Nation: Charlie's Peers

As long as anyone could remember, Georgia's Schley County had always dispensed justice Southern style. Its Negroes, who constitute half the population of 3,300, sat in court as prisoners or witnesses but not as jurors. Last month, however, a new jury commission revised the venire and added 100 Negroes to the petit jury list. As a result, a Negro teen-ager charged with killing a white policeman last week faced a 'jury of eleven Negroes and one white man.

The Negro defense attorney, C. B. King, engineered the jury's composition by using 19 of his 20 challenges to eliminate white candidates. He contended...

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