True Fires (24 page)

47

Early Wednesday morning, Sheriff K. A. DeLuth gives Birdilee a good-bye peck on the cheek. He’d aimed for her mouth, but, at the last moment, his wife had turned sideways. She’d been quiet, kept to herself ever since their dinner at the Cattlemen’s Club, hadn’t said a word or even offered to help with the bee stings on the backs of his hands, and out-and-out refused to attend the hearing in Judge Woods’s courtroom.
It’s about damn time she got
over whatever the hell it is she’s so upset about. I’ll have it out with her
when I get back.
“Give you a call from the road, darlin’,” he’d told her nicely, choosing to ignore the way she seemed to look right through him, like he wasn’t there, or she’d somehow forgot what the man she’d been married to for ten years looked like.

First off, he heads to the office to complete his paperwork, writes out his answers to the list of questions hand-delivered by old Marsh’s secretary yesterday afternoon: Yes, he was there when the Judge signed the Livestock Transfer forms. No, there were no other witnesses present. Yes, the date was accurate and the transaction occurred at the Judge’s bedside. No, no cash was exchanged. Yes, he would be claiming the fair value of the cattle as a gift on his income tax.
Like hell I will,
he chuckles as he folds and stamps the envelope, and places it in the flip-top mailbox just outside the door.

Next, he makes his follow-up phone calls to the six Police Chiefs in the county who are helping with the court-ordered roadblock of the Dare property.

Finally, he writes himself a check off the county account for “advance on travel expenses” and strolls across the street to cash it at the Lake Esther State Bank.

Paperwork complete, he checks the lock on his office, unlocks his car, and heads south, out of town. At the dirt road turnoff, he sees Deputy Carl Paige standing, sentrylike, in front of the sawhorses that block the entry to the Dare place. With a quick glance at the empty road ahead, DeLuth wheels over, facing south on the northbound shoulder, and kills his engine in the crosswalk.

“Sheriff !” Paige says, and salutes the squad car in crisp, military fashion.

“At ease, Carl.”

DeLuth thinks he should probably tell Paige, once again, that a salute’s not necessary, but secretly he relishes it. “How’s it goin’?”

“Not many visitors ’cept that newspaper woman, the school-teachers from Clark Christian, and a few Methodists.”

“Not exactly popular, are they?” DeLuth says, squinting in the direction of the Dares’ two cabins.

“Not exactly, sir.”

“Brought you a copy of the schedule for the next few days.”

“Yes, sir,” Paige says, accepting the sheet.

“Three eight-hour shifts,” DeLuth explains, “split between you and the Chiefs from Lake Esther, Opatka, Oscilla, and the others. With occasional fill-in by the Deputy from Tangerine County.”

“Yes, sir,” Paige nods, without asking the obvious—why isn’t his Sheriff in the shift rotation?

“I’m on my way to North Carolina for a few days,” DeLuth tells him anyway. “Collect some evidence in this damn case. Find the smoked Irishman in these Indians’ woodpile.” He grins.

“Yes, sir,” Paige says, in a way that makes DeLuth wonder if he even got the joke.

“I’ll be checkin’ in every night, Carl. Call you at your house, six o’clock, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

Ol’ Clive was right, DeLuth thinks, not much upstairs, but he’s
a damn fine order taker.

“Be back on Saturday,” the Sheriff says, starting his engine. “Sunday at the latest,” he calls, over the car’s souped-up rumble.

“Yes, sir. Have a good trip,
sir
.” Paige strikes attention, slicing the air with his picture-perfect salute.

The Deputy’s precise execution, his unwaveringly respectful attitude sets DeLuth to thinking, for the next hundred miles or so, of all he could set straight with an army of Carl Paige recruits.

48

Ruth sits staring, hands on the keys of her Underwood, wondering if she has what it takes to truly tell it.

Oh, it would be easy to stick to the bare bones of the attorneys’ submissions and Judge Woods’s decree, to relate to her readers, simple and straightforward, the now-settled fate of the four Dare children.

It would be easy but it wouldn’t be right,
she thinks.
No.
Somehow she needs to wrap those bones in the flesh-and-blood drama she witnessed today in the Fifth Circuit courtroom. She has to consider her audience—the raging racists, the quiet liberals, the vast not-really-involved in the middle—new to the community and old, and somehow move them in the way that she was moved by the day’s proceedings. She has to . . .

The silence from the back room is deafening. Somewhere, just around the corner, Hugh and Walt and Joe, editor and typesetter and pressman, sit idle, waiting to run Wednesday’s edition, already late.

“Saved you the head plus twenty-four column inches, above the fold,” Hugh told her when she rushed in from the Courthouse.

“Yeh, in half that many minutes, please,” Walt, the clock-watcher, had joked.

Behind him, Hugh shook his head. He, more than anyone, knew how important this was. To the community.
To us.
“We’ll wait,” was all he’d told her.

Clouding her head was the news—
incredible!
—from Hugh that the Senate had voted—
sixty-seven to twenty-two!
—to condemn Joe McCarthy. That lead would be easy to write: “In ‘The Fight for America,’ America has won.”

But this one.
Where to begin?
With the dramatic face-off between thundering Judge Woods and sneering, leering Sheriff DeLuth? With a cross-reference to McCarthy, and the fact that this hearing, like his, rode in on the backs of what Margaret Chase Smith, America’s first female Senator, called “the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear”?

Too strong? Too philosophical?
Probably.
Better to let the drama reveal itself step-by-step. Engage the reader in the same startling way that every single person in the courtroom was riveted today.
Yes,
she decides,
start at the beginning. And, with
any luck, the head and the lead will write themselves afterward.
She grinds out her cigarette, flips open her notepad, and begins:

DRAMA attended the closing of the Dare case that has reverberated across the nation as Americans of all races read of the four children evicted without warning or due process from their school, all-white Lake Esther Elementary, by Sheriff K. A. DeLuth and the Clark County School Board, who, against parental protest, insisted the children were Negro.

The drama was not only in the sudden bolt of its ending but also in the simmering presence of Sheriff DeLuth, who initially, single-handedly evicted the children of Franklin Dare and of William and LuEllen Dare; in the tightly packed rows of spectators, overflowing into the lobby, who sat hushed throughout the morning session, while a determined Fifth Circuit Court Judge Winston K. Woods forced the acceptance of the one and only legal issue at stake: “Are the children Colored within the meaning and intent of the laws of Florida?”

The drama increased when the plaintiff’s attorney, Thomas Paine Marsh, produced evidence to show that throughout their lives the Dares have lived as, and been accepted by their previous school, church, neighbors, and community as, white people. It increased again when defense attorneys Charles Sloan and Arnold Cooper, representing the Clark County School Board, at first refused to produce evidence to substantiate their charges that the children were Negroes. When at last forced to produce what they had, by Judge Woods’s order to “do so here and now or there will be no other opportunity,” Mr. Sloan reluctantly, and somewhat nervously, produced a fifteen-year-old dictionary and a sheaf of photostatic copies of birth certificates from his briefcase.

He then produced a Last Will and Testament, identifying it as that of Franklin Dare’s grandfather, John T. Dare, and saying it would be “connected” to the birth certificates.

Except for those of the Dare children, their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents— which were also introduced by the Dares’s counsel to show white and Croatan Indian racial listing— the certificates Sloan submitted to the court were of Negroes by the surname of Dare.

None of the names on the certificates, personally collected by Sheriff K. A. DeLuth, corresponded to the names on the Will as descendants of the children’s great-grandfather, who died in 1931. Nor did any of the certificates derive from either Avery or Robeson County, North Carolina, where the family has lived.

Mr. Marsh, given the chance to review the certificates submitted by the defense, argued, “All these Negroes have the name of Dare. I imagine you’ll find a thousand Negroes in North Carolina named Dare—hundreds in that state’s Dare County alone. We demand to know what witnesses you will produce to connect these Dares to the Franklin and Will Dare family!”

It was then the defense balked for the third time: The first was in their introduction of fourteen declarations as “issues” in the case, a list that Judge Woods whittled down to the single racial issue; the second in their begging for more time in which to “obtain more evidence,” which the Judge denied. And in this, the third instance, they asked for an additional month to obtain witnesses—after admitting they had no “expert” witnesses to submit.

After reminding them that they had already had two weeks, since the Complaint was filed, to round up witnesses as did the plaintiffs, Judge Woods gave them “until four o’clock this afternoon.”

At the four o’clock session, all parties returned. In response to Judge Woods’s query, “Does the defense have any further evidence or expert depositions to present?” school-board attorney Sloan said, “We are not presenting any names and addresses at this time, because it is not in the best interest of our clients to do so.”

Judge Woods, unmoved, demanded a “yes or no answer.” Mr. Sloan replied, “We don’t intend to introduce anything at this time.”

Mr. Marsh spoke for the plaintiffs as he said, “In view of the issue the Judge set forth today, that of race, we feel that the defense has shown no basis or any evidence that this family is not white, whereas we have produced depositions to show—with documents, affidavits, and testimony—they are white, and have always been classed white in every area where they were reared or have lived. The defense was given ample opportunity to prove their charge that the family is Negro. And they have not filed or attempted to file any evidence except the names of Dares who are Negroes. Nor have they undertaken to connect those Negroes surnamed Dare to the Franklin and Will Dare family.

“All of this shows clearly that their charge is a sham—it is patently false and unsupported by evidence or expert testimony of any kind. We move the charge be stricken from the record and that a judgment be granted for this family.”

It was here that Mr. Sloan attempted to save the hearing’s wreckage as he moved for a trial “so that the defense could question one of the plaintiffs’ witnesses.”

That witness is Dr. Kendrick McIntosh, a native of Robeson County, North Carolina—the same county of origin as the children’s great-grandfather—a professor of anthropology and sociology at Pembroke University who is a graduate of Harvard and the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and an author, editor, and recognized authority on race.

Dr. McIntosh, said Mr. Marsh, has stated in writing that he has investigated the Indians of Robeson County who are termed “Croatan” and they are not Negro. He knows the community where Mr. Dare’s grandfather was born, and he would be willing to testify that the man and his descendants are not Negro “either biologically, politically, or sociologically.”

Mr. Marsh also revealed that Dr. McIntosh, in a deposition he was prepared to enter if the case went to trial, was asked this question: “Does the fact that the grandfather’s birth certificate lists him as Croatan indicate in any way that he was a Negro?”

Under oath, Dr. McIntosh answered, “It definitely does not.”

Again, Mr. Sloan attempted to save his case with a request for trial so that “the defense might examine the physical evidence of the Dare children,” and if the word Croatan could, indeed, mean Negro.

Mr. Marsh replied, “The only evidence you’ve had of that is the Sheriff’s dictionary, which we’ve already shown has been disproved by law.”

Mr. Cooper, Mr. Sloan’s partner, took little part in the proceedings. Near the end of the afternoon session, the attorney suggested, somewhat facetiously, that the case be thrown out and “we could start all over again.” He laughed when Mr. Marsh commented, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Before ruling, Judge Woods stated that, in his opinion, the question of the children’s race hinged “crucially on the racial identity of their great-grandfather, John T. Dare,” deemed “Croatan” by his 1847 birth certificate. “That question,” Judge Woods told the packed courtroom, “is answered in a letter dated the tenth of this month, and entered into the record, from the Comptroller General of North Carolina. The letter states unequivocally that John T. Dare was a Confederate Army infantry-man and that Negroes were not used as anything but camp help during the Civil War. If the Confederate Army did not deem John T. Dare a Negro, then neither, I say, can we!”

At that, Circuit Judge Winston K. Woods granted the motion of the plaintiffs’ attorney that the accusation declaring the evicted schoolchildren are Negro could not be upheld.

Tight-lipped Sheriff DeLuth, author of the original now-declared-false accusation, strode out of the courtroom with an angry “No comment.”

Judge Woods’s ruling allows the declaratory judgment the Dare family sought in its suit against the Clark County School Board—that of the right to attend a white school.

That school is going to be Clark Christian Academy—the choice of the Dare family and a place where, according to Dr. John Leighton, head of the Academy, “Our doors are wide open for them the moment the court rules they may legally attend.”

Franklin Dare, father of two of the four falsely accused children, said, “The Lord be praised—I feel like I am living in America again.” His sister-in-law LuEllen Dare, with tears in her eyes, added, “It couldn’t be any other way. Thank the Lord— we’ve prayed so hard.”