The three death sentences of Clarence Henderson A battle for racial justice at the dawn of the Civil Rights Era

Chris Joyner

Book - 2022

The Three Death Sentences of Clarence Henderson' is the story of Clarence Henderson, a wrongfully accused Black sharecropper who was sentenced to die three different times for a murder he didn't commit, and the prosecution desperate to pin the crime on him despite scant evidence. His first trial lasted only a day and featured a lackluster public defense. The book also tells the story of Homer Chase, a former World War II paratrooper and New England radical who was sent to the South by the Communist Party to recruit African Americans to the cause while offering them a chance at increased freedom. And it's the story of Thurgood Marshall's NAACP and their battle against not only entrenched racism but a Communist Party -- de...spite facing nearly as much prejudice as those they were trying to help -- intent on winning the hearts and minds of Black voters. The bitter battle between the two groups played out as the sides sparred over who would take the lead on Henderson's defense, a period in which he spent years in prison away from a daughter he had never seen. Through it all, The Three Death Sentences of Clarence Henderson is a portrait of a community, and a country, at a crossroads, trying to choose between the path it knows is right and the path of least resistance. The case pitted powerful forces -- often those steering legal and journalistic institutions -- attempting to use racism and Red-Scare tactics against a populace that by and large believed the case against Henderson was suspect at best. But ultimately, it's a hopeful story about how even when things look dark, some small measure of justice can be achieved against all the odds, and actual progress is possible. It's the rare book that is a timely read, yet still manages to shed an informative light on America's past and future, as well as its present.

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Subjects
Genres
Biographies
Published
New York : Abrams Inc 2022.
Language
English
Main Author
Chris Joyner (author)
Item Description
Includes index.
Physical Description
xiii, 337 pages ; 23 cm
ISBN
9781419756368
  • Preface
  • Chapter 1. Murder and Chaos
  • Chapter 2. Carrollton
  • Chapter 3. A Desperate Manhunt
  • Chapter 4. "A Very Dark Negro"
  • Chapter 5. The First Trial
  • Chapter 6. "Let Me Go Home"
  • Chapter 7. Subversive Elements
  • Chapter 8. The Commies Come to Town
  • Chapter 9. "His Fight Is Our Fight"
  • Chapter 10. The NAACP Takes Charge
  • Chapter 11. A New Trial Ordered
  • Chapter 12. Dan Duke
  • Chapter 13. The Second Trial
  • Chapter 14. Ballistics, Nan, and a Verdict
  • Chapter 15. New Evidence, New Trial
  • Chapter 16. The Third Trial
  • Chapter 17. Cornett v. Jones
  • Chapter 18. God and the NAACP
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Index
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative reporter Joyner debuts with a searing look at an unsolved murder case, which led to three trials, three convictions, and three death sentences for Black sharecropper Clarence Henderson. On Halloween night 1948, in Carrollton, Ga., a masked man with a gun ordered 22-year-old military veteran Buddy Stevens and his teenage girlfriend, Nan Turner, to get out of Stevens's parked car. The man ordered Stevens to rape Turner, but he refused. Stevens subsequently lunged at the man, who shot him dead, and Turner escaped. When ballistics seemed to match a weapon that a man claimed Henderson had sold him two months after the murder, Henderson was arrested. That led to his long odyssey in the criminal justice system and the intervention of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, whose lawyers were led by Thurgood Marshall. Eventually, in 1953, Henderson's attorneys' efforts on multiple appeals led to his being freed, though in Georgia many continued to believe he "was a serial rapist of white women who had gotten away with murder." Joyner provides just the right level of detail in this stranger-than-fiction narrative, in which endemic racism almost resulted in the execution of an innocent man. Admirers of Timothy Tyson's The Blood of Emmett Till will be riveted. Agent: Matt Carlini, Javelin. (Jan.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigative reporter Joyner writes a history of the wrongful murder conviction of Black Georgia sharecropper Clarence Henderson. In 1948, Carl Stevens Jr., a white man, was murdered in Carrollton, GA; after what Joyner calls a sloppy investigation, Henderson was accused of the murder, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. The Georgia Supreme Court granted Henderson a retrial, finding that he had been convicted on purely circumstantial evidence; he was found guilty in the retrial, then granted a third trial to introduce additional ballistics evidence. Joyner provides background on life in Carrollton after World War II, when town politics became more progressive except in matters of race. He writes that prosecutors empaneled all-white juries and played on negative stereotypes of Black men to win their case against Henderson. Other factors in the case were new forensic investigation methods and the involvement of the U.S. Communist Party and the NAACP in Henderson's appeals. Joyner synthesizes all of these elements and offers a detailed play-by-play of the three trials to argue that despite Henderson's unjust treatment by prosecutors, he fared better than most Black defendants, in that his conviction in the third trial was eventually overturned and he was released. VERDICT A compelling account of "justice" in the Jim Crow South. Recommended for readers interested in true crime and race.--Rebekah Kati, Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

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