Mary Frances Berry - The Pig Farmers Daughter and Other Tales of American Justice: Episodes of Racism and Sexism in the Courts from 1865 to the Present

The Pig Farmers Daughter
and Other Tales of American Justice

Dr. Mary Frances Berry has been chairperson of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission since 1993. As Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter administration, she coordinated and supervised federal education program budgets that totaled nearly thirteen billion dollars. She has received twenty-eight honorary doctoral degrees and numerous awards for her public service, including the NAACPs Roy Wilkins Award and the Rosa Parks Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She is the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Politics of Parenthood: Child Care, Womens Rights and the Myth of the Good Mother

Black Resistance/White Law: A History of Constitutional Racism in America

Long Memory: The Black Experience in America

(with John W. Blassingame)

Stability, Security and Continuity: Mr. Justice Burton and Decision Making in the Supreme Court

Military Necessity and Civil Rights Policy: Black Citizenship and the Constitution

Why ERA Failed: Politics, Womens Rights, and the Amending Process of the Constitution

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2000

Copyright 1999 by Mary Frances Berry

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Berry, Mary Frances.
The pig farmers daughter and other tales of American justice : episodes of racism and sexism in the courts from 1865 to the present / by Mary Frances Berry. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Afro-AmericansLegal status, laws, etc.
2. Sex crimesUnited States. 3. Discrimination in criminal
justice administrationUnited States. I. Title.
KF4757 . B44 1999
342.730873dc21 98-38233

eISBN: 978-0-307-79729-2

www.vintagebooks.com

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W hen I was four I had my first encounter with the law. An open field lay next to the house of my mothers middle brother and his family, where my many Southall cousins played ball to while away lazy summer days. One afternoon a uniformed white man on a motorcycle rode into the field, kicking up a cloud of dust. He called out to us youngsters as we watched our older cousins ball game, What day is this? Someone answered, Monday. We scattered in all directions when suddenly the man on the motorcycle drove at us, yelling angrily, Call me Mr. Monday! and then raced away up the road. This man, the older cousins told us, was a police officer who frequently patrolled the community. To this day, if a white uniformed officer approaches me, I see in my minds eye Mr. Monday on that Nashville summers day.

This story has a rich history, dating from the days of slavery. Then, any white person had the authority to stop a slave to ask for his pass, or to correct any slave who he thought was misbehaving. A white man deputized for slave patrol could even kill a slave at his discretion. The story of Mr. Monday also fits within the tradition of Night Riders and White Cappers who intimidated and terrorized African Americans after slavery to keep them from voting or to punish those who prospered economically or seemed uppity. This tradition of keeping African Americans in their place, through the awful and unpredictable power of the white man to harass and abuse them at any timea power supported by the white community and the legal systemthis reality was imprinted on my mind at an early age. Imprinted also by that one encounter was what years of teaching about the law and worrying about the enforcement of the law has only reinforced: the law has the force of violence, and the law can be irrational and prickly in the hands of its enforcers.

But I now know that everyone has stories, including lawyers, judges, and jurors. Stories provide a frame of reference that determines what each of us believes is true about the law. They also shape law and how it is enforced. The stories of African Americans like me and my cousinsour cultural frame of referencerarely prevail. Rather it is white Americans stories that judges and lawmakers accept, and that determine legal outcomes. William Pickens described in 1933 how the stories of those in control dictate legal results: For generations in this country when a Negro came into court facing a white opponent, he had to settle not only the question involved in the charge against him as an individual, but also all the traditional charges against his racein fact the whole race question. Like Socrates before his accusers, he had to face a jury which was influenced not only by the evidence just presented, but also by the evidence that had been taught to them in their infancy, in their growing up, in literature, taverns, shops, and from a million other sources.

Whose story counts in legal decisions rests heavily on who controls political and economic power, in a process that is circular and progressive. The stories of the powerful are the only ones that count, and the counting further enhances the power of the tellers in the economic and political arena. The exclusion of their stories reflects the historical silencing of African Americans. Because of slavery and Jim Crow, only in recent years have African Americans served on juries, been able to testify freely, been admitted to leading law schools or published in major law reviews or served on state and federal courts. Hearing and responding to African American stories is a radically new experience for many white Americans.

Another early experience embedded a narrative of class and racial paternalism in my consciousness. My uncle Lincoln was a scamp who teased and poked fun and played rough with his children and all the cousins. His playful pinches were so hard that they frequently brought us to tears. But he always had jokes to tell and pockets filled with an endless supply of candy kisses. When drunk, he was likely to end up in a fight and then in jail. Always, his wealthy white employer would obtain Uncle Lincolns quick release with a phone call to the sheriff. Lincoln, his employer told everyone, was his boy and was just having fun; when sober, Lincoln was the best worker you could find.