinson, already in 1944 a celebrated athlete in track and football and in a few years the man who would break Major League Baseball’s color barrier. This was the pivotal moment in Jackie Robinson’s pre-MLB career. Had he been found guilty, he would not have been the man who broke baseball’s color barrier. Had the incident never happened, he would’ve gone overseas with the Black Panther tank battalion-and who knows what after that. Having survived this crucible of unjust prosecution as an American soldier, Robinson-already a talented multisport athlete-became the ideal player to integrate baseball. This is a dramatic story, deeply engaging and enraging. It’s a Jackie Robinson story and a baseball story, but it is also an army story as well as an American story—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019046248 (print) | LCCN 2019046249 (ebook) | ISBN 9780811738644 (cloth) | ISBN 9780811768627 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Robinson, Jackie, 1919-1972—Trials, litigation, etc. | African American baseball players—Biography. | African Americans—Biography. | African Americans—Civil rights—History. | Discrimination in sports—United States—History.

Classification: LCC GV865.R6 .L38 2020 (print) | LCC GV865.R6 (ebook) | DDC 796.357092 [B]—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046248

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046249

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

To Scott Howard

Contents

Cover

Half Title

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Author’s Note

Introduction

1Racism: The Two-Headed Snake

2Georgia to California

3The Athlete Emerges

4UCLA and Rachel Isum

5Early Stances against Racism

6After College

7African Americans and Military Service

82nd Lt. Robinson

9Medical Issues

10 Camp Hood, Texas

11 Back of the Bus

12 The Charges

13 The Statements

14 The Investigation

15 The Court-Martial

16 The Verdict

17 Final Army Days

18 The Negro Leagues

19 Branch Rickey

20 Spring Training

21 Montreal Royals

22 Breaking the Color Barrier

23 Federal Bureau of Investigation

24 House Un-American Activities Committee

25 Fame, Death Threats, and Retirement

26 Life after Baseball

27 More FBI

28 Final Days

29 Legacy

30 Conclusion

Epilogue: People, Places, Things—Today

Historical Perspective 1: Slavery and Racism

Historical Perspective 2: Grady County, Georgia

Historical Perspective 3: Spanish Flu Epidemic

Historical Perspective 4: Pasadena, California

Historical Perspective 5: African Americans in the Military

Historical Perspective 6: Max Schmeling

Historical Perspective 7: Joe Louis

Historical Perspective 8: 1st and 2nd U.S. Cavalry Divisions

Historical Perspective 9: Texas Race Relations

Historical Perspective 10: McCloskey General Hospital

Historical Perspective 11: Camp Hood, Texas, MP Station

Appendix A: Sworn Statement of 2nd Lt. Jack R. Robinson

Appendix B: Original Charge Sheet

Appendix C: Sworn Statement of Capt. Peelor L. Wigginton

Appendix D: Sworn Statement of Capt. Gerald M. Bear

Appendix E: Sworn Statement of Mr. Milton N. Renegar

Appendix F: Sworn Statement of PFC Ben W. Mucklerath

Appendix G: Sworn Statement of Mr. Bevlia B. Younger

Appendix H: Sworn Statement of Mrs. Elizabeth Poitevint

Appendix I: Sworn Statement of Mrs. Ruby Johnson

Appendix J: Sworn Statement of Acting Cpl. George A. Elwood

Appendix K: Sworn Statement of Sgt. William L. Painter

Appendix L: Sworn Statement of Acting Cpl. Eugene J. Henrie

Appendix M: Sworn Statement of Acting Cpl. Elmer S. Feris

Appendix N: Sworn Statement of Capt. Edward L. Hamilton

Appendix O: Sworn Statement of 1st Lt. George Cribari

Appendix P: Sworn Statement of Pvt. Walter H. Plotkin

Appendix Q: Sworn Statement of Pvt. Lester G. Phillips

Appendix R: Final Charge Sheet

Appendix S: Summary of Telephone Conversation

Appendix T: Letter to Assistant Secretary of War Truman K. Gibson

Appendix U: Second Sworn Statement of Capt. Gerald M. Bear

Appendix V: Sworn Statement of Mrs. Virginia Jones

Appendix W: Request for Retirement from Active Service

Appendix X: Follow Up Request for Retirement from Active Service

Appendix Y: Court-Martial Transcript

Sources/Bibliography

About the Author

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Guide

Cover

Half Title

Title

Copyright

Dedication

Contents

Author’s Note

Start of Content

Epilogue: People, Places, Things—Today

Historical Perspective 1: Slavery and Racism

Historical Perspective 2: Grady County, Georgia

Historical Perspective 3: Spanish Flu Epidemic

Historical Perspective 4: Pasadena, California

Historical Perspective 5: African Americans in the Military

Historical Perspective 6: Max Schmeling

Historical Perspective 7: Joe Louis

Historical Perspective 8: 1st and 2nd U.S. Cavalry Divisions

Historical Perspective 9: Texas Race Relations

Historical Perspective 10: McCloskey General Hospital

Historical Perspective 11: Camp Hood, Texas, MP Station

Appendix A: Sworn Statement of 2nd Lt. Jack R. Robinson

Appendix B: Original Charge Sheet

Appendix C: Sworn Statement of Capt. Peelor L. Wigginton

Appendix D: Sworn Statement of Capt. Gerald M. Bear

Appendix E: Sworn Statement of Mr. Milton N. Renegar

Appendix F: Sworn Statement of PFC Ben W. Mucklerath

Appendix G: Sworn Statement of Mr. Bevlia B. Younger

Appendix H: Sworn Statement of Mrs. Elizabeth Poitevint

Appendix I: Sworn Statement of Mrs. Ruby Johnson

Appendix J: Sworn Statement of Acting Cpl. George A. Elwood

Appendix K: Sworn Statement of Sgt. William L. Painter

Appendix L: Sworn Statement of Acting Cpl. Eugene J. Henrie

Appendix M: Sworn Statement of Acting Cpl. Elmer S. Feris

Appendix N: Sworn Statement of Capt. Edward L. Hamilton

Appendix O: Sworn Statement of 1st Lt. George Cribari

Appendix P: Sworn Statement of Pvt. Walter H. Plotkin

Appendix Q: Sworn Statement of Pvt. Lester G. Phillips

Appendix R: Final Charge Sheet

Appendix S: Summary of Telephone Conversation

Appendix T: Letter to Assistant Secretary of War Truman K. Gibson

Appendix U: Second Sworn Statement of Capt. Gerald M. Bear

Appendix V: Sworn Statement of Mrs. Virginia Jones

Appendix W: Request for Retirement from Active Service

Appendix X: Follow Up Request for Retirement from Active Service

Appendix Y: Court-Martial Transcript

Sources/Bibliography

About the Author

Author’s Note

The first African American Major League Baseball player was named Jack Roosevelt Robinson. His mother, siblings, and wife always called him Jack. It was not until Robinson signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers that he became known as Jackie. Because his world-wide fame is as Jackie Robinson, that is the name used throughout this narrative.

In the following pages the reader is directed at various places to refer to Historical Perspectives located in the back of the book. These Historical Perspectives provide deeper insights into the racial conditions, places, and people during Jackie’s time in uniform and his court-martial.

The analysis of, and conclusions about, the court-martial of Jackie Robinson are presented after a careful and lengthy study. However, not all readers will want to accept the author’s translations and interpretations; some will want more direct, first-hand information. Therefore, this book includes as Appendix the complete witness statements made by the participants and the entire transcript of the trial to enable readers to make their own decisions.

Introduction

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson, wearing Brooklyn Dodger Number 42, stepped onto the grass of Ebbets Field in New York City and changed Major League Baseball forever. Until that moment, America’s Pastime had been an affiliation of all-white teams. Robinson was the first black to break the color barrier in any major American sport. It would not be his only first.

Between the end of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s, Jackie Robinson became the icon of African Americans’ quest for equality in the United States. His mere presence combined with his remarkable athletic abilities on MLB diamonds proved to the country that blacks and whites could compete and live together for the betterment of both races. He was the lone, unrivaled black leader until the emergence of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Even today, photographs of Jackie Robinson in his baseball uniform symbolize not only sports’ willingness to move forward in race relations but also the country’s awakening to the need to address the status quo.

Indeed, the groundswell for change was already well underway by the time the umpire called Play ball! that April afternoon. Jackie Robinson became a significant player in both the future of baseball and the future of African American rights. While finding his own way was indelibly linked with the history of his ancestors, he was able to coalesce the forces around him to shape a better world for himself and those who would follow, for he was a leader who stepped out front and out early.

On December 1, 1955—more than eight years after Robinson took his first turn at bat at Ebbets Field—Rosa Louise McCauley Parks refused instructions from a white bus driver in Montgomery, Alabama, to relinquish her seat to a white passenger and move to the colored section—the rear—of the vehicle. Her defiance, which generated nation-wide attention, led to a law suit (Browder v. Gayle) endorsed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A Federal District Court on June 5, 1956, found bus segregation unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The United States Supreme Court affirmed the decision on November 13, 1956.

Despite the fact that Rosa Parks became the face of the Civil Rights Movement, she was not the first black to defy white rules regarding bus seating. More than ten years earlier, a young black man likewise refused to move to the rear of the bus. That young man was Second Lieutenant Jack Roosevelt Robinson, the date was July 6, 1944, and the place was Camp Hood, Texas. For that stance and his sequential protests, Robinson faced a General Court-Martial for his alleged disrespect to a superior officer and failure to follow a lawful command.

Whereas Parks’s civil disobedience led to her being remembered as the mother of the freedom movement and the first lady of civil rights, Robinson’s trial in the closing days of World War II on a remote Army post in Central Texas received little news coverage. In those days, Jim Crow laws dictated behavior both in Southern civilian communities and on military installations. Robinson, who would go on to become one of the best known and popular athletes of all generations, was truly a man ahead of his time that pivotal day when he refused to give up his seat on a Jim Crow bus. While it did not bring him the attention or notoriety that the same act brought Rosa Parks, this experience affected him deeply and set the stage for him to become an African American hero and icon.

Although one of the least explored episodes about him, the court-martial of Jackie Robinson played a crucial role in his maturing process and in the development of his self-confidence. It demonstrated to him—as well as eventually to the rest of the world—that a black man could successfully and non-violently stand up to white prejudices. That Robinson achieved the clarity of such maturity and confidence positioned him for everything that came after.

• 1 •

Racism

The Two-Headed Snake

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born near Cairo, Georgia, in Grady County, in the early years of the twentieth century. It was not a promising time for an African American to come into this world, especially into Southern Georgia. With the Civil War only a mere fifty years in the past, many former slaves and former slave owners were still living with, and holding onto, their vivid memories of the way of life that had been in their youth. Blacks and whites alike held fast to their resentments and grievances; all around them were ever-present reminders of the great loss of life and property during the war and the following Reconstruction, reminders that kept the wounds open for generations. This was the situation into which Jackie Robinson was born, and he was inevitably influenced and shaped by the forces around him and the history that had come before him.

The victory by the Union forces over the rebel Confederates preserved the United States and freed the slaves, but those events in and of themselves did not instantly produce cultural or political equality—or even basic rights and security for the liberated blacks. Other than the absence of chains, African Americans continued to live very much like enslaved people. This standard of living was enforced by the formal laws of courts, the informal rules of the white majority, and the violence of the Ku Klux Klan via intimidation at best and lynching at worst.

That was the heritage that surrounded Robinson at the time of his birth. His was a life story that had been set in motion centuries before. At the time in world history when the first white settlers arrived on the East Coast of North America early in the seventeenth century, slavery was, and always had been, a common, wide-spread practice imposed on any group or race that fell under the control of a more powerful group or ethnicity. Tragically, America and Americans would be no exception. On August 20, 1619, a Dutch ship anchored off the Colony of Virginia to offer twenty individuals, recently captured on the African West Coast, to the colonists in exchange for provisions. Once those enchained individuals stepped ashore, the stage was set for national conflict and grief because a free people cannot rationally coexist with an enslaved one.

It took only forty-four years before the growing number of slaves in the colonies staged their first rebellion, which occurred in Gloucester County, Virginia, in 1663. Over the next 100 years, slaves rebelled more than 250 times. None of the uprisings, however, were successful, and the participants were executed or whipped and returned to bondage. The larger the number of blacks in the country, the more the whites feared losing control of their chattel. By 1775, the slave population had risen to 600,000—or 20 percent—of the colonial population of 3,000,000. Even though the economies of all the colonies owed much to the institution of slavery, indentured blacks composed about 40 percent of the total population of the Southern colonies where agriculture was particularly dependent on their labor. This was the backdrop of the Robinson family. (Historical Perspective 1.)

The half-century between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century was filled with racial realignment on the parts of all Americans. It was a tumultuous time, a violent time, a dangerous time. It was expectations set against realities, the powerful challenged by the impoverished, traditions rocked by change. These shifts left Americans of all races reeling.

It was against such a backdrop that Jackie Robinson entered this world in the bloodiest months of racial violence to date in the United States. In 1919, thousands of black soldiers returned from combat in World War I, expecting better treatment as a reward for their service and sacrifices. Instead they found an ungrateful white population harboring the same old pre-war biases against them. Many of those mustering out of the service joined the half million or so other blacks who had already migrated from the South to the industrial Northeast and Midwest to fill jobs left open by whites inducted into the army. When white enthusiasm to put blacks back in their pre-war place collided with the African American demand for equality, the result was wide scale violence.

Still, on a day-to-day basis, Americans of all races found ways to coexist and work side-by-side. The post-World War I years were prosperous for both white and black workers. Jobs were plentiful and wages, even for blacks, were substantial. Then came the greatest equalizer of all—economic disaster in the form of the stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression. Suddenly everyone, white and black, faced high unemployment, plunging incomes, and monetary deflation that would not totally recover until World War II.

• 2 •

Georgia to California

Fortunately for him, Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919, into a strong family—at least on his maternal side. As the fifth of five children born to Mallie McGriff and Jerry Robinson, Jackie had older brothers Frank, Mack, and Edgar and sister Willa Mae to look out for him. Mallie’s father and mother—Jackie’s maternal grandparents—Washington McGriff and his wife Edna Sims, had been born slaves but did well after being freed. They lived on twelve acres they owned just south of Cairo in southwestern Georgia. Illiterate themselves but wise, the McGriffs emphasized education for their children. Mallie, the seventh of fourteen children, went to the local colored school through the sixth grade and, at age ten, taught her father how to read so he could study his Bible.

Cairo—pronounced Cayro—Georgia, founded in 1835 and later the county seat of Grady County, had a population in 1919 of about 1,900, 45 percent of whom were African Americans. (Historical Perspective 2.)

Jerry Robinson, Jackie’s father and the eldest of eleven children, worked in the fields on a cotton farm owned by James Madison Sasser. His father Tony—Jackie’s paternal grandfather—had crossed the border from the Florida panhandle in his youth and worked his entire life on the Sasser plantation. Neither Tony nor his wife could read or write.

Mallie McGriff and the handsome Jerry Robinson met at a Christmas dance in 1906 when she was only fourteen years old and he eighteen. They began to see each other, but the McGriffs disapproved of Jerry, not only for his age but also for what they considered his being a shabby prospect. They much preferred the son of a family who had come to Georgia from South Carolina and lived in the best tenant house on the Sasser farm. However, love trumped her parents’ wishes and three years later Mallie married Jerry on November 21, 1909.

Jerry and Mallie moved into one of Sasser’s tenant houses and went to work for the landowner at $12 a month. The couple was happy in the early months of their marriage as Jerry labored in the fields and Mallie tended a garden and took care of the house. Mallie, whose parents had taught her to plan and prepare for the future, was to understand that there was little future on $12 a month—especially since Sasser insisted that most of the income be spent at his company store.

Sasser differed little from Georgia landowners at the time, expecting the tenants’ low wages to be spent at his facility, and he discouraged any kind of public meetings where they might organize. As a result, just as it had been in slave days, the church was one of the few places blacks could gather, worship, and socialize. During the Red Summer of 1919 and other periods of racial unrest, even these places became targets for burning and destruction.

Swine killing time in the fall also revealed Sasser’s ideas on equality and further reinforced Mallie’s thought that they were not living high on the hog. The Robinsons and other black workers received only the scraps—feet, internal organs, and intestines for chitterlings.

Mallie believed that their present lives were not far removed from slavery and voiced her opinion to her husband and his employer. Both whites and blacks feared Sasser—a tall, powerful, rawboned man—but Mallie stood up to him and insisted that they become sharecroppers rather than working for wages. Sasser was not happy with the proposal but, because of the labor shortage, agreed to provide housing, land, seed, and fertilizer in return for one-half of the Robinson’s crop.

The Robinsons prospered as sharecroppers—raising cotton, peanuts, corn, sugar cane, and potatoes and owning their own hogs, turkeys, and chickens. Mallie later recalled that she was happy with her life and lived the way she wanted to live. Jerry, however, tired of farm life and had a roving eye for other women. Three times he left Mallie and the farm only to return, usually after his money ran out. The couple would reconcile, have another baby, and then repeat the cycle.

Surviving family members today have conflicting opinions as to whether Jackie was born in his parents’ home or that of his grandparents. All are in agreement that Dr. Arthur Brown Reynolds, a white physician, attended the birth. Of her five births, Jackie’s was the only one assisted by a medical doctor. Apparently, the community’s black midwives had either died or were ill from the Spanish flu, which was epidemic at the time. (Historical Perspective 3.)

The Robinsons chose Roosevelt as Jack’s middle name to honor Teddy Roosevelt, the U.S. president from 1901 to 1909 who had charged up San Juan and Kettle Hills in the Spanish-American War supported by—and some say saved by—a black regiment on his flank. Roosevelt had been a great supporter of equal rights for African Americans, particularly during his first term. Pressure from white racists during his second term made him more conservative but he did condemn lynchings as well as oppose the segregation policies of President Wilson. Roosevelt died on January 6, 1919, and, with the birth of Jackie three weeks later, the Robinsons thought Roosevelt to be an appropriate middle name.

For his first eighteen months, baby Jackie lived with his parents in their tenant home. It is likely that he had little contact with whites, and he was too young to be aware of the racism and poverty that surrounded him in Southern Georgia. Jackie’s arrival did little to help the deteriorating relationship between Jerry and Mallie with Jerry spending more and more time in Cairo, where it had become fairly common knowledge that he was having an affair with the married daughter of the respected Powell family who farmed land adjacent to that of Sasser.

On July 28, 1919, in the middle of cotton-growing season, Jerry told Mallie that he was going to Texas to visit a brother. Despite her suspicions, Mallie and the children bid him goodbye. They would never see him again. Rumors came to Mallie that Jerry had taken a northbound train rather than one to the west. Another rumor said he was working in a sawmill in Florida and the Powell daughter was with him. By the early 1930s when Mallie received a telegram from one of Jerry’s relatives saying that he was dead, his demise had little effect on the family. Jack’s older brother Mack, who was in high school when the telegram arrived, later recalled that it had been so long since they had seen or heard from their father that his passing wasn’t traumatic for us; we had no recognition of him.

Jackie was too young to have any memories of his father or even remember the telegram’s arrival. In a Personal History Statement that he completed during Basic Training at Fort Riley, Kansas, years later, Jackie erroneously wrote that his father had died sometime around 1922 of natural causes.

After Jerry’s departure from Georgia, Mallie had to determine how she was going to support her five children, especially because James Sasser was not happy to have lost one of his sharecroppers but still have his family living on his land and in his tenant house. He offered to have the county sheriff find Jerry and return him home, but Mallie refused. She also turned down a job as the Sasser family cook. Sasser told her, You’re about the sassiest nigger woman ever on this place. He then evicted her and the children from the tenant house to a much smaller, poorly maintained cabin.

With help from relatives, Mallie managed to gather their final crop and then found a job working for a nearby white family. By the end of the winter of 1920, Mallie realized how bleak life looked in Georgia. Race relations had worsened instead of improving after the Red Summer of 1919. The Ku Klux Klan became larger and more active. Poll taxes and literacy requirements, combined with intimidation, prevented most blacks from exercising their right to vote. Other Jim Crow laws limited almost every aspect of their lives. A black farmer in southern Georgia was more like a serf in medieval Europe than a free person in America. And a black woman with five mouths to feed was several notches lower yet.

Mallie’s opportunity to escape the prejudices and poverty came when her half-brother arrived from California in the spring of 1920. Burton Thomas, son of Edna McGriff from a marriage previous to Monroe Thomas, had moved to southern California after serving in World War I and was a great advocate of the region. He often said, If you want to get closer to Heaven, visit California.

Mallie decided not to visit California but rather to move there. Mallie gathered up what funds she could—a little money from the last crop, a few dollars saved from her domestic job with the white family, some relatives’ contributions, and perhaps a little extra from her white employer who sympathized with her situation. She also convinced relatives to join her who were willing to gamble on a better life in California—her sister Cora Wade, brother-in-law Samuel, and their two children; her brother Paul McGriff; and Mary Lou Thomas Maxwell, Mallie’s half-sister and full sister of Burton Thomas.

Mallie and her extended family were not the only blacks in Georgia seeking freedom from the Jim Crow south. In 1920 alone, approximately 50,000 African Americans had joined the Great Migration in search of better paying jobs and a greater degree of freedom in the industrialized Midwest, North, and West Coast. The threat of the loss of cheap labor so disturbed southern whites that Macon and other towns in Georgia organized special police units to prevent blacks from moving away, using intimidation, beatings, and physical removal from trains. Like their neighboring counterparts, the white citizens of Cairo did not like the exit of their cheap workforce but took no action to prevent their exodus. On May 21, 1920, Mallie took her children and a few pieces of luggage in a borrowed buggy to Cairo where she met up with the rest of the relocating family members. At the scheduled time on the departure date, around midnight, the Number 58 train arrived. Mallie, carrying 16-month-old Jackie, and