Contempt of Court: The Turn-Of-The-Century Lynching That Launched 100 Years of Federalism

A little-known chapter in American legal history gets expert, well-deserved treatment by Curriden, legal affairs writer for the Dallas Morning News, and Phillips, a Tennessee trial attorney. The exciting narrative concerns the legal and social aftermath of the 1906 trial of Ed Johnson, a black man, for the rape of Nevada Taylor, a white woman, in Tennessee. Intimidated by threats of social unrest, the local court and law enforcement officers railroaded Johnson through an unjust trial and sentenced him to death by hanging. After Johnson's conviction, a team of local lawyers rushed to the Supreme Court for an appeal and stay of execution. In a little-used proceeding that allows for an interim decision by just one of the justices, Noah Parden, a black attorney, made the argument to Justice John Marshall Harlan and won the stay. But the local Chattanooga population became so enraged by what they saw as federal interference in local affairs that, with the assistance of the local sheriff, they stormed the jailhouse and lynched Johnson. The Supreme Court then held its first criminal trial, with the justices sitting as jurors in the case against the lynchers. The book succeeds on two levels: as an analysis of a legal precedent that paved the way for the Supreme Court, many years later, to find that the Bill of Rights applied to the states; and as a dramatic story, written with novelistic flair, of a few brave individuals who refused to be cowed by mob rule. 20 pages b&w photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)