Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1963-11-14

Oct 26 issue of The NelU Repltblic Mnon-
zine. ItlOas aoritten by Murray Ken1pton.
an editor OF the nationally circulated
nlagaSine.)
John and James Giles and Joseph John.
son are three Southern Maryland Negroes
sentenced to the gas chamber for the rape
of a 16-year-old girl in July, 1861, in the
woods by the Patuxent River, 16 miles from
the White House.
Their case is such an irresistible reminder
of the Scottsboro case as to be an instance
of nature initiating propaganda. The defen.
dants were young and the girls honor a
long-interred casualty Still, Maryland in 1868
is not Alabama of the thirties the difference,
at minimum is that between life imprison.
ment and the death sentence When Governor
Willard Tawes opened his hearing on clemency
for the Giles brothers and johnson in the
State House the morning of October 15
communication of their sentence to life i'm.
prisonment seemed already assured. But poor
Governor Tawes faced appellants whose
spokesman were not begging for the boys
lives but demanding their freedom. That too
suggests the difference between Alabama then
and Maryland now. Tawes came to office
when the urban Negroes and the rural whites
who make up Maryland's uneasy Democratic
majority were equally powerful and equally
opposed to compromise. The state of Mary
land consists of Baltimore, which is Philadel.
phia spiked with Sodom; Western Maryland,
which is a Southerly extension of central
Pennsylvania; Southern Maryland, which is
like the fringes of Winston-Salem; and the
Eastern Shore, which is like Clarendon
County, South Carolina The government of
this implausible mixture is the process of
rendering unacceptable compromises; the
state has, for example, a public accommoda.
tons law which applies everywhere except on
the Eastern Shore, the only place in Mary
land where the segregation of Negroes is
general. Governor Tawes is from Crisfield,
fishing town at the toe of the Eastern Shore
In the case of anyone else, this environment
might argue an inclination to resist civil
rights; but after five years as Governor of
Maryland mans thoughts and movements
are less apt to be directed by interior de-
cision than tortured by conflicting exterior
necessities.
He hoped Governor Tawes said in what
has become by now his official tone of en-
barrassment, that the clemency hearing could
be got over by noon because he had to attend
a civil rights panel in the afternoon. He
hoped too that all present would appreciate
the fact that the Giles brothers and Johnson
had been convicted by two Maryland juries
and sentenced to death by two Maryland
judges and that these verdicts had been sus-
tanned by the Maryland Court of Appeals
That uniform legal history is the special
source of Governor TaweS latest embarrass-
ment. The Giles brothers and Johnson are
Negroes and their victim is a white, girl.
Race, of course, is something never men,
toned in the trial record; even so the whole
theory of the prosecution depends upon the
fact that the three men were Negroes and the
girl was white. The girl had been parked
with Stewart Foster, 21-year-old tough, on
a road in the woods. The Giles brothers and
Johnson had come upon them, and there had
been a fight. Foster had been knocked I'M
concious and the girl had run from the car
to be found later and, she asserts, ravished
by the three Negroes
The defendants told a story which their
own lawyers thought was unbelievable. The
fight had begun, Johnson insisted, when
Foster called him black mother-befouler;
the jury was asked to believe that lone
white man would insult three Negroes in an
lSOldLeO place. James IlleS anu JOlIlSOH
that they INDUCED themselves with the girl,
but claim that she was not just ready but
forward. She said the defendants claimed,
that she had been involved with II boys that
week and three more would hardly make
difference She had also said that she was
juvenile court probationer; and that If the
police came she would have to cry rape The
defendants thus asked the jury to believe
that white girl would willingly surrender to
three Negro strangers.
The defense, then, had theory which
went against all reason and habit. But the
prosecution had its problems too The girl
conceded that she had not offered any show of
resistance but had merely submitted from
fear. The prosecutions theory, as presented
to the Supreme Court by the attorney general
of Maryland, was thus Completely dazed,
alone in the woods with three demonstrably
violent colored men, and afraid for her own
life :. she complied by removing her own
shorts and then withstood successive
rapes" Without this explanation of the vic
TINS conduct, no capital verdict would have
been likely Yet this explanation obviously
depends on assumptions about the basic
nature OF white girls and Negro men in the
dark of the night
And now spokesman for the Giles
brothers and Johnson were asking Governor
Tawes to reduce their sentence from death
down to IS months, which amounted to ask