Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “I tell them that, I know. They’re just desperate, like I was desperate before y’all helped me. Marsha, Ashley, Monica, Patricia are sweatin’ me to have you send someone to help.” — We met Marsha Colbey shortly after that and began working on her appeal. We decided to challenge the State’s case and the way the jury had been selected. Charlotte Morrison, a Rhodes Scholar and former student of mine, was now a senior attorney at EJI. She and staff attorney Kristen Nelson, a Harvard Law grad who had worked at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, the nation’s premier public defender office, met with Marsha repeatedly. She would talk about her case, the challenge of keeping her family together while she was in prison, and a range of other problems. But it was the sexual violence at Tutwiler that most frequently came up during these visits. Charlotte and I took on the case of another woman who had filed a federal civil suit after she was raped at Tutwiler. She had had no legal help; because of defects in her pleadings and the allegations she made in her complaint, we could secure only a small settlement judgment for her. But the details of her experience were so painful that we could no longer look past the violence. We started an investigation for which we interviewed over fifty women; we were truly shocked to see how widespread the problem of sexual violence had become. Several women had been raped and become pregnant. Even when DNA testing confirmed that male officers were the fathers of these children, very little was done about it. Some officers who had received multiple sexual assault complaints were temporarily reassigned to other duties or other prisons, only to wind up back at Tutwiler, where they continued to prey on women. We eventually filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice and released several public reports about the problem, which received widespread media coverage. Tutwiler made a list of the ten worst prisons in America compiled by Mother Jones; it was the only women’s facility to be so dishonored. Legislative hearings and policy changes at the prison followed. Male guards are now banned from the shower areas and toilets, and a new warden has taken over the facility.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I was about to say something when I saw him open the glove compartment. Opening objects in a parked vehicle was so incredibly illegal that I realized he wasn’t paying any attention to the rules, so saying something about it would be pointless. There was nothing interesting in my car. There were no drugs, no alcohol, not even tobacco. I kept a giant-size bag of peanut M&Ms and Bazooka bubble gum in the glove compartment to help stave off hunger when I didn’t have time for a meal. There were just a few M&Ms left in the bag, which the officer inspected carefully. He put his nose into the bag before tossing it back. I wouldn’t be eating those M&Ms. I had not lived at our new address long enough to get a new driver’s license, so the address on my license didn’t match the new location. There was no legal requirement to update the driver’s license, but it prompted the officer to hold me there for another ten minutes while he went back to his car to run a search on me. My neighbors grew bolder as the encounter dragged on. Even though it was late, people were coming out of their homes to watch. I could hear them talking about all the burglaries in the neighborhood. There was a particularly vocal older white woman who loudly demanded that I be questioned about items she was missing. “Ask him about my radio and my vacuum cleaner!” Another lady asked about her cat who had been absent for three days. I kept waiting for my apartment light to come on and for Charlie to walk outside and help me out. He had been dating a woman who also worked at Legal Aid and had been spending a lot of time at her house. It occurred to me that he might not be home. Finally, the officer returned and spoke to his partner: “They don’t have anything on him.” He sounded disappointed. I found my nerve and took my hands off the car. “This is so messed up. I live here. You shouldn’t have done this. Why did you do this?” The older officer frowned at me. “Someone called about a suspected burglar. There have been a lot of burglaries in this neighborhood.” Then he grinned. “We’re going to let you go. You should be happy,” he said. With that, they walked away, got in their SWAT car, and drove off. The neighbors looked me over one last time before retreating back into their homes. I couldn’t decide whether I should race to my door so that they could see that I lived in the neighborhood or wait until they were all gone so that no one would know where the “suspected criminal” lived. I decided to wait.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The State sought the death penalty. After striking all of the black prospective jurors in a county that is 28 percent black, the prosecutor told the all-white jury in his closing argument that a conviction was appropriate because Herbert was “associated with Black Muslims from New York City” and deserved no mercy. Alabama’s capital statute requires that any murder eligible for the death penalty be intentional, but it was clear that Herbert had no intent to kill the child. The State decided to invoke an unprecedented theory of “transferred intent” to make the crime eligible for the death penalty. But Herbert had no intention to kill anyone. Herbert was advised to deny any culpability but ultimately argued that this was reckless murder, not capital murder, which could be punished with life imprisonment but not the death penalty. During the trial, the appointed defense lawyer presented no evidence about Herbert’s background, his military service, his trauma from the war, his relationship with the victim, his obsession with the girlfriend—nothing. Alabama’s statute at the time limited what court- appointed lawyers could be paid for their out-of-court preparation time to $1,000, so the lawyer spent almost no time on the case. The trial lasted just over a day, and the judge quickly condemned Herbert to death. Following the imposition of the death sentence, Herbert’s appointed lawyer, who was later disbarred for poor performance in other cases, told Herbert that he didn’t see any reason to appeal the conviction or sentence because the trial had been as fair as he could expect. Herbert reminded him that he’d been sentenced to death. He wanted to appeal no matter how unlikely the prospects, but his lawyer filed no brief. Herbert was confined on death row for eleven years, until it was his time to face “Yellow Mama.” A volunteer lawyer had challenged the intent questions in a desperate appeal but was unsuccessful. Herbert’s execution was now set for August 18, just three weeks away. After my call with Herbert, I filed a flurry of stay motions in various courts. I knew the odds were low that we would block the execution. By the late 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court had grown impatient with challenges to capital punishment. The Court had justified reauthorization of the death penalty in the mid-1970s on the promise that proceedings would be subject to heightened scrutiny and meticulous compliance with the law but then began to retreat from the existing review procedures. The Court’s rulings had become increasingly hostile to death row prisoners and less committed to the notion that “death is different,” requiring more careful review. The Court decided to bar claims from federal habeas corpus review if they weren’t initially presented to state courts. Federal courts were then forbidden to consider new evidence unless it was first presented to state courts. The Court began insisting that federal judges defer more to state court rulings, which tended to be more indulgent of errors and defects in capital proceedings.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I was very disagreeably shaken by this, and Saul asked me to write a postscript-which I did. That same week I met the late Dwight MacDonald, whom I admired very much because of his magazine, Politics, who looked at me with wonder and said that I was "very smart." This pleased me, certainly, but it frightened me more. But no black editor could or would have been able to give me my head, as Saul did then: partly because he would not have had the power, partly because he could not have af fordcd-{)r needed-Saul's politics, and partly because part of the price of the black ticket is involved-fatally-with the dream of becoming white. This is not possible, partly because white people arc not white: part of the price of the white ticket is to delude them selves into believing that they arc. The political position of my old man, for example, whether or not he knew it, was dictated by his (in his case) very honorable necessity not to break faith with the Old World. One may add, in passing, that the Old World, or Europe, has become nothing less than an American superstition, which accounts, if anything can, for an American vision of Russia so Talmudic and self-serving that it has ab solutely nothing to do with any reality occurring under the Still. OTHER ESSAYS But the black American must find a way to keep faith with, and to excavate, a reality much older than Europe. Europe has ne\·er been, and cannot be, a useful or valid touchstone for the American experience because America is not, and never can be, white. My tather died before Eugene died. When my father died, Beauford helped me to bury him and I then moved fr om Har lem to the Village. This was in 1943. We were fighting the Second World War. We: who was this we? For this war was being fought, as tar as I could tell, to bring freedom to everyone with the exception of Hagar's children and the "yellow-bellied Japs." This was not a matter, merely, of my postadolescent dis cernment. It had been made absolutely clear to me by the eighteen months or so that I had been working for the Army, in New Jersey, by the anti-Japanese posters to be found, then, all over New York, and by the internment of the Japanese. At the same time, one was expected to be "patriotic" and pledge allegiance to a flag which had pledged no allegiance to you: it risked becoming your shroud if you didn't know how to keep your distance and stay in your "place." And all of this was to come back to me much later, when Cassius Clay, a.k.a. Muhammad Ali, refused to serve in Viet nam because he was a Muslim-in other words, for religious reasons-and was stripped of his title, while placards ali over New York trumpeted, Be true to yottr faith!

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And on the basis of the evidence== the moral and political evidence-one is compelled to say that this is a backward society. Now if I were a teacher in this school, or any Negro school, and I was dealing with Negro children, who were in my care only a few hours of every day and would then return to their homes and to the streets, chil dren who have an apprehension of their future which with every hour grows grimmer and darker, I _wouL<LtD'. w_teac h them-I would try �Q__I!!_akc Jhc;m_ls,no_W=that--ffigse-.stre.ets, tfu>_se- - nouscs, those d�_!!g_�_r:s, t hos. e . . agonies..by.-whid�-th�y are surrounded, are criminal. I would try to make each child know tnat - i:lleSe things arc the results of a criminal conspiracy to destroy him. I would teach him that if he intends to get to be a man, he must at once decide that he is stronger than this conspiracy and that he m�st never make his peace with it. And that one of his weapons for refusing to make his peace with it and fo r destroying it depends on what he decides he is worth. I would teach him that there are currently very few standards in this country which arc worth a man's respect. That it is up to him to begin to change these standards for the sake of the life and the health of the country. I would suggest to him that the pQ _ p u Laccult u•e-as represe nted, fo r example, on televisio n-and in comic books and in mo_vies,---- is b � sed on � an �� sics crc _ ated by very ill p�_plc..,_aud._h.c..-m ll-lit-be aware that tficsc arc:_ fantasies that hav�____!!_<_>_ _ !hing to d�vith reaticy:·T woufd teach him that the press he readsiSI10t as free as· irsays it is-and that he can do something about that, too. I would try to make him know that just as American history 686 OTHER ESSAYS is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more ter rible than anything anyone has ever said about it, so is the world larger, more daring, more beautiful and more terrible, but principally larger-and that it belongs to him. I would teach him that he doesn't have to be bound by the expedi encies of any given Administration, any given policy, any given time-that he has the right and the necessity to examine e\'erything. I would try to show him that one has not learned anything about Castro when one says, "He is a Communist." This is a way of not learning something abou�J:astro, SQR1e thing ab() ut Cuba, something, in fact, about the world.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is a fa r more horrible story than "Man of All Work," but it too manages its effects by a kind of Grand Guignol humor, and it too is an unsparing indictment of the frivolity, egotism, and wrong-headedness ofwhite people-in this case, a french artist and his mistress. It too is told entirely in dialogue and recounts how a french artist traveling through Africa picks up an African servant, uses him as a model, and, in order to shock and titillate his jaded European friends, brings the African back to Paris with him. Whether or not Wright's vision of the African sensibility will be recognized by Africans, I do not know. But certainly he has managed a frightening and truthful comment on the in exorably mysterious and dangerous relationships between ways of life, which arc also ways of thought. This story and ALAS, POOR RICHARD 251 "Man of All Work" left me wondering how much richer our extremely poor theater might now be ifWright had chosen to work in it. But "The Man Who Killed a Shadow" is something else again; it is Wright at the mercy of his subject. His great tc>rte, it now seems to me, was an ability to convey inward states by means of externals: "The Man Who Lived Underground," t(>r example, conveys the spiritual horror of a man and a city by a relentless accumulation of details, and by a series of brief, sharply cut-otT tableaus, seen through chinks and cracks and keyholes. The specifically sexual horror taced by a Negro can not be dealt with in this way. "The Man Who Killed a Shadow" is a story of rape and murder, and neither the mur derer nor his victim ever comes alive. The entire story seems to be occurring, somehow, beneath cotton. There are many reasons tc>r this. In most of the novels written by Negroes until today (with the exception of Chester Himes' If He Hol lers Let Him Go) there is a great space where sex ought to be; and what usually fills this space is violence. This violence, as in so much of Wright's work, is gratuitous and compulsive. It is one of the severest criticisms than can be leveled against his work. The violence is gratuitous and compulsive because the root of the violence is never examined. The root is rage.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Leftists have a hard time in the south; there cannot be very many there; I, certainly, was never followed around southern streets by leftist lunatics, but state troopers. Similarly, there arc a great many people in Texas, or, tor that matter, in America, with tar stronger reasons tor wishing the President dead than any demented Castroite could have had. Quite apart, now, from what time will reveal the truth of this case NOTHING PERSONAL 699 to have been, it is reassuring to feel that the evil came fr om without and is in no way connected with the moral climate of America; reassuring to feel that the enemy sent the assassin from far away, and that we, ourselves, could never have nour ished so monstrous a personality or be in any way whatever responsible for such a cowardly and bloody act. Well. The America of my experience has worshipped and nourished vi olence for as long as I have been on earth. The violence was being perpetrated mainly against black men, though-the strangers; and so it didn't count. But, if a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their de vouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save. But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country-to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world-and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them: our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or woman who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate-and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children-to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  I told them you were coming down but decided that just you and I should talk.” It didn’t surprise me that word had gotten around and that people were talking about Walter’s new attorney. I had talked to enough people in the community to know that people would be discussing my efforts on Walter’s behalf. My guess is that Judge Key had already characterized me as misguided and uncooperative simply because I didn’t get off the case, as he had directed. Chapman had a medium build, curly hair, and glasses that suggested he didn’t mind looking like someone who spent time reading and studying. I’d met prosecutors who dressed and presented like they would rather be out hunting ducks than running a law office, but Chapman was professional and courteous and approached me with a pleasant demeanor. I was intrigued that he would immediately give voice to the concerns of other people in law enforcement and was initially encouraged that he meant for us to have a candid conversation free of distractions and posturing. “Well, I appreciate that,” I said. “I’m very concerned about this McMillian case. I’ve read the record, and to be honest I have serious doubts about his guilt and the reliability of this conviction.” “Well, this was a big case, there’s no doubt about that. You do understand that I didn’t have anything to do with the prosecution, don’t you?” “Yes, I do.” “This was one of the most outrageous crimes in Monroe County history, and your client made a lot of people here extremely angry. People are still angry, Mr. Stevenson. There’s not enough bad that can happen to Walter McMillian for some of them.” This was a disappointing beginning—he seemed completely convinced of Walter’s guilt. But I pressed on. “Well, it was an outrageous, tragic crime, so anger is understandable,” I replied. “But it doesn’t accomplish anything to convict the wrong person. Whether Mr. McMillian has done anything wrong is what the trial should resolve. If the trial is unfair, or if witnesses have given false testimony, then we can’t really know whether he’s guilty or not.” “Well, you may be the only person right now who thinks the trial was unfair. Like I said, I wasn’t involved in the prosecution.” I was becoming frustrated, and Chapman probably saw me shift in my seat. I thought about the dozens of black people I’d met who had complained bitterly about Walter’s prosecution, and I was starting to see Chapman as either naive or willfully indifferent—or worse.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  JEROME. Let those who deny the authenticity of the Hebrew copies, shew us this passage in the LXX, and when they have failed to find it, we will shew it them in the Hebrew. We may also explain it in another way, by considering it as quoted from Numbers, God brought him out of Egypt; his glory is as it were that of a unicorn. (Num. 23:22.) REMIGIUS. In Joseph is figured the order of preachers, in Mary Holy Scripture; by the Child the knowledge of the Saviour; by the cruelty of Herod the persecution which the Church suffered in Jerusalem; by Joseph’s flight into Egypt the passing of the preachers to the unbelieving Gentiles, (for Egypt signifies darkness;) by the time that he abode in Egypt the space of time between the ascension of the Lord and the coming of Anti Christ; by Herod’s death the extinction of jealousy in the hearts of the Jews. 2:1616. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. When the infant Jesus had subdued the Magi, not by the might of His flesh, but the grace of His Spirit, Herod was exceeding wrath, that they whom he sitting on his throne had no power to move, were obedient to an Infant lying in a manger. Then by their contempt of him the Magi gave further cause of wrath. For when kings’ wrath is stirred by fear for their crowns, it is a great and inextinguishable wrath. But what did he? He sent and slew all the children. As a wounded beast rends whatsoever meeteth it as if the cause of its smart, so he mocked by the Magi spent his fury on children. He said to himself in his fury, ‘Surely the Magi have found the Child whom they said should be King;’ for a king in fear for his crown fears all things, suspects all. Then he sent and slew all those infants, that he might secure one among so many. AUGUSTINE. (non occ.) And while he thus persecutes Christ, he furnished an army (of martyrs) clothed in white robes of the same age as the Lord. AUGUSTINE. (Serm. 220. App.) Behold how this unrighteous enemy never could have so much profited these infants by his love, as he did by his hate; for as much as iniquity abounded against them, so much did the grace of blessing abound on them.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But, probing more deeply, one finds that these novels are not essentially any more "advanced" than The Birth of a Nation; even the humane rage comes closer to approximating a kind of uncon trollable hysteria. These novels utilize -comp ulsively -a rather shabby trick: Treat Negroes as human beings, the nov elists cry; but this contains a clause: there are some Negroes you ought to admire; and finally: many of them, most of the best of them, are not much darker than you are. This might be forgivable, were there not at the same time an explo itation of the more familiar myth which these novels are loudly en gaged in tearing down. Thus, when the heroine of Q;tality goes home-to a landscape not notably different from that made familiar by Margaret Mitchell-her greatest hu miliation comes when she is treated in exactly the same manner as a dark, gin-drinking, razor-toting hussy- concerning whom the author, through the heroine's eyes, comments: "In a way [h er hysteria] com pensated for her ignorance, her low standing in the social scale. Maybe the same thing was true of the great mass of the colored people, simple, ignorant, yet uninhibited in their emotional expression." It is the heroine, with her great ad mixture of white blood, who will lead her people from these 586 OTH ER ESS AYS low grounds. Similarly, when Neil Kingsblood discovers his ancestry, his wife waits apprehensively for the signs--expect ing him to turn into a "shambling, f(>olish" darky. But this does not happen and she sticks to him; after all, he has not really changed; he is as white as ever; he has merely become a crusader f(>r a downtrodden people. The really remarkable plots, counter-plots, and sub-pl ots that make these novels as impossible to remember as they are difficult to read, again betray an essential desperation. The plots are all concerned with the sexual aggressions of whites against blacks; these constitute, before the books begin, the essential a priori dilemma; they operate to burden every en counter within the novel proper with a clandestine, historic significance; the atmosphere inside which these people move is made heavy with unfulfilled desire. The considerable prob lem this presents to the American psyche is partially solved by keeping the protagonists as light as possible or, at any rate, making it abundantly clear that the Negro under discussion is not subject to the same passions and cannot therefore be bound by the same laws as saddle other Negroes. These novels arc, really, exceedingly timorous studies of transgression, and they all have two sets of transgressors: the ancestors, who are a Negro woman and a white man; and the protagonists, who, in all cases but one, are a Negro man and a white woman.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Well, that is the way they have always treated me. They weren't cruel, they just didn't know you were alive. They didn't know you had any feelings. What I am trying to suggest here is that in the doing of all this for 100 years or more, it is the Amc�jcan white man who has long since lost his grip on reality. In some peculiar way, having created this myth about Negroes, and the myth about his own history, he created myths about the world so that, for example, he was astounded that some people could prefer Castro, astounded that there arc people in the world who don't go into hiding when they hear the word "Commu nism," astounded that Communism is one of the realities of the twentieth century which we will not overcome by pre tending that it docs not exist. The political lcvcl__iruhis..J:oun try now, on the part of peopl e who should know bener, is abysmal, The Bible says somewhere that where there is no vision the people perish. I don't think anyone can doubt that in this country today we arc menaced-intolerably menaced-by a lack of vision. It is inconceivable that a sovereign people should continue, as we do so abjectly, to say, "I can't do anything about it. It's the government." The g_o_vcrnmcnt is the creation of the people. It is responsible to the people. And the pcopk__ arc A TALK TO TEACHERS 685 responsible fo r it. No American has the right to allow the present government to say, when Negro children are being bombed and hosed and shot and beaten all over the deep South, that there is nothing we can do about it. There must have been a day in this country's life when the bombing of four children in Sunday School would have created a public uproar and endangered the life of a Governor Wallace. It hap pened here and there was no public uproar. I began by sayi ng that one of the paradoxes of education was that pre�iscly at thc__l1Qint when you begin to develop a conscience, you must find yourself at war with your soci� . !)'_, It is your responsibility to change society ifyou think of your self a,��n educated Qf_�Q.l1.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The black community recognized this energy almost at once and flowed toward it and supported it; a people's most valuable asset is the well-being of their young. Nothing more thoroughly reveals the actual intentions of this country, do mestically and globally, than the ferocity of the repression, the storm of fire and blood which the Panthers have been forced to undergo merely for declaring themselves as men-men who want "land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace." The Panthers thus became the native Vietcong, the ghetto became the village in which the Vietcong were hidden, and in the ensuing search-and-destroy operations, everyone in the village became suspect. Under such circumstances, the creation of a new people may seem as unlikely as fashioning the proverbial bricks with out straw. On the other hand, though no one appears to learn very much fr om history, the rulers of empires assuredly learn the least. This unhappy failing will prove to be especially ag gravated in the case of the American rulers, who have never heard of history and who have never read it, who do not know what the passion of a people can withstand or what it can accomplish, or how fatal is the moment, for the kingdom, when the passion is driven underground. They do not, for that matter, yet realize that they have already been forced to TO BE BAPTIZED 457 do two deadly things. They have been forced to reveal their motives, themselves, in all their unattractive nakedness; hence the reaction of the blacks, on every level, to the "Nixon Ad ministration," which is of a stunning, unprecedented unanim ity. The administration, increasingly, can rule only by fear: the fears of the people who elected them, and the fear that the administration can inspire. In spite of the tear gas, mace, clubs, helicopters, bugged installations, spies, provocateurs, tanks, machine guns, prisons, and detention centers, this is a shaky foundation. And they have helped to create a new pan theon of black heroes. Black babies will be born with new names hereafter and will have a standard to which to aspire new in this country, new in the world. The great question is what this will cost. The great effort is to minimize the dam age. While I was on the Coast, Eldridge Cleaver and Bobby Scale and David Hilliard were still free, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were still alive. Now, every day brings a new set back, fr equently a bloody one.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  I knew that these people were Jews-God knows I was told it often enough-but I thought of them only as white. Jews, as such, until I got to high school, were all incarcerated in the Old Testament, and their names were Abraham, Moses, Daniel, Ezekiel, and Job, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. It was bewildering to find them so many miles and centuries out of Egypt, and so fa r fr om the fiery fu rnace. My best friend in high school was a Jew. He came to our house once, and afterward my fa ther asked, as he asked about everyone, "Is he a Christian?"-by which he meant "Is he saved?" I really do not know whether my answer came out of innocence or venom, but I said coldly, "No. He's Jewish." My fa ther slammed me across the face with his great palm, and in that moment everything flooded back-all the hatred and all the fe ar, and the depth of a merciless resolve to kill my fa ther rather than allow my fa ther to kill me-and I knew that all those sermons and tears and all that repentance and rejoicing had changed nothing. I wondered if I was ex pected to be glad that a fr iend of mine, or anyone, was to be tormented fo rever in Hell, and I also thought, suddenly, of the Jews in another Christian nation, Germany. They were not so fa r from the fiery fu rnace after all, and my best friend might have been one of them. I told my fa ther, "He's a better Chris tian than you arc," and walked out of the house. The battle between us was in the open, but that was all right; it was almost a relief. A more deadly struggle had begun. Being in the pulpit was like being in the theatre; I was be hind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked. I knew the other ministers and knew the quality of their lives. And I don't mean to suggest by this the "Elmer Gantry" sort of hypocrisy concerning sensuality; it was a deeper, deadlier, and more subtle hypocrisy than that, and a little honest sensuality, or a lot, would have been like water in an extremely bitter DOWN AT THE CROSS 3 0 9 desert. I knew how to work on a congregation until the last dime was surrendered-it was not very hard to do--and I knew where the money for "the Lord's work" went. I knew, though I did not wish to know it, that I had no respect for the people with whom I worked. I could not have said it then, but I also knew that if I continued I would soon have no respect for myself. And the fa ct that I was "the young Brother Baldwin" increased my value with those same pimps and rack eteers who had helped to stampede me into the church in the first place.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Because she was facing capital murder charges and a potential death sentence, she made a deal to accept a prison sentence of twenty years. Law enforcement officials refused to investigate her claims of innocence prior to sending her to prison. We won her freedom after establishing that she had had a tubal ligation five years prior to her arrest, which made it biologically impossible for her to conceive, let alone give birth to, a child. In addition to unexplained deaths of infants parented by poor women, other kinds of “bad parenting” have also been criminalized. In 2006, Alabama passed a law that made it a felony to expose a child to a “dangerous environment” in which the child could encounter drugs. This “child chemical endangerment statute” was ostensibly passed to protect children living in households where there were meth labs or drug-trafficking operations. But the law was applied much more broadly, and soon thousands of mothers with children living in poor, marginalized communities where drugs and drug addiction are rampant were at risk of prosecution. In time, the Alabama Supreme Court interpreted the term environment to include the womb and the term child to include a fetus. Pregnant women could now be criminally prosecuted and sent to prison for decades if there was any evidence that they had used drugs at any point during their pregnancy. Dozens of women have been sent to prison under this law in recent years, rather than getting the help they needed. The hysteria surrounding bad mothers made a fair trial for Marsha Colbey very difficult. During jury selection, numerous jurors announced that they could not be impartial toward Mrs. Colbey. Some jurors indicated that they found allegations of killing a child so disturbing that they could not honor the presumption of innocence. Several revealed that they had such a close relationship with one of the state investigators—a key State witness who had been especially vocal about identifying bad mothers—that they would give him “instant credibility” and would “believe everything [he] said was credible.” Another juror admitted trusting law enforcement witnesses he knew to the point where he would “believe anything they say.” The trial court allowed almost all of these jurors to remain on the jury panel despite defense objections. Ultimately, a jury who brought many presumptions and biases to the trial of Marsha Colbey was selected to decide her fate. The jury returned a verdict of guilty on one count of capital murder. Prior to rendering a verdict, jurors expressed concerns about Mrs. Colbey being subject to the death penalty, so the State agreed not to pursue an execution if she was found guilty. This concession yielded an immediate conviction. The trial court sentenced Mrs. Colbey to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and a short while later she found herself shackled in a prison van heading to the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, Vengeance consists in the infliction of a penal evil on one who has sinned. Accordingly, in the matter of vengeance, we must consider the mind of the avenger. For if his intention is directed chiefly to the evil of the person on whom he takes vengeance and rests there, then his vengeance is altogether unlawful: because to take pleasure in another’s evil belongs to hatred, which is contrary to the charity whereby we are bound to love all men. Nor is it an excuse that he intends the evil of one who has unjustly inflicted evil on him, as neither is a man excused for hating one that hates him: for a man may not sin against another just because the latter has already sinned against him, since this is to be overcome by evil, which was forbidden by the Apostle, who says (Rom. 12:21): “Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil by good.” If, however, the avenger’s intention be directed chiefly to some good, to be obtained by means of the punishment of the person who has sinned (for instance that the sinner may amend, or at least that he may be restrained and others be not disturbed, that justice may be upheld, and God honored), then vengeance may be lawful, provided other due circumstances be observed. Reply to Objection 1: He who takes vengeance on the wicked in keeping with his rank and position does not usurp what belongs to God but makes use of the power granted him by God. For it is written (Rom. 13:4) of the earthly prince that “he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” If, however, a man takes vengeance outside the order of divine appointment, he usurps what is God’s and therefore sins. Reply to Objection 2: The good bear with the wicked by enduring patiently, and in due manner, the wrongs they themselves receive from them: but they do not bear with them as to endure the wrongs they inflict on God and their neighbor. For Chrysostom [*Cf. Opus Imperfectum, Hom. v in Matth., falsely ascribed to St. Chrysostom] says: “It is praiseworthy to be patient under our own wrongs, but to overlook God’s wrongs is most wicked.” Reply to Objection 3: The law of the Gospel is the law of love, and therefore those who do good out of love, and who alone properly belong to the Gospel, ought not to be terrorized by means of punishment, but only those who are not moved by love to do good, and who, though they belong to the Church outwardly, do not belong to it in merit.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Thou presumest and thinkest, thou trifling boy, thou Varlet, and without all reverence, that thou art most worthy and excellent, and that I am not able by reason of myne age to have another son, which if I should have, thou shouldst well understand that I would beare a more worthier than thou. But to worke thee a greater despight, I do determine to adopt one of my servants, and to give him these wings, this fire, this bow, and these Arrowes, and all other furniture which I gave to thee, not to this purpose, neither is any thing given thee of thy father for this intent: but first thou hast been evill brought up and instructed in thy youth thou hast thy hands ready and sharpe. Thou hast often offended thy antients, and especially me that am thy mother, thou hast pierced mee with thy darts thou contemnest me as a widow, neither dost thou regard thy valiant and invincible father, and to anger me more, thou art amorous of harlots and wenches: hot I will cause that thou shalt shortly repent thee, and that this marriage shal be dearely bought. To what a point am I now driven? What shall I do? Whither shall I goe? How shall I represse this beast? Shall I aske ayd of myne enemy Sobriety, whom I have often offended to engender thee? Or shall I seeke for counsel of every poore rusticall woman? No, no, yet had I rather dye, howbeit I will not cease my vengeance, to her must I have recourse for helpe, and to none other (I meane to Sobriety), who may correct thee sharpely, take away thy quiver, deprive thee of thy arrowes, unbend thy bow, quench thy fire, and which is more subdue thy body with punishment: and when that I have rased and cut off this thy haire, which I have dressed with myne owne hands, and made to glitter like gold, and when I have clipped thy wings, which I my selfe have caused to burgen, then shall I thinke to have revenged my selfe sufficiently upon thee for the injury which thou hast done. When shee had spoken these words shee departed in a great rage out of her chamber.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  Darnell said he told Walter’s former lawyers what he told me and they had raised it in the motion for a new trial, but no one took it seriously. In capital cases, a motion for a new trial is routinely filed but rarely granted. But if the defendant alleges new evidence that could lead to a different outcome in the case—or that undermines the reliability of the trial—there is typically a hearing. After speaking with Darnell, I thought about refiling his assertions before the case went up on appeal and maybe, just maybe, we could persuade local officials to retreat from the case against Walter. I made a motion to reconsider the denial of a new trial for Mr. McMillian. I immediately got an affidavit from Darnell stating that Hooks’s testimony was a lie. I took the risk of talking to a few local lawyers about whether the new prosecutor might acknowledge that the conviction was unreliable and support a new trial if there was compelling new evidence. Several people had suggested that Tom Chapman, the new Monroe County district attorney and a former criminal defense attorney, would be fairer and more sympathetic to someone wrongly convicted than lifelong prosecutor Ted Pearson. After Pearson’s long tenure as D.A., Chapman’s election represented something of a new era. He was in his forties and had talked about modernizing law enforcement in the region. Some said that he was ambitious and might want to run for statewide office someday. I also discovered that he had represented Karen Kelly in a prior proceeding, which told me that he was already familiar with the case. I was hopeful. I was still sorting out how to proceed when Darnell called me at my office. “Mr. Stevenson, you have to help. They arrested me this morning and took me to the jail. I just got out on bond.” “What?” “I asked them what I had done. They told me I was being charged with perjury.” He sounded terrified. “Perjury? Based on what you told Mr. McMillian’s lawyers a year ago? Have they come to interview you or talk to you since we got your statement? You were supposed to let me know if you heard from them.” “No, sir. I haven’t heard from any of them. They just came and arrested me and told me I had been indicted for perjury.” I hung up with Darnell, shocked and furious. It was unheard of to indict someone for perjury without any investigation or compelling evidence to establish that a false statement had been made.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: The passion of anger, like all other movements of the sensitive appetite, is useful, as being conducive to the more prompt execution [*Cf. [3582]FS, Q[24], A[3]] of reason’s dictate: else, the sensitive appetite in man would be to no purpose, whereas “nature does nothing without purpose” [*Aristotle, De Coelo i, 4]. Reply to Objection 3: When a man acts inordinately, the judgment of his reason is cause not only of the simple movement of the will but also of the passion in the sensitive appetite, as stated above. Wherefore just as the removal of the effect is a sign that the cause is removed, so the lack of anger is a sign that the judgment of reason is lacking. OF CRUELTY (TWO ARTICLES)We must now consider cruelty, under which head there are two points of inquiry: (1) Whether cruelty is opposed to clemency? (2) Of its comparison with savagery or brutality. Whether cruelty is opposed to clemency?Objection 1: It would seem that cruelty is not opposed to clemency. For Seneca says (De Clementia ii, 4) that “those are said to be cruel who exceed in punishing,” which is contrary to justice. Now clemency is reckoned a part, not of justice but of temperance. Therefore apparently cruelty is not opposed to clemency. Objection 2: Further, it is written (Jer. 6:23): “They are cruel, and will have no mercy”; so that cruelty would seem opposed to mercy. Now mercy is not the same as clemency, as stated above ([3583]Q[157], A[4], ad 3). Therefore cruelty is not opposed to clemency. Objection 3: Further, clemency is concerned with the infliction of punishment, as stated above ([3584]Q[157], A[1]): whereas cruelty applies to the withdrawal of beneficence, according to Prov. 11:17, “But he that is cruel casteth off even his own kindred.” Therefore cruelty is not opposed to clemency. On the contrary, Seneca says (De Clementia ii, 4) that “the opposite of clemency is cruelty, which is nothing else but hardness of heart in exacting punishment.” I answer that, Cruelty apparently takes its name from “cruditas” [rawness]. Now just as things when cooked and prepared are wont to have an agreeable and sweet savor, so when raw they have a disagreeable and bitter taste. Now it has been stated above ([3585]Q[157], A[3], ad 1; A[4], ad 3) that clemency denotes a certain smoothness or sweetness of soul, whereby one is inclined to mitigate punishment. Hence cruelty is directly opposed to clemency. Reply to Objection 1: Just as it belongs to equity to mitigate punishment according to reason, while the sweetness of soul which inclines one to this belongs to clemency: so too, excess in punishing, as regards the external action, belongs to injustice; but as regards the hardness of heart, which makes one ready to increase punishment, belongs to cruelty.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  Not a soul seemed to notice; apparently it happened every day. I was pushed into the doorway of a drugstore, and frisked, made to empty my pockets, made to roll up my sleeves, asked what I was doing around here-"around here" being the city in which I was born. I am an old hand at th is-p olicemen have always loved to pick me up and, sometimes, to beat me up-so I said nothing during this entire operation. I was worried about my friend, who might fail to understand the warmth of his reception in the land of the free; worried about his command of English, especially when confronted by the somewhat special brand used by the police. Neither of us carried knives or guns, nei ther of us used dope: so much for the criminal aspect. Fur thermore, my friend was a married man, with two children, here on a perfectly respectable visit, and he had not even come from some dirty and disreputable place, like Greece, but from geometric and solvent Switzerland: so much for morals. I was not exactly a bum, either, so I wondered what the cop would say. NO THING PER SON AL 697 He seemed extremely disappointed that I carried no weap ons, that my veins were not punctured-disappointed, and, therefore, more truculent than ever. I conveyed to him with some force that I was not precisely helpless and that I was perfectly able, and more than willing, to cause him a great deal of trouble. Why, exa ctly, had he picked us up? He was now confused, afraid, and apologetic, which caused me to despise him from the bottom of my heart. He said how many times have I heard it!- that there had been a call out to pick up two guys who looked just like us. White and black, you mean? Apart from my friends, I think I can name on the fingers of one hand all the Americans I have ever met who were able to answer a direct question, a real question: well, not exactly. Hell, no. He hadn't even known that the other guy was white. (H e thought that he was Puerto Rican, which says something very interesting, I think, about the eye of the beholder-like, as it were, to lik e.) Nevertheless, he was in a box-it was not going to be a simple matter of apologizing and letting me go. Unle ss he was able to find his friend and my friend, I was going to force him to arrest me and then bring charges for false arrest. So, not without dif ficulty, we found my friend, who had been released and was waiting in the bar around the corner from our house. He, also, had baffled his interlocutor; had baffled him by turning out to be exa ctly what he had said he was, which contains its own comment, I think, concerning the at titudes Americans have toward each other.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. Finally, the mandate of this body is not merely goodwill, not merely paper resolutions. If one believes in the Prince of Peace one must stop committing crimes in the name of the Prince of Peace. The Christian Church still rules this world, it still has the power, to change the structure of South Mrica. It has the power, if it will, to prevent the death of another Martin Luther King junior. It has the power, if it will, to force my Government to cease dropping bombs in South-East Asia. These are crimes committed in the name of the Christian Church, and no more than we have absolved the Germans for saying "I didn't know it," "I didn't know what it was about," "I knew of people having been taken away in the night, but it has nothing to do with me." We were very hard on the Germans about that. But Germany is also a Christian nation, and what the Germans did in the Second World War, since they arc human and we are human too, there is no guarantee that we are not doing that, right now. When a structure, a State or a Church or a country, becomes too expensive for the world to afford, when it is no longer responsive to the needs of the world, that structure is doomed. If the Christian faith does not recover its Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we shall discover the meaning of what he meant when he said, "Insofar as have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me." Address to the World Council of Churches, July 7, 1968 Sweet Lorraine T HAT's the way I always felt about her, and so I won't apologize for calling her that now. She understood it: in that far too brief a time when we walked and talked and laughed and drank together, sometimes in the streets and bars and restaurants of the Village, sometimes at her house, some times at my house, sometimes gracelessly fleeing the houses of others; and sometimes seeming, for anyone who didn't know us, to be having a knock-down, drag-out battle. We spent a lot of time arguing about history and tremendously related subjects in her Bleecker Street and, later, Waverly Place flats. And often, just when I was certain that she was about to throw me out, as being altogether too rowdy a type, she would stand up, her hands on her hips (for these down-home sessions she always wore slacks), and pick up my empty glass as though she intended to throw it at me. Then she would walk into the kitchen, saying, with a haughty toss of her head, "Really, Jimmy.