Read Online God'll Cut You Down by John Safran - Free Book Online
Authors: John Safran
Tags: Literary, General, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, True Crime, Murder, Popular Culture
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the Vincent McGee case from the white public defender. They (and Earnest) think there is a race aspect to the case that will be ignored if left in white hands. They think the whites will explain the crime as a garden-variety fight over money rather than a white supremacist attacking a black man and the black man having todefend himself. “Hello, Tina!” Earnest shouts as I curl onto the highway to Vicksburg. “I’ll put you on. An investigative reporter from Melbourne, Australia!”
Earnest hands me the phone and tells me to speed up. I’m driving too slowly for a highway, he says. “It’s Tina McGee. You know, Vincent McGee’s mother.”
Jesus!
This is crazy: It’s too early to be talking with the killer’s mother! I don’t feel ready for this.
Shut up, John, this is a gift, talk to the mother!
But I don’t know what to say. I suction my ear to the phone.
“Hello?” I try.
“Hello,” Tina says quietly.
“To the left!” Earnest shouts, thrusting his finger to the left lane. “Over there!”
“Um . . . have you seen Vincent since he’s been arrested?” I ask Tina.
“They will not let me see him!” she yells. “They will not let me see him! Eddie Thompson will not let me in!”
“Over there!” Earnest says. “John, you need to pay attention to your driving.”
“Who’s Eddie Thompson?” I ask Tina.
“He the Rankin County jailer!” she says.
“Left!” shouts Earnest.
There’s quadriplegia in my future if I don’t get off the phone, so I’m grateful when Tina tells me I can pop by her house anytime. We hang up.
I indicate to change lanes but turn on the wipers instead.
“You said on the radio Richard had beaten up a woman,” I say.
Earnest tells me old Mississippi spy agency files were unsealed in the 1990s. He says the story is in there, but he can’t remember the exact details. I can’t write down
spy agency
, but it’s the sort of thing I won’t forget.
“Were you born in Mississippi?” I ask Earnest.
“Yes, Vicksburg,” he says. “You know about Vicksburg?”
Although it’s where I’m driving to, I don’t. Earnest tells me if I want to understand Mississippi, if I want to write a book about this place, I need to understand that town.
The Ballad of Earnest McBride
Vicksburg is forty miles from Jackson, right up against the Mississippi River. Earnest’s father ran the print shop there. He’d print the local newspaper and jazz club posters, with art deco Negroes and copy like so:
Boots & His Buddies—At the Cotton Club Ballroom. From 9.30 p.m. until the milkman comes.
Earnest found an old
New York Times
when he was young. It told him the very word
jazz
came from his town. Some drummer called Chas, some mishearing when the crowd would click and say, “Chas, Chas.”
In 1955 Earnest read something else in the paper. A black guy visiting from Chicago, Emmett Till, had whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi Delta grocery store. He was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, tied to an industrial fan by barbed wire, with a bullet in his head. Emmett Till was fourteen.
Earnest McBride was fourteen.
“That was a major teaching point in our lives,” Earnest tells me. “Those of us who were getting out of puberty at the time.”
Earnest was supposed to scoop poop from the chicken coops behind the print shop, but he preferred to read. In
Jet
magazine he read about the Klansmen just outside Vicksburg.
Jet
told him the Klan were not just lynching but castrating black men.
“The notion that someone’s going to castrate you, or even take your life, if you had sex with a white woman, that really got home to us.”
Teenage Earnest was a caddie at the Vicksburg golf club. There had been a break-in at the club, and all the caddies were taken down to thepolice station. In a mildewing room, a white policeman took Earnest’s hand. He rolled his black fingers on a black inkpad, then onto a fingerprints card.
The policeman and Earnest were
Earnest hands me the phone and tells me to speed up. I’m driving too slowly for a highway, he says. “It’s Tina McGee. You know, Vincent McGee’s mother.”
Jesus!
This is crazy: It’s too early to be talking with the killer’s mother! I don’t feel ready for this.
Shut up, John, this is a gift, talk to the mother!
But I don’t know what to say. I suction my ear to the phone.
“Hello?” I try.
“Hello,” Tina says quietly.
“To the left!” Earnest shouts, thrusting his finger to the left lane. “Over there!”
“Um . . . have you seen Vincent since he’s been arrested?” I ask Tina.
“They will not let me see him!” she yells. “They will not let me see him! Eddie Thompson will not let me in!”
“Over there!” Earnest says. “John, you need to pay attention to your driving.”
“Who’s Eddie Thompson?” I ask Tina.
“He the Rankin County jailer!” she says.
“Left!” shouts Earnest.
There’s quadriplegia in my future if I don’t get off the phone, so I’m grateful when Tina tells me I can pop by her house anytime. We hang up.
I indicate to change lanes but turn on the wipers instead.
“You said on the radio Richard had beaten up a woman,” I say.
Earnest tells me old Mississippi spy agency files were unsealed in the 1990s. He says the story is in there, but he can’t remember the exact details. I can’t write down
spy agency
, but it’s the sort of thing I won’t forget.
“Were you born in Mississippi?” I ask Earnest.
“Yes, Vicksburg,” he says. “You know about Vicksburg?”
Although it’s where I’m driving to, I don’t. Earnest tells me if I want to understand Mississippi, if I want to write a book about this place, I need to understand that town.
The Ballad of Earnest McBride
Vicksburg is forty miles from Jackson, right up against the Mississippi River. Earnest’s father ran the print shop there. He’d print the local newspaper and jazz club posters, with art deco Negroes and copy like so:
Boots & His Buddies—At the Cotton Club Ballroom. From 9.30 p.m. until the milkman comes.
Earnest found an old
New York Times
when he was young. It told him the very word
jazz
came from his town. Some drummer called Chas, some mishearing when the crowd would click and say, “Chas, Chas.”
In 1955 Earnest read something else in the paper. A black guy visiting from Chicago, Emmett Till, had whistled at a white woman in a Mississippi Delta grocery store. He was found three days later in the Tallahatchie River, tied to an industrial fan by barbed wire, with a bullet in his head. Emmett Till was fourteen.
Earnest McBride was fourteen.
“That was a major teaching point in our lives,” Earnest tells me. “Those of us who were getting out of puberty at the time.”
Earnest was supposed to scoop poop from the chicken coops behind the print shop, but he preferred to read. In
Jet
magazine he read about the Klansmen just outside Vicksburg.
Jet
told him the Klan were not just lynching but castrating black men.
“The notion that someone’s going to castrate you, or even take your life, if you had sex with a white woman, that really got home to us.”
Teenage Earnest was a caddie at the Vicksburg golf club. There had been a break-in at the club, and all the caddies were taken down to thepolice station. In a mildewing room, a white policeman took Earnest’s hand. He rolled his black fingers on a black inkpad, then onto a fingerprints card.
The policeman and Earnest were
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