By last week, Amy Mallard was probably as unpopular in Toombs County, Ga. as her husband Robert ("Big Duck") Mallard had been before he was lynched. The lynching had caused a lot of trouble and almost everyone thought that was Amy's fault. Big Duck had been a "real uppity nigger"—some said he even wanted to be called mister—and most of Toombs County thought he'd gotten just what he deserved.
But Amy Mallard had put up an awful fuss. Even after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had charged her with the murder herself she wouldn't shut up. They let her out of jail after a few hours, and what did Amy do? She ran off and hid in Savannah and said she was scared and got her name in the papers.
Then a man named Joseph Goldwasser, who owns a department store in a Negro district in Cleveland, offered to help her. Between them and some other folks they got two Toombs County white men indicted for the murder. But last week at the trial, which was attended by 300 Toombs Countians, they found out that it isn't so easy to get away with things like that in Georgia.
Men With White Stuff. It was a nice, orderly trial. There was a little stir when people saw Goldwasser come in—him a white man—holding Amy's arm, and carrying Amy's baby. One farmer couldn't help saying out loud: "Don't that make you sick?" But it was sort of comical too. The defense made Goldwasser a witness; this enabled them to send him outside the courtroom as soon as the trial started.
It only took 20 minutes to pick the jury for the trial of the first defendant, a 22-year-old tenant farmer named William ("Spud") Howell. Then Amy was put on the stand. She told how she and Big Duck and their baby and two cousins were on their way home in their car at night and how a gang of men "with white stuff on them" and "pistol guns" had stopped their car, and shot Robert Mallard dead.
Her attorney asked if she had recognized anyone. "Yes," she said, "William Spud Howell." Spud just smiled. But when Amy told how Big Duck got shot she went to pieces. She yelled, "Oh Lawdy, Oh murder. They killed him." She got down on her knees, screamed, "I see 'em. I see 'em. Oh Lord—why did they murder him?" A lot of people in the audience couldn't help laughing.
Clean Graveyards. But the neatest trick of the trial came when Howell's attorney, T. Ross Sharpe, called two of the jurors down out of the box to be witnesses. Though both had sworn they were "impartial" before being seated on the jury, they each said they considered Amy's reputation "bad" and would not believe what she said, even under oath.
Said Lawyer Sharpe happily during a recess: "That's perfectly legal. It was pulled on me, 25 years ago, and I've been waiting to use it ever since." And it was legal—under the law in Georgia (and many other states), any juror can testify.
After that there was some good oratory.