CURRENT PROJECT

CHAPTER ONE

The Lynching

     It’s not every day that your neighbor is hunted, shot, beaten and lynched—even in Willard. But the day Sheriff Jack Brown knocked on my mother’s door to warn us to stay inside, that’s exactly what was going on. It was August 1933 and Sheriff Brown was making his rounds to the sparse houses spackled around the countryside of Willard, a piece of “God’s Country” that lay in the northern half of Pender County, North Carolina.
     Sheriff Brown had gotten wind of something and was trying to get us all to stay out of the way. He stood on our small front porch as the sweaty circles under the armpits of his khaki shirt slowly spread toward his back like lava; even the badge on his left shirt pocket drooped like a wilted daisy. One of our neighbors was going to die, and in 1933 a white, negro-friendly sheriff simply had no jurisdiction over men in white hooded sheets.
     Willard was a segregated southern farming community of less than a thousand folks. Our neighbors the Wests, Murrays, Walkers, Gores, Wilsons, Pearsalls, Rogers, Jones, Powells, Brices, Rouses, Echoes, Boneys, Fillyaws, Johnsons and Olivers were a cereal mix of relatives and extended family. Down Highway 117 a bit lived the white Wests, Murrays, Walkers, Gores, Johnsons, etc. At one time, the white ones owned the black ones, gave them their names and eventually their freedom—of sorts.
     Several of the Negro families owned their own homes and small plots of land. Many of us blacks were sharecroppers by day and farmers at night. Potato pie and pound cake were our manna, collard and mustard greens our staples. Our faith poured out of us through hymns, shouts of glory and raised hands. But on this day, one of us was accused of getting out of his place. It would be Doc Rogers’ last day on earth.
     A black male, young or old, had to be careful in those days. Invisible lines and unspoken rules could silently circle you like a rabid dog and before you knew it, your life would be on the line. I knew that danger from personal experience.
     I was about sixteen years old. Every day before and after school, I drove a school bus. The white schools would run their buses for about four or five years and then they’d give them to us—which meant our school buses were anything but reliable. One morning on the way to school, the bus that I was driving broke down, again. I had to pull to the side of the road, leave a bus full of children unsupervised, and walk half a mile back to the general store in Watha.
     All of the little communities in Pender County had their own general store where the white farmers gathered in the mornings for coffee. Most of the talk centered around crops, weather and how to keep Negroes in their place or how to use Negroes for profit. Usually these stores had the only telephone you could find in the community. My bus had broken down before almost in this exact spot. The white storekeeper in Watha had been nice enough to call the mechanics for me. I hoped he wouldn’t mind calling for me again.
     On this morning I ran smack dab into one of those unspoken rules. I walked in and only noticed the eight or nine white farmers standing around with their coffee. In my haste I had failed to notice there was one white woman in the store. As luck would have it, I had stopped right next to her when I asked the storekeeper if he could make the call to the garage for me.
     Suddenly one of the men walked up to me and said, “Nigger, don’t you realize that you are standing next to a white woman?” Then he slapped me—hard. The blow knocked me off balance as I tried my best to back away. I dropped my chin to my chest, afraid to look up. My soul stung. I was mad. I was cornered. And those many sets of eyes bearing down on me turned me to stone. I waited for the next blow and was surprised when it didn’t come.
     “I-I-I apologize for having disrespected the lady,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I hardly recognized my own voice as my apology soured in my throat like vomit. To my surprise the storekeeper went ahead and made my call for me. When I thanked him for his kindness, I backed out of the store then turned and started running toward the school bus. I kept looking back to see if anyone was following after me. I feared for the children on my bus and was trying to think, as I was running, how I would protect them if those men decided to come after me.
     I climbed onto the bus, slammed the door and waited—never taking my eyes off the road toward Watha. The mechanic arrived and began working on the bus as I kept glancing down the road. Black boys were being strung up all over the South for less than I had done that morning. I looked around at the children crowded together on the seats yawning and talking amongst themselves, unaware that the shadow of death had just passed over them because of my foolish mistake.
     Like I said, you had to watch out for those cloaked rules. No standing too close to a white woman. No speaking to her or making eye contact. And any black man who thought he was worthy of the love of a white woman was just going to get himself killed.
     The fiery torches thrown into Doc’s house were hungry for dry wood and began licking up every splinter they touched. The men in dingy white hoods danced around his yard like hungry demons. There wasn’t a court in North Carolina that would convict these law-abiding citizens for simply protecting their own.
     Tears spilled down Mama’s face as she looked across the field in front of our house. She held me in her arms as my brothers Tommy and James and sister Bertnita clung to her skirt-tails. Black smoke bellowed out of Doc Rogers’ house.
     While the wooden frame flared up all around him, Doc pulled up some floorboards and dropped to the dirt below. He crawled from under his back porch through the cover of thick smoke and clawed through the tall grass behind his house—carrying his rifle.
     Doc might have escaped all together but for whatever reason, he stood up and began firing his rifle at the Klansmen. The white men quickly pounced on him and then shot him until their guns were empty. As the mob encircled his body, they took turns kicking his head and stomach until their hate needed to get a breather. By the time they had put a noose around his neck and tied him to the bumper of their truck, no one could be deader.
     A little bit later, the truck full of hooded men calmly drove past our house that sat on the corner of highways 117 and 11. They drove by as if on a Sunday drive—in tow behind them was the body of Doc Rogers bouncing down the dirt road like an old string of tin cans—his skin now chalky, his face unrecognizable. The men drove Doc all through Willard as a warning to those of us who might be thinking we were better than we were. Then they drove all the way to Burgaw, eleven miles from Willard, with Doc tied to their bumper.
Once they arrived at the county seat, the men circled the courthouse with what was left of Doc’s peeled and bloodied body trailing behind them. There was one last deed to be done. With a fresh noose around his neck, Doc—a man with whom we had shared meals and a church pew—was lynched from a tree and left on display like a gutted deer.
     Now I tell you this story as the truth. If you look up in the library or on the Internet you will find Doc Rogers’ name listed among those lynched in the state of North Carolina. You might even find some old newspaper clippings telling you a slightly different story—that Doc shot someone and that a “deputized posse” of about two hundred men chased him into his house and that the house mysteriously caught on fire. But if you lived in Willard in 1933, you knew the truth.
     Another thing you’ll notice is that Doc was murdered on August 27, 1933. I was born on March 6, 1933. I was only five months old when they dragged Doc by our house. I was stunned to find that out. My brother Tommy was nine years old. James was three years old at the time and my sister, Bertnita, was six. Yet, I can still smell the smoke bellowing from Doc’s house. In my mind’s eye I can actually see the rope around his neck.
     You see, Doc Rogers’ story has been told over and over again throughout Willard for seventy-six years now. It is as old as I am. It is embedded in me so deeply that my mind has always held it as memory—not a story. This catastrophic event seared into Willard’s collective memory like a weld. If you were an infant like me, it eventually caught up with you like a nasty north wind forcing you to choose one of two paths—hatred or forgiveness.
     Needless to say, I grew up in a dangerous time for a colored child. I could have easily chosen a life of fury and rage because it was all around me—but my mama wouldn’t have it. She was determined that Doc’s death would mean something; that the lesson learned here was not going to be vengeance or fear or loathing. Her children, and eventually there would be seven of us, were going to learn courage, compassion and the challenge of a life well lived for God. I must tell you that my mama, Cassie Henry Newkirk Johnson, had a lot of praying to do.

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