1630 North 15th Street
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

June 13, 1952

Dear Friend:

I am twenty-four years old. I want to live. I ask you to help save me from a lynch death, which is in store for me if I am sent back to Alabama. Monday, June 16, my trial is coming up for the last time before Judge Ganey at the Federal Court House, 9th and Market, 10 A.M.

When I was eighteen years old I sharecropped on a small farm near Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The man I was sharecropping for was named Terry. One day when I asked him to fix his fence to keep his cows from trampling my corn crop, he started clubbing me over the head with an axe handle. When I was dazed from the blows on the head, I asked myself the question, "Why should I stand up here and let this man kill me. He has no right to kill me. I have no right to die." The only thing I had was a pen knife in my pocket so I stuck him with it.

Terry organized a mob of Klu Kluxers to lynch me. I saw them in time and escaped to Detroit. I have been up North for the past seven years. My boss and fellow workers vouch for the fact that I am a steady worker and have been living a law-abiding citizen's life.

But in Alabama a Colored man is not supposed to defend himself when attacked by a white man. Terry swore out a warrant for my arrest and the Government now wants to send me back to Alabama--that's where twenty-eight Negroes were murdered by police and sheriffs in the last two years. I don't want to be the twenty-ninth to be murdered because I am a Negro.

I have committed no crime. I ran away to escape a lynching. I ask you--is it a crime to flee from a lynching--to save your life?

You can help, but you must do it now. There are only two days left. Wire Governor Gordon Persons, Montgomery, Alabama, and ask him to drop the warrant. Sunday, please ask those who can make it to attend my trial Monday morning, 10 A.M. before Judge Ganey at the Federal Court House, 9th and Market.