James Turner Leeson Jr., 79, Race relations journalist audiotaped broadcast about execution of Willie McGee
Hoodoo
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_OBIT_LEESON
Race relations journalist Leeson dies in Tenn.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- James Turner Leeson Jr., a Nashville journalist
whose recording of a broadcast describing the questionable execution of
a black man convicted of raping a white woman in Mississippi led to a
book on the subject, has died. He was 79.
Leeson worked for The Associated Press, the Southern Education Reporting
Service and its successor, the Race Relations Reporter, during the 1960s
and 1970s. He died Monday at his home, according to Crawford Mortuary
and Funeral Home.
In 1951, Leeson made an audiotape of a broadcast about the execution of
Willie McGee. His trial took place after a five-year legal battle that
happened in the very early days of the Civil Rights movement, garnering
attention across the U.S. and world. McGee insisted he was innocent and
said at his appeals that he was having an affair with the woman and she
panicked when her husband found out.
Leeson would sometimes play the tape for some of his students at Vanderbilt.
Years later one of those students, Alex Heard, used the tape as
reference for a book, "The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex
and Secrets in the Jim Crow South." It is to be published by Harper next
week.
On the tape was a local radio station broadcast that described the
atmosphere around the execution. McGee was put to death in a traveling
electric chair at a courthouse in Laurel, Miss. A generator that
supplied the electricity was set up outside with tubes running to the
courthouse. Official spectators were inside and a crowd of somewhere
between 500 and 1,500 assembled on the lawn, sidewalks, and streets,
according to Heard's website.
"It's the only piece of audio that survived. It's priceless but not the
whole story," Heard said Thursday. Heard said on his blog that he and
Leeson stayed close over the years that he was working on the McGee project.
Heard said Leeson committed suicide.
The tape is also mentioned in a radio documentary about the case
scheduled to be aired Friday on National Public Radio.
The McGee case drew protests from prominent Americans including Albert
Einstein and William Faulkner. One of the defense attorneys was Bella
Abzug, who later represented New York in the U.S. House. People referred
to the execution as "legalized lynching," according to Heard's website.
Leeson also was the consulting journalist for Vanderbilt University
student communications - the school newspaper, radio station and arts
magazine - for some 10 years. His work there led to his inclusion in new
examinations of a racially tinged capital case from the 1950s.
"He was a mentor to many people," Bill Armistead, a Nashville attorney
and close friend, recalled Thursday.
Leeson also had been a longtime broker of farm property in Williamson
County.
Leeson was born in North Carolina and raised in southern Mississippi. He
was a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi and the
Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He was a veteran
of the U.S. Navy.
Friends said he had worked for The Associated Press around 1960 in
Nashville.
Survivors include two nieces. A wake is scheduled at his home on May 13
on what would have been his 80th birthday.
--
Trout Mask Replica
WFMU.org or WMSE.org; because music channels on
Sirius Satellite, and its internet radio player, suck
Hoodoo
(Central Daylight Time), spoke thusly:
> The tape is also mentioned in a radio documentary about the case
> scheduled to be aired Friday on National Public Radio.
I happened to hear about the last half of the NPR program broadcast
today. Quite heart rending.
My Grandfather's Execution
by Radio Diaries
May 7, 2010
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126539134
Listen to the Story
All Things Considered
[22 min 44 sec]
[link on webpage]
http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/06/bridgette.jpg?t=1273095742
Bridgette McGee-Robinson holds a photo of her grandfather Willie McGee.
When Bridgette McGee-Robinson was growing up, she didn't know anything
about her grandfather � who he was, where he was from, why no one ever
talked about him.
But, as a child, while helping her mother clean the house, she came
across a packet of old articles and photographs hidden under a mattress.
She asked her mother who the man in the old photographs was, but her
mother snatched the papers away and told McGee-Robinson that she was too
young to understand them.
Four decades later, McGee-Robinson went to Mississippi to find out
everything she could about her grandfather's life and death. She went to
find people who could tell her what Willie McGee was like, who he was
and what happened to him.
The Case Of Willie McGee
In the fall of 1945, in the small town of Laurel, Miss., McGee, a young
black man, was arrested on charges of raping a white housewife. The
charges inflamed the town � the rumor got out that people were going to
break him out of the Laurel jail and lynch him. When McGee was taken to
the courthouse to be tried, he was transported in a National Guard truck
and dressed in fatigues to disguise his identity and protect him.
http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/06/mcgee.jpg
This picture of Willie McGee in jail � date unknown � was the one
Bridgette McGee-Robinson found under her mother's mattress and spurred
her quest to find the truth.
The alleged victim testified that a black man had broken into her house,
told her he had a knife, and raped her while her baby slept next to her.
Prosecutors linked McGee to the crime. McGee's own lawyers put up a
half-hearted defense. They encouraged McGee to plead insanity and failed
to cross-examine the prosecution's witnesses.
McGee's first trial lasted only half an afternoon; the jury deliberated
only two-and-a-half minutes before sentencing McGee to death. No white
man in Mississippi had ever received a death sentence for rape.
But McGee-Robinson spoke with some people in Laurel who said McGee's
true defense couldn't be brought up at trial because it was too
inflammatory. There were people in the black community who believed that
McGee had been having an illicit affair with the woman who accused him
of rape.
McGee-Robinson's aunt Della McGee Johnson told her that the family had
always believed that McGee was involved with the white woman � and that
he was charged with rape when they were caught. Most white people that
McGee-Robinson spoke to, however, believed that a consensual
relationship between a black man and a white woman would have been
impossible, given the societal norms of the time.
A Rally And Execution
In 1946, McGee's case was taken over by the Civil Rights Congress, a
newly formed, Communist-affiliated civil rights group. The Congress
hired future U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug to represent Willie McGee, and
launched both a legal defense and a public relations campaign. The
Congress sponsored "Save Willie McGee" rallies and petition drives
across America; activists rallied in Paris, Moscow and China. William
Faulkner, Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker and Albert Einstein came out in
support of McGee.
McGee's case covered six years before his appeals were exhausted. On the
night of May 7, 1951, McGee was executed in Mississippi's portable
electric chair. The traveling chair was moved from county to county, set
up in local courthouses, and connected to generators that supplied the
power that drove the chair. After an execution, the chair would be
dismantled and brought back to the state capital. The chair is now
housed at the Mississippi Law Enforcement Training Academy, where
McGee-Robinson found it gathering dust in a corner, surrounded by
softball trophies.
On that night in May 1951, the chair was set up before the judges' stand
in the same courtroom where McGee had first been convicted. The
courtroom was on the second floor; long wires connected the chair to a
generator below in an alley. Close to a thousand people gathered on the
lawn of the courthouse to witness the execution.
The execution was broadcast live by a local radio station, which went to
the scene with a remote transmitter and delivered a play-by-play of the
scene outside. Reporters dangled their microphones over the generator to
capture the sounds of the machine as it groaned under the strain of
running the chair.
'We'll Never Know The Truth'
After the execution, McGee's body was taken to a local black funeral
home. Harvey Warren, who grew up in Laurel, remembered being taken by
his parents to view the body. He said there was a message they wanted
him to get: "Don't mess with white girls. You see what happened to
Willie McGee."
http://media.npr.org/assets/news/2010/05/06/mcgee2.jpg
McGee was dressed in a National Guard uniform to disguise his identity
and prevent him from being lynched on the drive to the courthouse.
Others in the town say that after the execution, people didn't want to
talk about the case anymore. It was uncomfortable to discuss, and people
wanted to put the subject to rest.
But McGee-Robinson had one more person she wanted to talk to. She went
to the home of Jon Swartzfager, who was the son of Paul Swartzfager, the
district attorney who had prosecuted McGee in his last trial � the man
who had essentially sent McGee-Robinson's grandfather to the electric chair.
Swartzfager welcomed McGee-Robinson into his home, and they sat and
talked about the case. Swartzfager told her that on the night of the
execution, his father smuggled a bottle of whiskey into the jail where
McGee was being kept. He asked to speak to McGee alone, and the two men
sat and shared the whiskey.
Paul Swartzfager asked McGee, "Did you do it?" McGee answered, "Yes, but
she wanted it just as much as I did."
Those words are ambiguous, and can be interpreted in different ways.
Robinson says, "Things are never as clear-cut as we want them to be. How
do I feel about those words? I don't know. I think we'll never know the
truth, truth, truth. But I know what I believe. And that's my truth. So
when my kids and grandkids ask me, 'Who was my great-grandfather?' I'll
be able to tell them, 'This is the story of Willie McGee.' "
Narrated by Bridgette McGee-Robinson. Produced for All Things Considered
by Joe Richman and Samara Freemark of Radio Diaries, with help from
Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, Deborah George and Ben Shapiro.
Execution Broadcast
Two local Mississippi radio stations -- WFOR and WAML -- delivered a
joint broadcast of Willie McGee's execution live from the scene in front
of the courthouse. They captured the sound of the estimated thousand
people who came to witness the execution, and the roar of the generator
that powered the state's traveling electric chair.
In a lucky twist, that recording has been preserved and can be heard
today. Although there are many recordings from World War II and from the
civil rights movement, preserved recordings from the years in between --
the late 1940s and early 1950s -- are rare.
The fact that this particular recording was preserved is a fluke. A
young reporter, Jim Leeson, recorded the broadcast for his personal use,
and held onto it for the next five decades. Several years ago, he
donated the recording to the University of Southern Mississippi's oral
history department, which allowed Radio Diaries and NPR to use it. While
the entire broadcast is about 30 minutes long, these 2 minutes capture
its essence.
--Samara Freemark
Listen To A Short Clip Of The Archival Tape
[link on webpage]