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From International Socialist Review, Vol.20 No.1, Winter 1959, p.11.
Transcription & mark-up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Commenting on the Jimmy Wilson case, the Harvard Law Record (Oct. 2) had this to say about the “Crime of the South”:
The spotlight recently has been focused upon the struggle of Negroes in the South to attend the same schools as white people. But even more important than this is the Negro’s fight for life, for his freedom, in cases which arise in Southern courts every day of the year.
The case of Jimmy Wilson is unique in one way, for seldom is anyone anywhere condemned to death for stealing $1.92. But it is typical, all too typical of the “raw deal” that the average Negro receives in local criminal courts throughout the South day after day.
Governor Folsom is to be commended for saving Jimmy Wilson’s life. But he hesitated a good while before doing so. He did not act until after the case had received widespread publicity throughout not only this country, but the whole world, almost all of it sympathetic to Wilson, until he had received a floodtide of letters, including many from important personages such as George Meany, pleading for Wilson’s life to be spared, and until Secretary of State Dunes sent a telegram, informing him of the black eye that the case was giving the United States abroad.
Would Governor Folsom have commuted this sentence if widespread publicity had not been given to the case? Would he have commuted the sentence if he had not received such a flood of letters demanding and appealing that the prisoner’s life be spared? Would he have commuted the sentence if the big city newspapers had not decided that Jimmy Wilson made good copy?
It is not so much the Negro desiring to fulfill his wish to attend an integrated school in Little Rock or Norfolk who needs protection. It is the unheralded Negro in the unheard-of town, the one who is accused of a crime but who can’t afford to hire a capable lawyer to defend him, and who is not offered top quality, high-priced counsel by the NAACP.
It is the Jimmy Wilsons that nobody ever hears of, whose cases are not unique enough, do not have a novel enough twist to make them worth the attention of big city journalists; It is the Jimmy Wilsons who don’t command wide publicity, who don’t receive the benefit of letters from public personages throughout the country pleading for their lives: it is the Jimmy Wilsons that the New York newspapers don’t cover that need protection.
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Last updated on: 2 May 2009