"SCIPIO AFRICANUS JONES"

 “SCIPIO AFRICANUS JONES”

In her Magnificat in Luke 1, Mary sings a powerful song when she affirms that she is pregnant with Jesus:  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked down with favor upon God’s lowly servant.”  I wonder if Jemmina, an enslaved woman from Arkansas, was thinking of those words during her pregnancy as her white supremacist master took her back into slavery.   She was impregnated during the master’s sexual abuse of her.  A son was born in 1863 from that abuse, and she named him Scipio Africanus, after the famous Roman general who defeated Hannibal in 202 CE.  She was hoping for great things from her son, and he delivered.

As I noted last week, the White South always seems to be rising in American history.  During one of the most powerful times of the White South, Scipio Africanus Jones  became a famous lawyer in Arkansas, no matter the racial classification.  He defied odds and hung out his shingle, and his most famous case came in 1919, when he stepped forward to appeal the convictions and the death sentences of the Elaine 12.  In early October of 1919, Black sharecroppers were meeting in a church near Elaine, which is about 20 minutes from my hometown of Helena.  They were meeting to try to find ways to get better prices for the cotton that they grew in neo-slavery times.  White people drove up to the church and fired into it, but the Black farmers were not cowed – they returned the fire.  This led to the death of a white man, and a huge white race riot broke out.  The riot went on for several days, and during this time, at least 235 African-Americans were murdered and lynched.

When US Army troops finally stropped the killing and restored some order, 12 Black men were charged with murder, and 100 other Black people were charged with various other crimes.  All of their actions were done in self-defense, but they were the ones who were arrested!  The Elaine 12 were tried in Helena, with mobs of angry white people roaming the courthouse grounds, all threatening to kill anyone who considered an acquittal for the Elaine 12.  In no great surprise, the jury of all white men returned a guilty verdict for the Elaine 12 – it is said that it took the jury only 20 minutes to decide the verdict.  The men were sentenced to death under this mob atmosphere.  The mobs then wanted to lynch the Elaine 12, but the governor decided to move them to the jail in Little Rock until their death sentences were carried out.

No lawyers, white or Black, were interested in taking their case, and even the NAACP had difficulty finding an attorney.  Breathing in the power of his name, Scipio Africanus Jones responded to the plea from the NAACP and stepped forward to take their case on appeal.  After the sudden death of his white co-counsel George Murphy, Jones  would largely do the work of this case on his own. He received many death threats for taking the case – an African-American fighting for the lives of twelve Black men whose cases looked hopeless.  Jones appealed the case to the Arkansas Supreme Court, but his appeal was denied.  Through many twists and turns, including a visit by Ida B. Wells to the Elaine 12, Jones finally got the case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even after all his great work in getting this case to the Supreme Court, the NAACP did not think that Jones could handle the argument before the Court.  Much to his dismay, he was replaced by white attorneys – indeed he was not even allowed in the courtroom when the case was argued before SCOTUS.  He still was central, however.  Because he knew the case backwards and forwards, he wrote most of the brief for the arguments to SCOTUS.  As he noted, his goal was not personal glory – his goal was to spare the lives of the Elaine 12 and even to seek their freedom.

His hard and dedicated work paid off.  In February, 1923, in a 6-2 vote in Moore v. Dempsey, SCOTUS overturned the convictions of the Elaine 12 and remanded them back for a retrial.  It was a turning point in the history of SCOTUS on intervening in state criminal cases.  It changed the nature of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling allowed for federal courts to hear and examine evidence in state criminal cases to ensure that defendants had received due process.  It would take a while longer, but eventually all of the Elaine 12 were freed from prison.

    Not only had Scipio Africanus Jones changed the course of the lives of the Elaine 12 and their families – he also opened the door for an expansion of federal courts to intervene in the state cases of the White South seeking to crush Black defendants.  We’re in discouraging days now, with the White South rising again, but let us be inspired by Scipio Africanus Jones, and by those among us now who are like him.  Let us be counted in their number and find our places in such a parade of witnesses and justice workers.