Remarks on Race by Mississippi Judge Carlton Reeves ’89 Reaches National Audience
In 2011 a gang of ten white teenagers killed James Craig Anderson, a 48-year-old black man in Jackson, Mississippi, a city called “Jafrica” by the group. They cornered Anderson in a parking lot, beat him severely, and then drove over his body with their truck, screaming “white power.” In February three of them—Deryl Paul Dedmon, Dylan Wade Butler, and John Aaron Rice—were convicted of a federal hate crime (they had already been convicted in state court for various degrees of murder and conspiracy).
At their sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ’89, the second African-American appointed a federal judge in Mississippi, offered remarks on the history of racism and lynching they were widely picked up in the media. After many alumni alerted us to the remarks, we asked Judge Reeves if we could share them. We have excerpted them below (full text at bit.ly/judgereeves).
In Without Sanctuary, historian Leon Litwack writes that between 1882 and 1968 an estimated 4,742 Blacks met their deaths at the hands of lynch mobs. The impact this campaign of terror had on black families is impossible to explain so many years later.…
Those who died at the hands of mobs, Litwack notes, some were the victims of “legal” lynchings—having been accused of a crime, subjected to a “speedy” trial and even speedier execution. Some were victims of private white violence … murdered by a variety of means in isolated rural sections and dumped into rivers and creeks.…
How could hate, fear, or whatever it was transform genteel, God-fearing, God-loving Mississippians into mindless murderers and sadistic torturers? I ask that same question about the events which bring us together on this day. Those crimes of the past as well as these have so damaged the psyche and reputation of this great State.
Mississippi soil has been stained with the blood of folk whose names have become synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement like Emmett Till, Willie McGee, James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, Vernon Dahmer, George W. Lee, Medgar Evers, and Mack Charles Parker. But the blood of the lesser-known people like Luther Holbert and his wife, Elmo Curl, Lloyd Clay, John Hartfield, Nelse Patton, Lamar Smith, Clinton Melton, Ben Chester White, Wharlest Jackson, and countless others, saturates these 48,434 square miles of Mississippi soil. On June 26, 2011, four days short of his 49th birthday, the blood of James Anderson was added to Mississippi’s soil.
The common denominator of the deaths of these individuals was not their race. It was not that they all were engaged in freedom fighting. It was not that they had been engaged in criminal activity, trumped up or otherwise. No, the common denominator was that the last thing that each of these individuals saw was the inhumanity of racism. The last thing that each felt was the audacity and agony of hate; senseless hate: crippling, maiming them and finally taking away their lives.
Mississippi has a tortured past, and it has struggled mightily to reinvent itself and become a New Mississippi. New generations have attempted to pull Mississippi from the abyss of moral depravity in which it once so proudly floundered.
Despite much progress and the efforts of the new generations, these three defendants are before me today. They and their co- conspirators ripped off the scab of the healing scars of Mississippi … causing her (our Mississippi) to bleed again.
Hate comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and from this case, we know it comes in different sexes and ages. A toxic mix of alcohol, foolishness, and unadulterated hatred caused these young people to resurrect the nightmarish specter of lynchings and lynch mobs from the Mississippi we long to forget. Like the marauders of ages past, these young folk conspired, planned, and coordinated a plan of attack on certain neighborhoods in the City of Jackson for the sole purpose of harassing, terrorizing, physically assaulting, and causing bodily injury to black folk. They punched and kicked them about their bodies—their heads, their faces. They prowled. They came ready to hurt. They used dangerous weapons; they targeted the weak; they recruited and encouraged others to join in the coordinated chaos; and they boasted about their shameful activity.
Though the media and the public attention of these crimes have been focused almost exclusively on the early morning hours of June 26, 2011, the defendants’ terror campaign is not limited to this one incident…. There are unknown victims like the John Doe at the golf course who begged for his life and the John Doe at the service station. Like a lynching, for these young folk going out to “Jafrica” was like a carnival outing. It was funny to them—an excursion which culminated in the death of innocent, African-American James Craig Anderson.
But even after Anderson’s murder, the conspiracy continued.… And, only because of a video, which told a different story from that which had been concocted by these defendants, and the investigation of law enforcement—state and federal law enforcement working together—was the truth uncovered.
What is so disturbing … so shocking … so numbing … is that these … hunts were perpetrated by our children … students who live among us … educated in our public schools … in our private academies … students who played football lined up on the same side of the scrimmage line with black teammates … average students and honor students. Kids who worked during school and in the summers; kids who now had full-time jobs and some of whom were even unemployed. Some were pursuing higher education and the Court believes they each had dreams to pursue. These children were from two-parent homes and some were the children of divorced parents, and yes, some even raised by a single parent. No doubt, they all had loving parents and loving families.…
I asked the question earlier, but what could transform these young adults into the violent creatures their victims saw? It was nothing the victims did … they were not championing any cause … political … social … economic … nothing they did … not a wolf whistle … not a supposed crime … nothing they did. There is absolutely no doubt that in the view of the Court the victims were targeted because of their race.
The simple fact is that what turned these children into criminal defendants was their joint decision to act on racial hatred. In the eyes of these defendants (and their co- conspirators) the victims were doomed at birth … their genetic make-up made them targets.…
In the Mississippi we have tried to bury, when there was a jury verdict for those who perpetrated crimes and committed lynchings in the name of White Power … that verdict typically said that the victim died at the hands of persons unknown. The legal and criminal justice system operated with ruthless efficiency in upholding what these defendants would call White Power.
Today, though, the criminal justice system (state and federal) has proceeded methodically, patiently, and deliberately seeking justice. Today we learned the identities of the persons unknown … they stand here publicly today.
The sadness of this day also has an element of irony to it: each defendant was escorted into court by agents of an African-American United States Marshal; having been prosecuted by a team of lawyers which includes an African-American AUSA from an office headed by an African-American U.S. Attorney—all under the direction of an African-American Attorney General, for sentencing before a judge who is African-American, whose final act will be to turn over the care and custody of these individuals to the BOP—an agency headed by an African-American.
Today we take another step away from Mississippi’s tortured past … we move farther away from the abyss. Indeed, Mississippi is a place and a state of mind. And those who think they know about her people and her past will also understand that her story has not been completely written. Mississippi has a present and a future. That present and future has promise. As demonstrated by the work of the officers within these state and federal agencies—black and white, male and female, in this Mississippi, they work together to advance the rule of law.
Having learned from Mississippi’s inglorious past, these officials know that in advancing the rule of law, the criminal justice system must operate without regard to race, creed, or color. This is the strongest way Mississippi can reject those notions—those ideas which brought us here today.
At their guilty plea hearings, Deryl Paul Dedmon, Dylan Wade Butler, and John Aaron Rice told the world exactly what their roles were … it is ugly … it is painful … it is sad … it is criminal.…
These sentences will not bring back James Craig Anderson nor will they restore the lives they enjoyed prior to 2011. The Court knows that James Anderson’s mother, who is now 89 years old, lived through the horrors of the Old Mississippi, and the Court hopes that she and her family can find peace in knowing that with these sentences, in the New Mississippi, Justice is truly blind. Justice, however, will not be complete unless these defendants use the remainder of their lives to learn from this experience and fully commit to making a positive difference in the New Mississippi. And, finally, the Court wishes that the defendants also can find peace.
[ed. Note: Reeves sentenced Dedmon to 50 years, Rice 18.5 years, and Butler seven years.]
