Justice & the Communists

To Communists all over the world, "the case of Willie McGee" had become surefire propaganda, good for whipping up racial tension at home and giving U.S. justice a black eye abroad. Stirred up by the Communist leadership, Communist-liners and manifesto-signers in England, France, China and Russia demanded that Willie be freed. The U.S. Information Service in London, worried by English concern about the case, released an official statement of the facts. Not only Communists took up the cry. In New York, Albert Einstein signed a newspaper ad protesting a miscarriage of justice. Mrs. McGee, a captive of the Communists, addressed party rallies, staged an "allnight vigil" in front of the White House.

The Communists, as usual, had managed to distort the case. The facts:

On Nov. 1, 1945, Mrs. Troy Hawkins, 32, the wife of a Laurel, Miss. postal worker, was up most of the night with her small daughter, who was ill. It was 4 a.m. when Mrs. Hawkins finally snapped off the light and dozed off with her arm around her daughter. She was awakened by a man crawling up to the bed in the darkness. According to her testimony, after threatening to "cut your goddamed throat if you holler," the intruder raped her and fled.

Important Clue. To police, Mrs. Hawkins could only describe her attacker as a Negro who had been drinking. But a neighbor came forward with a significant clue. At about 4:30 a.m., she had seen a Negro drive away in a grocery truck which had been parked near the Hawkins home. A truck had been reported missing by a grocery firm, along with Driver Willie McGee, who also had $20 of the firm's money. An alarm was sent out for McGee, a wiry, 31-year-old father of four. He was arrested the next afternoon and, according to a deputy sheriff, confessed to the attack. Two Negroes were found who said they had been drinking with McGee until 3 a.m. on the morning of the crime.

After a day-long trial, a jury took only 2 1/2 minutes to find McGee guilty, and he was sentenced to death in the chair. But the Mississippi supreme court reversed the conviction on the ground that McGee had been tried in so electric an atmosphere that state Guardsmen with fixed bayonets had patrolled the courthouse to prevent trouble.

McGee got a change of venue and a second trial, 30 miles away in Hattiesburg. Again he was sentenced to death. Again the sentence was reversed, this time on the ground that Negroes were excluded from grand-jury lists. By the third trial, the Communists were in control of Willie McGee's defense, and they submitted a new and ugly accusation: McGee had been intimate with the woman for several years and had been framed because he tried to break off the relationship. In the small (pop. 20,000) town of Laurel, there was utterly no evidence of such a relationship; and a physician had testified that Mrs. Hawkins had been raped. Willie McGee was again sentenced to death. The Mississippi supreme court, calling the charges against Mrs. Hawkins a "revolting insinuation and plainly not supported," denied a third appeal. Willie McGee had not taken the stand in his own defense in any of the three trials.

Petitions. All last week, petitions to save Willie McGee's life poured in on Dixiecrat Governor Fielding Wright. Many an honest person who recognized the Communist tactics also urged clemency for McGee. Fundamental point in their plea: no white man has ever been executed for rape in Mississippi.

Willie McGee had received two reprieves from Supreme Court Justices, but now the court turned him down. He shuffled into the same courtroom in Laurel where he was first tried, and sat down in Mississippi's portable electric chair. The powerful generator that supplied lethal current to the chair whined away. Within a few minutes, Willie McGee was dead.

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