The Face in the Courthouse Window
On a stormy night in January 1878, an angry mob of citizens gathered in Carrollton, Alabama with one purpose in mind. Even though the wind blew hard and thunder roared, their eyes were locked on a single window in the courthouse and their cries for justice kept them from hearing the coming storm. They were there to get revenge from the man who had burned the symbol of their recovery from Yankee defeat (Windham and Fish 64). A suspect had been arrested on circumstantial evidence and was being held in the attic. Henry Wells, the accused, watched the crowd grow from the window upstairs. He was terrified that his life might end before the night was over. What happened next assured him that at least his story would survive. A sudden flash of lightning captured the image of his face in the garret window of the Pickens County courthouse. Many believe it is a visual reminder of the threat Wells shouted from the attic, “If y’all come up here and kill me, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your lives. I swear” (Johnson)! The legend of the face in the courthouse window is about a community who reacts to similar disasters with determination, exaggerated expectations and superstition instead of logic. The Face in the Courthouse Window has become one of the most interesting mysteries in Alabama and is the most famous thing about Carrollton, Alabama.
Carrollton became the county seat of Pickens County in 1830. The first courthouse was burned by Union soldiers in 1865. Citizens united together to rebuild the courthouse shortly after the war even though money, material and labor were hard to find. They had to sacrifice to rebuild the courthouse (Windham and Fish 64). At a cost of twenty thousand dollars, it was a s...
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Interestingly, the book does not focus solely on the Georgia lynching, but delves into the actual study of the word lynching which was coined by legendary judge Charles B Lynch of Virginia to indicate extra-legal justice meted out to those in the frontier where the rule of law was largely absent. In fact, Wexler continues to analyse how the term lynching began to be used to describe mob violence in the 19th century, when the victim was deemed to have been guilty before being tried by due process in a court of law.
The purpose of this essay is to compare three very similar cases, the Scottsboro Trials, Brown v. Mississippi, and the fictional trial of Tom Robinson in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird; and to prove why the defendant of the third trial never had a chance. Each took place in the rural South in the 1920’s and 30’s and involved the unfair conviction of young black males by all-white juries pressured by the threat of mob violence. Each lacked the evidence sufficient for conviction, most especially for the death penalty. Last, heroes emerged from each trial and made small but solid steps towards equal justice for all.
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The University of Maryland has a rich history dating back to its founding in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College. Built between 1804 and 1812, The Rossborough Inn is the oldest building on campus today (Ghost Tour, 2). With its history, it is no surprise that the Inn has been a hotspot for ghost activity. Knowing that there have been numerous reports of ghosts at Rossborough, I visited the Inn to ask current employees at the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, located in Rossborough Inn, if they themselves had experienced anything bizarre or if they had known others who had. I entered the small office where three women were talking and with their permission asked about their experiences with ghosts at Rossborough. Upon asking my question, all three smiled, although shaking their head, they indicated they had not. However, they all had heard of the stories, and one of the women replied and told me to speak with the University Archivist. She told me that she has spoken with the archivist, and upon learning the stories, she said that she “got freaked out and really wanted to go home.”
There’s a haunted house in Dover, Delaware called the Governor’s Mansion, where all of the Governors of Delaware have lived. If you go to the house yourself, you might see or experience a couple different ghosts. One evening, a guest to the house passed an old man dressed in old-fashioned clothes while going down the stairs for dinner. Once at the table the guest asked the owners who the person was. The curious owners asked for a description of the man. The description that the visitor sent chills down the spines of the owners, as it was an exact description of the owner’s father who had been dead for many years, and nobody else was in the house. The father had also been known for getting drunk a lot, so to this day he can still be seen drinking any liquor left out in the open. The mansion is also known for being a part of the Underground Railroad, so lots of slaves were always coming and going through the house at night. One night the house got busted and one of the runaway slaves ran and hid in a big tree in the yard. The slave was up there for a while and was already tired from his journey to the house.
In the beginning of the late seventeenth century a sense of fear and panic was sweeping throughout the colonies of North America this fear began in a small town in Massachusetts called Salem and would lead to the death of nineteen people. This fear was caused by young Puritan girls who started randomly convulsing and accusing people of being witches many of the accused were women many single or widowed who owned land and this event was titled The Salem Witch Trails, but another smaller very significant event also took place during this period of time that event is the attempted hanging of Mary Webster. Both of these events are very significant in the fact that they would become a basis of American literature and would bring about a very big theme even in today`s literature that theme being “A majority does not always make the right decision.” Both of these events would lead to the writing of two significant pieces
Many themes are demonstrated in To Kill A Mockingbird and Mississippi Trial, 1955. Three of the most predominant themes were courage, integrity, and truth. The author developed these themes gradually throughout both books by illustrating the actions and thoughts of the main characters. Because of these characteristics, Hiram Hilburn and Atticus Finch emerge as the heroes of the stories. The way in which heroes become inspirational to others is by learning from their mistakes. Atticus and Hiram both struggle with the pressure to follow the crowd, but the critical question is will they be able to do what’s best for the town?
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In many of Faulkner’s stories, he tells about an imaginary county in Mississippi named Yoknapatawpha. He uses this county as the setting for his story “Barn Burning” and it is also thought that the town of Jefferson from “A Rose for Emily” is located in Yoknapatawpha County. The story of a boy’s struggle between being loyal to his family or to his community makes “Barn Burning” exciting and dramatic, but a sense of awkwardness and unpleasantness arrives from the story of how the fictional town of Jefferson discovers that its long time resident, Emily Grierson, has been sleeping with the corpse of her long-dead friend with whom she has had a relationship with.
John Dickinson, from Letters from a farmer in Pennsylvania (1768) from Voices of America Past & Present pgs. 66-67
“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks” (Lee 304). Harper Lee is the renowned author of To Kill a Mockingbird which was inspired by the real events of the Scottsboro Trials. Throughout her novel, Lee indirectly references the case by creating characters, events, and symbols that resemble and contrast the case. These elements allow the novel to emerge with a more realistic and historic plot. In particular, the similarities and differences between Judge Horton and Judge Taylor, Victoria and Mayella, and the atmosphere of the courtroom are most prevalent. By examining these components one will be able to respect the historical features present in Harper Lee’s fictional literary phenomenon, To Kill a Mockingbird.
The Scottsboro Trial and the trial of Tom Robinson are almost identical in the forms of bias shown and the accusers that were persecuted. The bias is obvious and is shown throughout both cases, which took place in the same time period. Common parallels are seen through the time period that both trials have taken place in and those who were persecuted and why they were persecuted in the first place. The thought of "All blacks were liars, and all blacks are wrongdoers," was a major part of all of these trails. A white person's word was automatically the truth when it was held up to the credibility of someone whom was black. Both trials were perfect examples of how the people of Alabama were above the law and could do whatever they wanted to the black people and get away with it. In both trials lynch mobs were formed to threaten the black people who were accused. Judge Hornton tried many times to move the case to a different place so that a fair trial could take place and not be interrupted by the racist people. Finally was granted to move the case even though the lynch mobs threatened to kill everyone who was involved in the case if it were to be moved. In this essay the bias and racism in both trials are going to be clarified and compared to each other.
The original trials of the Scottsboro Boys, presided by Judge Hawkins, were unfair. Haywood Patterson wrote that as he and the Boys were herded into the Scottsboro courthouse by the National Guard, a horde of white men, women, and children had gathered outside, ready to lynch them. He “heard a thousand times… ‘We are going to kill you niggers!’” (Patterson 21). The atmosphere around the courthouse on the day of the trials was like Barnum and Bailey’s and the Ringling Brother’s...
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