Tomiko Brown-Nagin - Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality

Sam Terry was killed in cold blood. On February 27, 1949, a Sunday afternoon in rural Manchester, Georgia, about sixty-five miles south of Atlanta, white officers shot Terry a veteran of World War II, a member of the Greatest Generation, and a thirty-seven-year-old Black manthree times in the back, once in the side.

Terry had been arrested for a minor infraction that had nothing whatsoever to do with him. Two officers hauled him from his home and locked him in a jail cell. While he was detained, they unloaded their weapons on him, claiming he had resisted arrest and tried to break away from his cell. Terry died of his wounds two days later. In the aftermath, the local sheriff disclaimed all responsibility. His men had done nothing wrong, he said: no evidence was found that Terry had been mistreated by the arresting officersthe same men who shot and killed him.

Terrys widow, Minnie Kate, flatly contradicted the sheriff. Sam had not resisted arrest, his wife asserted; suffering from the mumps, he had been in no condition to attack anyone, much less officers of the law. But Sam had protestedverballywhen the officers had manhandled Minnie Kate and briefly placed her under arrest on trumped-up charges. Angered by Sams defense of his wife, the officers yelled, Shut up, you black son-of-a-bitch or well kill you. Once they arrived at the jail, the officers shoved Sam into a cell, followed him in, slammed the door, and immediately after fired several shots at him. Minnie Kate, standing just outside the cell door, witnessed the events unfold; what she had seen and heard was an entirely unjustified shooting a barbaric murder. What was more, Minnie Kate said, while Sam bled profusely from the gunshot wounds in his intestines, the officers had insisted that she had better not holler, or she would get the same thing.

News accounts and an attending doctor confirmed critical elements of Minnie Kate Terrys version of events. The Atlanta Constitution established that the doors of the cell had been locked when officers repeatedly shot Sam Terry. And the doctor who treated the veteran after the incident said that he had been shot four times. But Minnie Kate had no recourse in the state of Georgia, which at that time was governed by Herman Talmadge, a vicious racist. So she reached out to the national NAACP and its lawyers. Along with her allies, Minnie Kate urge[d] the lawyers to take action to see that this injustice is brought to the limelight and the guilty ones are punished. Murders of Black men are spreading throughout the Southland. She was not wrong. A reign of terror that began around 1880 continued through the mid-twentieth century: during this time, white mobs across the South, aided and abetted by law enforcement, murdered hundreds of African Americans, and often targeted Black veterans.

Terrys death came to the attention of Thurgood Marshall, the chief counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF, or Inc. Fund), and his legal assistant, Constance Baker Motley, then just three years out of law school. Springing into action, Motley wrote to Tom C. Clark, Attorney General of the United States, and requested a federal investigation. Marshall followed up with a letter to the Department of Justice, seeking the help of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Nothing happened.

In 1950more than a year after Minnie Kate Terry had buried her husbandMotley once again followed up with federal officials, to no avail. The Department of Justice closed the case, saying that the evidence was insufficient to support a prosecution. This failure to thoroughly investigate, much less prosecute, fit a pattern. Despite its wartime condemnation of the racism and violence of the Nazi regime, the U.S. government virtually ignored the wave of anti-Black terrorismthe all-too-frequent beatings, shootings, and lynchings of African Americansthat occurred in the postwar South. Veterans, who led a growing resistance to anti-Black oppression, were routinely victimized and in dire need of representation. Constance Baker Motley, then in her twenties, became one of the most prominent and tireless advocates for African Americans during this turbulent era.