For those who may be engaged in “disingenuous” confusion over whether state-sanctioned racism has been part of our culture since the dawn of our country’s existence, I want to draw your attention to one simple case in Virginia, and its related legacy, that I stumbled across when conducting some legal research.
In 1921, the Virginia Supreme Court considered the case of Harry Hart, who was convicted by a jury of attempted sexual assault on a white woman, sentenced to DEATH and, ultimately, electrocuted in Augusta, VA on January 23, 1922. See 131 Va. 726 (Va. 1921); https://deathpenaltyusa.org/usa1/state/virginia5.htm.
The victim, Virginia Garber, was described as being “rather small for her age, and is a simple, good, unsophisticated country girl.” The assailant, Harry Hart, was described as being “a full-grown negro man, aged twenty-one years, married and lived with his wife and child in the same neighborhood.”
As the Supreme Court noted, the result of the attempted assault was as follows:
“Miss Garber was not injured or bruised or thrown down, nor were her clothes torn. Hart did not put his hands under her clothes, nor use any vulgar language, or make to her any improper proposal. When he relaxed his efforts to consummate the assault, he kissed her. The evidence of those who knew him more or less casually was that he bore a good reputation as a law-abiding citizen before this trouble arose.”
While neither I nor my firm would ever discount the impact of rape or attempted rape, the fact is that Ms. Garber was never even touched beneath her apparel, making such circumstance not even remotely comparable to intentional murder, actual, and violent sexual assault, etc.
The “Honorable” Frederick Sims, also a former member of the VA Senate and Mayor, went to great lengths to discount and reject Mr. Hart’s pleas that the jury’s death sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment under the constitution. Judge Sims included as a basis for upholding the sentence the need for the Commonwealth to impose a prompt and swift severe penalty to prevent a “resultant grave shock to the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth” that may result in the public resorting to “lynch law.” So, electrocute him to prevent a mob from lynching him goes that line of logic.
One of the Commonwealth’s attorney generals arguing in favor of the death penalty was Leon Bazile, who, after multiple promotions for jobs well done, would later go on to the Fifteenth Circuit. There, Judge Bazile issued the famous Loving decision in 1965, that affirmed the legality of VA’s ban on interracial marriage and the criminal conviction of a biracial couple. For VA’s court, Bazile wrote:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”
The US Supreme Court overturned that abhorrent decision. Don’t kid yourself into believing that this remedied the underlying systemic racism reflected in the Loving decision.
A snap-shot of Judge/Representative/Attorney General Bazile’s 5 decades-long legacy of state-sanctioned oppression, opposition to integration, equal justice, and equal treatment to African Americans has been described as follows:
“Bazile was involved in virtually every legal race issue during those years—the racial integrity and segregation laws of the 1920s, proposals for repatriation of African Americans in the 1930s, the public school equalization cases in the 1940s, defense of Virginia’s Massive Resistance in the 1950s, prosecution of the Danville civil rights demonstrators in 1963, and, finally, his last ruling in the Loving case in 1965.”
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Bazile_Leon_M_1890-1967#:~:text=Leon%20M.,U.S.%20Supreme%20Court%20in%201967.
While this description neglects to mention the 1921 murder of Harry Hart, that legacy is a bloody shame and only one, good reveal of the history of white – governmental sanctioned – oppression.
Finally, of the 399 people put to death by hanging or electrocution by the Commonwealth between 1901-1962, 89% were African American.
https://deathpenaltyusa.org/usa1/state/virginia5.htm
The line-item reference to Harry Hart describes him as a laborer; not a victim of state-sanctioned racist murder, which would accurately and likely describe him and so many others on this sad list.
Blessings to his/their souls and families, yes.
Change our country and future – now – to ensure equal justice and opportunities for all, yes.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
Douglas Fierberg
6/5/2020
#blacklivesmatter #blm
