Lonely Crusade (17 page)

Q. You saw that, did you?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Then what happened?

A. We took what later turned out to be a broken drinking glass away from him and subdued him…

MR. BROWN
: Was there any particular reason why you were looking for a knife at that time?

LT. ROBERTS
: Well, sir, the defendant started to strike at me with something Lieutenant Gregory said he thought was a knife.

Q. Did he have something in both hands?

A. No, sir.

Q. Did you know when you were subduing the defendant that he was a colored man?

A. Yes, sir, I did know it, but I can’t say how I knew it.

Q. Well, did you observe that he was a colored man?

A. There was a full moon, sir, but you couldn’t naturally tell—I mean by the time I got there everything was so mixed up—Lieutenant Gregory said, “He has a knife.”

MR. BROWN: Thank you very much…

(
Mary Lou Haskell takes the stand
)

MR. LOESSER
: Did the defendant say anything before he made you lie down?

MISS HASKELL
: Yes, sir. He said—oh, Lieutenant Gregory said: “What are you going to do?” and the fellow says: “I am going to tickle your girl friend.” And Lieutenant Gregory says: “Listen, fellow, you can kill me or anything you want to, but please let my girl alone,” The fellow says: “It isn’t you I want, it’s the girl.” So he made—every time Lieutenant Gregory would start to say something, he would put the gun in his back, and tie told him to be sure and not make a move or it would be too bad for him. And so then he made me lie down. He made me put the blouse up over the top of my head so I couldn’t see anything. And then he—well, Chuck started to move and he made him be still then. And then—just—well, I guess that took place about five minutes. Five or ten minutes. And then he attacked—he started to rape.

Q. Then what did you do?

A. Well, I started to cry just as he started and then Lieutenant Gregory jumped on him…

MR. BROWN
: When was the first time if at all that you learned he was a colored man—the defendant?

MISS HASKELL
: Well, when he attacked me, I kind of thought he was but I didn’t know for sure, and I didn’t know for sure until the boys got him in the car.

Q. When he told Lieutenant Gregory to turn around the other way and bend down on his knees and keep his hands up, was Lieutenant Gregory facing him?

A. No, sir, he never did face him.

Q. Now you testified, I believe, on direct examination that it took some five or ten minutes while the defendant was committing this bad act upon you, is that true?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Then subsequent to that time he raped you, is that true?

A. Well, just as I felt it, Lieutenant Gregory realized that he had gone that far and jumped on him.

Q. Do you remember what hospital you went to, Miss Haskell?

A. No, sir.

Q. Were you examined by a lady doctor?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Do you remember the name of the lady doctor who examined you?

A. No, sir…

As in slowly mounting horror, Lee Gordon saw revealed before his eyes the ease with which a Negro could be convicted of rape when the white woman was willing to take the stand and confess that he had raped her. The first motive he had attributed to Jackie passed from mind. Now he was torn between accepting it as a warning or a threat. But he could not stop .reading until the gristly revelation came to its inevitable end:

(
John O’Shaunessey, Police Officer, takes stand
)

MR. BROWN
: Was any statement made by the defendant ever reduced to writing?

OFFICER
: To writing? A written statement? We took no written statement…

(
Inspector Kelly takes stand
)

MR. BROWN
: Isn’t it the custom of the police department in a case of such a serious nature as this, when the defendant gives a statement, to reduce it to writing?

INSPECTOR
: Not particularly so. And in this case for the simple reason that the man was caught right in the act.

Q. Was the defendant in this case asked to give a written statement?

A. Yes, he was.

Q. What was his reply?

A. He denied that he had done anything…

(
Rasmus Henry Johnson (the defendant) takes stand
)

(
He testified that he had received his check, cashed it, had some drinks, played pool, gone to the theater, gone to the beach, walked along the beach, and then walked across the park to catch the Geary Street car to go home.
)

MR. BROWN
: How far did you go along the beach?

JOHNSON
: I imagine two or three block farther down to the old diner there.

COURT
: Was that lit up that night?

J.: No, sir, I don’t think it was.

COURT
: It has been closed for a year.

MR. B.
: When did you see Lieutenant Gregory that evening for the first time?

J.: I saw Lieutenant and this young lady lying on the ground.

MR. B.
: What was he doing?

J.: Well, he was on top of her, and I came near walked on them and I jumped back. Because it is a pass there.

MR. LOESSER
: What is that?

COURT
: There is none on the picture here.

J.: On the picture right in the back over there if you would go out to the space out there you can see it. There is numerous passes between those bushes six and seven and eight foot wide.

MR. B.
: Your Honor, I submit there is.

COURT
: Not where he is showing, no.

J.: In the back over here, Your Honor.

COURT: That is not on the picture.

MR. B
.: No, if the Court pleases I submit that is—

COURT
: That is not on the picture. I am talking about the picture.

MR. B.
: I think we ought to be fair.

COURT
: Show me on the picture. Show me the path on the picture.

J.: I can’t see the pass on the picture.

COURT
: No, that is what I am saying. There is no path on the picture.

J.: That is full of passes all through the bushes. There is passes enough to drive a truck through.

MR. B.
: How do you know that?

J.: Because I worked out there in the park.

COURT
: When?

J.: I worked out in the park in 1936. I worked on WPA.

COURT
: That shovel-leaners’ paradise! So you’re an expert now—working for the government. How long have you lived in San Francisco?

J.: I came here in 1923.

MR. B.
: Tell the court in your own words what happened.

J.: When I walked up and I saw him, I stepped back and he jumped up and pulled his trousers up. He said to me: “Why don’t you get out of this park where you belong, nigger?” I looked at him and I said: “I think I got as much right in this park as you have.” I told him: “I am minding my own business.” He said: “Do you know who I am?” I told him: “I don’t know who you are and I don’t care.” He says: “Why, I am a lieutenant in the U. S. Army Air Corps.” I told him: “That don’t make any difference to me.” I said: “I am just a poor fellow minding my own business.” He said to me: “Do you know what they do to you, to guys like you, where I come from?” I said: “That don’t make no difference.” He takes a poke at me and, I struck him and knocked him down. When I knocked him down he hollered for this other guy, and the girl started yelling and hollering for the other guy. And then they both got me down and started kicking me. Then they took me by my arms and twisted my arms up and carried me about one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet away and jumped on me again. When they carried me to the police station, Lieutenant Gregory told the police officers there that I held him up and attempted to rape his girl.

MR. LOESSER
: When you came home you changed from the old rusty boots to these here?

J.: No, I did not.

MR. B.
: If the Court pleases, I object to the manner of examining the witness, holding a paper in front of the jury.

MR. L
.: Of course, you know as well as I that I can’t call his wife as a witness against him. I have got a statement from the wife where she said he had an old rusty pair of boots on that laced up the front when he came home—

MR. B.: Just a moment. I object to that and I assign it as a prejudicial misconduct on the part of the District Attorney. He knows he can’t prove indirectly what he can’t prove directly.

COURT
: You have to have two suits on to work?

J.: Yes, sir. A pair of extra trousers—and every tree topper out there wears the same. You can send a man out there and investigate the project.

COURT
: I don’t care about the project at all. I want to know why you were sneaking around with boots and rubbers on and two suits of clothes.

J.: I wasn’t sneaking. I was walking.

MR. B.: I object to that question as improper. There is nothing in the evidence that he was sneaking around.

COURT: There certainly is—All right, we will take out the word “sneaking”…

COURT: (
instructing the jury
) This has been a short case, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. We started it yesterday and we heard the testimony—This is a case in which the witnesses on one side, five of them, testify one way, and the defendant testifies another way. It is for you to determine on which side lies the truth, and who has reason not to tell the truth…

(
Foreman and jury come back for further instructions
)

Foreman: Is there any difference between attempted rape and rape, whatever it is?

COURT
: Yes, two different offenses.

FOREMAN
: And the bill of information calls for what charge?

COURT
: Rape, yes…

Rasmus Henry Johnson was found guilty of rape, robbery, and violating section 288A of the California Penal Code.

After the verdict and before the sentence, Judge Gleason told representatives of the N.A.A.C.P. that he would drop the rape charge if Johnson would plead guilty to robbery and not ask to appeal the case. Johnson said he would rather serve ten thousand years than plead guilty to something he did not do…

For further information relative to the case of Rasmus Henry Johnson, write to:

MRS. MARY EMMERSON, SECRETARY, LOS ANGELES JOHNSON DEFENSE COMMITTEE
.

When Lee Gordon came to the end he did not want to stop, for now he would have to determine the reason Jackie had given him this, and he did not feel up to hating anyone that morning. He felt only a sickening dread, akin to nausea, and the tremendous, overwhelming desire to be safely in Ruth’s arms.

So engrossed had he become that he had ridden to the end of the line at Pershing Square, and wearily he alighted. For a time he sat slumped on a park bench in the early morning fog. Aside from the usual coterie of homeless bums, the square was deserted so early on a Sunday morning, and Lee did not see the bums. He felt lost, alone, the one remaining inhabitant of a lost world with only this conviction that he had to reach—was it a threat or a warning?

His mind kept rebeling against the thought that she would threaten him, although it would be just like a Communist to employ revolutionary propaganda as a personal means of threatening. But if she did not mean it as a threat, why should she feel impelled to warn him, and against what? Did she think he ran about the city attacking white women at will? Or was she just trying to illustrate for his own benefit how easily the case of Rasmus Johnson might have become the case of Lee Gordon, had she screamed?

Could this be what Jackie was trying to tell him by the document, that only her pity for him had saved him from a prison sentence, to impress him with the quality of her soul? If she was being noble at his expense, he told himself, he would hate her just as much as for the other.

Whatever had been her motive, she had succeeded only in frightening him, he reflected as he started doggedly for home. Could this then be what she had intended after all?

Chapter 10

S
HE WAS
sitting on the top step when she saw him turn into the walk. Her heart gave one great leap of pure relief and the cold wet air gushed into her lungs. And as suddenly it sank again. He looked so bowed and beaten. Everything down inside of her began to cry.

“Lee!” It was a prayer.

At the sound of her voice he saw her. He had not seen her before and now he stopped and did not move. Every fiber of his being went defensive.

“Well, say what you got to say and get it over with!” he said.

“Is it that bad?” she asked gently.

“Is what that bad? What are you talking about?”

“Nothing, Lee.” Now only despondency was in her voice.

For a moment longer he stood with his lips slightly parted. Inside of him were all these things he wanted her to know—the whole abhorrent story of the evening—dammed at the very tip of his tongue by the fear she wouldn’t understand. He felt like crying over this, for once they could have laughed at everything, at least discussed it, even the episode at Jackie’s. For together they had seen the nude white women in the burlesque shows on Main Street, holding nothing back. His curiosity had been no secret then, and often, with her knowledge, an aphrodisiac. Now with the conviction that this would never be again, he closed his mouth and went inside the house and shut the door behind him. After a moment of dull regret he began undressing.

She came in and asked him quietly: “Do you want breakfast now?”

“No.”

“Coffee? It’s already made.”

“Nothing.”

“I think I will have some coffee,” she said and went into the kitchen.

He put on his robe and came out and stood in the kitchen doorway. A place was set for him but he did not take it. Finally he said: “Everybody got drunk and just kept staying, that’s all.”