Glover Clifford - The trial of Patrolman Thomas Shea: the police killing of Clifford Glover

Add Armstead is the product of an America that should have died a century ago. The elderly midwife present at his birth in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on June 14, 1922, had been raised in slavery. The eighth of nineteen children, he dropped out of school in second grade and can neither read nor write. Armstead grew up in the American South before the Montgomery bus boycott, sit-ins, and freedom riders. It was an era when most blacks were forbidden to vote and it was a crime punishable by ten years in prison for a black and white to intermarry. His formative years were spent under the heels of political and economic barons who had a vested interest in keeping his people ignorant, uneducated, and superstitious. At age twenty-one, he moved north to New York, where he has worked as a laborer for more than thirty years.

Armstead is five feet six inches tall, of wiry build, with skin the color of bitter chocolate. His face is thin with high cheekbones and a pencil mustache. The majority of his teeth are missing, leaving gaping holes on each side of his mouth. His eyes are dull, and his hair is cropped close where it has not receded. A gold crucifix dangles from a chain around Armsteads neck just to the left of an ugly three-inch scar. His hands are the hands of a laborer. Extremely large for someone his size, scarred from an endless series of metal slices, dirt perpetually under the nails. He is an unremarkable man who, as the result of a single horrifying moment in the dreary predawn hours of April 28, 1973, was ripped from obscurity and brutally exhibited before the American public until the same public wearied of him.

His voice is deep. He speaks in rushes.

Shea! Yeah, I know that name. He made a pact with the devil. You see, God and Satan be sittin in heaven with suitcases full of souls, and they trade them back and forth. And the devil, hes got another suitcase with every kind of temptation you can imagine. Shea made a pact with the devil. The devil took his soul, and now Shea does his bidding. I know because I was there the morning Shea shot my boy. If Id been drunk or causing trouble, it might have been different, but there werent none of that. Me and Clifford was just walking along when Shea killed him dead. Some nights, I still wake up and hear the bullets whistling over me.

After Shea killed my boy, there was a time when any man with a uniform and badge was my enemy. Every cop, I hated. Then God called me. I was sitting in church, cursing God for everything that had gone wrong, when I felt my breath growing short. My throat closed up and I couldnt breathe. Right then I heard the voice of God. He said, Add, the devil could have killed you that Saturday morning, but I saved you to preach the Gospel. I heard Gods voice, and I begged for forgiveness. I said, Lord, I surrender everything. Lord, Ill give you everything. Lord, Im in your hands.

Thats the way its been now for five years. All the trouble I went through was for God. Without God, you dont got nothing. You can give me a Rolls-Royce, and Ill say thats mine but it aint. Thats Gods car because, if God takes the breath out of me, if God takes my life right then, that car aint worth nothing. Id rather do what God tells me than live in a palace because what I got now, money cant buy. God came in and put peace and love in my heart.

Peace and love. Thats the message of the Lord. If all of us were united, not just here in America but in the whole world, if we could sit down and talk out our problems, then wed have peace. But we cant get the world united. We got countries fighting with countries. We got rich fighting with poor, black fighting with white. It dont make sense. Everybody should get on the train and ride together with Christ. Hes the conductor. And when you got Christ, you have everything.

Hate tears up a mans insides. When Jesus was on the cross, He said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, Thats why I forgive Shea. God says that Sheas my brother. If Shea walked in this door right now and said, Im hungry, Id give him something to eat. Theres no way a man can love God if he hates his own brother. Thats what matters to me now. Loving God. But theres more you came to ask me, so Ill tell you more.

I was born in nineteen hundred and twenty-two on a farm in Fredericksburg, Virginia. There were nineteen children in the family. I got five brothers and four sisters still living. Nine of them are dead. Im the oldest living son.

My mothers name was Sarah. She was a big woman, weighed a little more than two hundred pounds. At hog-killing time, she worked in the yard. But the rest of the time, she stayed at home. I guess raising nineteen of us was work enough. She was born a Baptist, lived like a Baptist, and died a Baptist. Always told us to go to church, and I never gave her no trouble except once. One Sunday, instead of praying like I was supposed to, I went fishing with George Young. The canoe turned over and I couldnt swim, nearly drowned before George saved me. Right then, I figured the Lord was trying to tell me something. Thats the last time I ever went fishing on Sunday.

My father hauled wood for a living. His name was Add, and I look a lot like he used to. He and my mother ran out of names by the time they got to me, so they named me Add, Junior. My father was a hard man, but he taught us the best he knew how. He gave us what he could and we didnt have no palace, but what we had was all right. I was never ashamed.

My father worked us hard when we was children. I didnt get much book learning because he made me quit school in second grade so I could help him out at work. Every day except Sunday, him and me would chop down a load of trees. Then wed saw them into eight-foot sections and bring them back by horse and wagon to the yard, where my brothers cut them down some more. Finally, wed load the wood back on the cart and take it to peoples houses for their stoves. It was hard work but honest money. We got five dollars a load, three or four loads a day.