If you like courtroom dramas and are also a history buff, this is the two-fer for you. Chris Joyner, after what was obviously strenuous and lengthy research, has written a book that is equal parts the story of a Georgia sharecropper’s arrest and three trials, and an in-depth look at mid-century Southern history via a trip to Carrollton, Georgia.
A white couple are on a date when they are confronted by a man who makes them lie down in a secluded field. When the young woman is told to undress, her story goes, her date jumps up to defend her. She escapes; her date is killed. Nan Turner runs to a farmhouse to report that a man has shot Buddy Stephens. Upon being questioned, she recalls only that the killer “had a Negro sounding voice.”
Nan’s account is little to go on, and it is many months before a plausible arrest is made. Clarence Henderson is charged, but the evidence is all circumstantial. This is the set-up of the “Three Death Sentences” story, but along the way, readers are treated to the multi-sided world of race relations and judicial realities of the times. These “asides” provide an exquisitely detailed look at such institutions as the NAACP (with Thurgood Marshall pre Supreme Court), The Atlanta Constitution’s Ralph McGill, The Scottsboro Boys, Communism, Big Bethel AME Church, the Three Governors’ (M. E. Thompson, Herman Talmadge, Ellis Arnall) Controversy and 1950s politics, journalism and law in general.
Joyner has captured the voice of both the times and the people of Carrollton. Local newspaper publisher Stanley Parkman is described as “tall…and he wore spectacles.” Joyner tells us of “a cabal of politicians” and gives us a real, down-home feel for the South he knows well.
It is fun, especially for those of us who have spent our lives in Atlanta, learning that the deservedly legendary Ralph McGill was not the least bit reluctant to share his opinions in his daily column. He was, in fact, at times a bit of a spoiled brat. We infer from the accounts that it was McGill who was responsible for “unbylined stories” in the paper, reporting tales of prosecutorial misconduct, Communist bullying and judicial nepotism.
The wrap-up — what becomes of Clarence Henderson after his saga has ended — is no surprise. Henderson, is after all, only a secondary character in this book. The South and its denizens take first place. You might want to skip over some of the highly detailed and lengthy accounts of firearms
evidence, but don’t let that get in your way of enjoying The Three Death Sentences of Clarence Henderson.
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More than a true crime story
The author recounts the story of an unsolved 1948 murder of a popular young veteran and the attempted rape of his date. And, he expertly puts the events, which are very much local, into the broader context of the times in which they occurred. Clarence Henderson, a Black sharecropper arrested more than a year after the crime on very thin evidence, was convicted and sentenced to death three times and three times the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction. As you read, you see how the case gained the attention of Civil Rights leaders, including future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. This is an important story well told by veteran journalist Chris Joyner.
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The author recounts the story of an unsolved 1948 murder of a popular young veteran and the attempted rape of his date. And, he expertly puts the events, which are very much local, into the broader context of the times in which they occurred. Clarence Henderson, a Black sharecropper arrested more than a year after the crime on very thin evidence, was convicted and sentenced to death three times and three times the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction. As you read, you see how the case gained the attention of Civil Rights leaders, including future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. This is an important story well told by veteran journalist Chris Joyner.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2022
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