Roadhouse Justice
Hattie Lee Barnes and the Killing of a White Man in 1950s Mississippi
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"In 1951, Hattie Lee Barnes, a twenty-one-year-old Black woman working as an overnight caretaker and maid at a county-line beer joint in southwestern Mississippi, shot and killed a white intruder. That man, twenty-two-year-old Lamar Craft, was breaking into the bar in the early morning hours, most likely to assault Barnes sexually. She confessed immediately to shooting him, at which point local police charged her with murder. Craft's family, one of prominence and influence, rejected Barnes's story that she was Lamar Craft's killer. Embarrassed by the circumstances in which he died, they assert...
"In 1951, Hattie Lee Barnes, a twenty-one-year-old Black woman working as an overnight caretaker and maid at a county-line beer joint in southwestern Mississippi, shot and killed a white intruder. That man, twenty-two-year-old Lamar Craft, was breaking into the bar in the early morning hours, most likely to assault Barnes sexually. She confessed immediately to shooting him, at which point local police charged her with murder. Craft's family, one of prominence and influence, rejected Barnes's story that she was Lamar Craft's killer. Embarrassed by the circumstances in which he died, they asserted that Rob Lee, the white bar owner, was the actual murderer. Two of Craft's brothers thereafter tried to assassinate Lee but failed. Lee, concerned that Barnes might implicate him in the killing, shot her multiple times but failed to kill her. In Roadhouse Justice Trent Brown examines the long-forgotten circumstances surrounding Craft's death, revealing not only the details of his death and the lengthy court proceedings that followed, but also the precarious nature of Black lives under 1950s Mississippi justice. Barnes's court-appointed lawyer was twenty-five-year-old Joe Pigott. He and Charles Gordon, a reporter for the local newspaper, believed the prosecutors would attempt to unjustifiably convict Barnes of murder, sending her to state prison for life if not to the electric chair. Both men became strong advocates of her cause. At her murder trial later that year, the judge was Thomas Brady, a staunch segregationist who would become in the mid-1950s the leading intellectual light of the white supremist Citizens' Councils. Surprising nearly everyone, Pigott persuaded Brady to instruct the jury to deliver a directed verdict of not guilty. Hattie Barnes, however, was still not free. Despite her acquittal, Mississippi authorities continued to hold her in jail so that she would be available to testify against Rob Lee, the bar owner who shot her. At Lee's trial, which occurred over a year later, Barnes testified against him. A jury found Lee guilty, and a judge sentenced him to ten years in prison. The Craft family nonetheless continued to press authorities into indicting Lee for Lamar Craft's murder. They also filed suit against a life insurance company to construct an alternate explanation of his death. Two years after Barnes defended herself against Lamar Craft in the roadhouse, authorities finally freed her. As Brown points out, the broader story of the case illuminates the capricious nature of Mississippi justice, in which race, personal connections, and community pressures mattered a great deal. He rightly shows that Barnes was an uncommonly determined woman for not buckling under the enormous pressures she faced. Told here for the first time, the story of her tribulations and ultimate victory will attract readers interested in civil rights, legal studies, and Mississippi history"--
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