How would you like to be accused of a crime and then be disenfranchised because of your race? Well this is what happened to Mark Charles Parker because he allegedly raped June Walters a pregnant white woman on February 23 1959. In Howard Smead’s historical nonfiction book Blood Justice he describes one of the most important investigations of a racist, motivated crime in the history of the United States.
Blood Justice is about the killing of Mark Charles Parker and the investigation after his death. Mark Charles Parker was accused of the rape of June Walters which
Occurred on March 1, 1959. R. Jess Brown a well-known African American lawyer represented Parker. On April 13th an all white grand jury indited Parker for rape and two counts of kidnapping. On April 17th Parker pleaded not guilty to each charge. Next Parker’s trial date was set for April 27th. Then Brown asked Judge Sebe Dale’s to drop the case because a black man was not on the grand jury. Brown did this because of a recent ruling made by the 5th U.S. circuit court of Appeals. The ruling stated that it was unconstitutional for a jury of an all white people to convict a black man. The ruling went on to say that one African American had to be on a jury when an African American was on trial. This defense tactic by Brown was a legally intelligent thing to do but this actually became the motive for the mob to kill Parker.
On Friday April 24th J.P. Walker, Preacher Lee, Crip Reyer and L.C. Davis got into Reyer’s Oldsmobile and they took off on a mission to kill Mark Charles Parker. (3 other cars of men followed) They went to the courthouse/jail in Poplarville and they could not get in. So they went to Jewel Alford’s House (The jail keeper) to get the keys to the Jail. Alford went with the four men to the courthouse. When he got there he went in and down the hall to Sheriff Moody’s office and got the keys to the jail. He opened the door to the jail and Lee, Reyer, Davis, Walker followed Alford into the jail. Alford then opened Parkers cell and Lee and Davis pulled Parker out of the jail and courthouse to the Reyer's Oldsmobile. Alford then left and the men got into the car.
The Oldsmobile sped away and the other cars followed.
- on June 23, Williams was driving when a heavy car came up from behind him and tried to force his car off the embankment and over a cliff with a 75 ft. drop off. The bumpers of the two cars were stuck and the cars had to pass right by a highway patrol station, which was a 35 mile and hour zone, but the car was pushing his at 70 miles per hour. Williams started blowing his horn hoping to attract the attention of the patrolmen, but when they saw they just lifted their hands and laughed. He was finally able to rock loose from the other car’s bumper and make a sharp turn into a ditch. He went to the police about it, but they would not do anything because he was black. The police in Monroe never did anything to help blacks
In a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Batson. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids the prosecutor from challenging potential jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable to consider the state’s case ag...
Outside the courthouse in Newton, Georgia, in the early hours of January 30, 1943, Robert “Bobby” Hall was beaten unconscious by M. Claude Screws, Frank Edward Jones, and Jim Bob Kelley[1] while in their custody for the alleged theft of a tire;[2] Screws, Jones and Kelley were, respectively, Baker county sheriff, night policeman, and a civilian deputized specifically for the arrest.[3] Without ever recovering consciousness, Hall died as a result of a fractured skull shortly after his arrival at an Albany hospital that morning.[4] The NAACP and FBI investigated Hall’s death in the following months and federal charges were brought against Screws, Jones, and Kelley for violation of Section 20 of the Federal Criminal Code, which stipulates that no person may “under color of any law … willfully” deprive a person of “any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States.”[5] After being found guilty in the lower courts, the defendants brought their case to the Supreme Court on appeal, alleging that they had violated a state rather than federal law and, consequently, could not be held liable under Section 20. The Supreme Court’s central concern in Screws et al. v. United States was to interpret the intent and breadth of Section 20 in order to judge its constitutionality; in doing so, the Court struggled to reach a consensus regarding the definition of state action and the indefinite nature of the rights protected by the statute. Such consensus proved difficult, indeed, as the case was narrowly decided and divided the Court along deep constitutional lines; while a majority of the Court advocated reversal of the lower co...
“Dracula, in one aspect, is a novel about the types of Victorian women and the representation of them in Victorian English society” (Humphrey). Through Mina, Lucy and the daughters of Dracula, Stoker symbolizes three different types of woman: the pure, the tempted and the impure. “Although Mina and Lucy possess similar qualities there is striking difference between the two” (Humphrey). Mina is the ideal 19th century Victorian woman; she is chaste, loyal and intelligent. On the other hand, Lucy’s ideal Victorian characteristics began to fade as she transformed from human to vampire and eventually those characteristics disappeared altogether. Lucy no longer embodied the Victorian woman and instead, “the swe...
The case started in Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school seven blocks from her house, but the principal of the school refused simply because the child was black. Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help (All Deliberate Speed pg 23). The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wanted to challenge segregation in public schools. The NAACP was looking for a case like this because they figured if they could just expose what had really been going on in "separate but equal society" that the circumstances really were not separate but equal, bur really much more disadvantaged to the colored people, that everything would be changed. The NAACP was hoping that if they could just prove this to society that the case would uplift most of the separate but equal facilities. The hopes of this case were for much more than just the school system, the colored people wanted to get this case to the top to abolish separate but equal.
Bryan Stevenson has the same focus in the nonfiction memoir Just Mercy. He uses the pages of his memoir to tell the story of an innocent black man, in Monroeville Alabama who is falsely convicted of killing an 18-year-old, white, female, college student. In this story the year is 1980, but the racial divide still runs deep.
Dracula accentuates the lust for sexuality through the main characters by contrasting it with the fears of the feminine sexuality during the Victorian period. In Victorian society, according to Dr.William Acton, a doctor during the Victorian period argued that a woman was either labelled as innocent and pure, or a wife and mother. If a woman was unable to fit in these precincts, consequently as a result she would be disdained and unfit for society and be classified as a whore (Acton, 180). The categorizing of woman is projected through the “uses the characters of Lucy and Mina as examples of the Victorian ideal of a proper woman, and the “weird sisters” as an example of women who are as bold as to ignore cultural boundaries of sexuality and societal constraints” according to Andrew Crockett from the UC Santa Barbara department of English (Andrew Cro...
The legal system of the colonial times renounced from punishing white males but did not falter from finding accountability with the actions of females, causing women to pause at reporting rape against white men. Two famed cases in history, those of Martha Richardson and Goodwife Fancy, represent this perception. Martha Richardson had gotten pregnant before her wedding with a man other than her fiancé. Upon this disclosure, Martha recalled fainting at her master's residence some time ago in the company of two white males and concl...
Victorian England, as depicted in Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a much different time then the world that we live in today, this much should be obvious. The biggest difference, perhaps, is the one that is seen through the gender roles expressed in the novel. In Victorian England women were expected to maintain their chastity, at least until marriage or they would be shunned from society, or looked down upon. Once married they had “womanly duties” that were expected of them, duties that depended on them taking care of the home sphere of Victorian life. As could be imagined, men were expected to be chivalrous, “knights in shining armor,” who provided and protected for their families. But I feel as if in Dracula, the main characters experience a
In William Shakespeare's play, Macbeth, the three witches have been presented as powerful and ugly. Whereas the three sisters in Bram Stoker's epistolary, Dracula, are viewed as being powerful (which is similar to Macbeth) and beautiful (which is different to Macbeth).
There is a slight gap that continues to increase as time progresses and creates this gap that is present in this book between genders. Women: “…are weak but good, and men are strong but less good”. (Acocella 20) Men are seen to be superior and women are seen to have their morals in check. In fact, critics believe that Stoker is afraid of the New Woman. In Dracula, Mina is the new woman. Van Helsing states, “She has man's brain--a brain that a man should have were he much gifted--and woman's heart. The good God fashioned her for a purpose, believe me when He made that so good combination” (Stoker 373). Mina, is much more intelligent than any average woman and could be a match for a man. She has enough capability to have the same if not better strength and knowledge as a man. Unfortunately, this could not be a view of Stoker’s, it is merely a reflection of society and the gender differentiation. Differences between the sexes have been going for centuries. Throughout the book Mina is growing into a greater woman. As the author of the book, Stoker would not have written that portion if he did not agree with the equality in the gender
Sexuality is both prevalent in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, and in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film version of Dracula. However, they are both portrayed in different ways. In the novel version of Dracula, the Count is shown as someone who is unable to love. He is also portrayed as someone who is physically ugly. Coppola’s film version of Dracula veered away from the norm of the book and turned Dracula into someone that is very sexual and able to love. The thought process behind Coppola’s decision could have something to do with making money, since sex sells. Sexuality will be compared in Stoker’s novel Dracula to Francis Ford Coppola’s film version of Dracula.
Stoker suggests otherwise in Dracula, however. Stoker could have also established a female savior, and Lucy’s sister figure, Mina, would have been the perfect candidate. Like Lizzie in “The Goblin Market,” Mina is an individual whom Van Helsing praised as “So true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egotist” —a mirror of femininity (Stoker 226). But, in Dracula, it is the masculine force and scientific intelligence which overcame the fallen woman in Lucy. Stoker portrays the group of four men, led by Dr. Van Helsing, as mighty soldiers of modernity and religion. As Van Helsing asserted, “[they] have on [their] side… resources of science,” “a power denied to the vampire kind” (Stoker 276). Dracula is evidently a male-centered world, where redemption of fallen outcast requires bravery, self-reliance, and intelligence — all of which are Victorian ideals of men — and such task is “no part for a woman” (Stoker 274). Therefore, Mina, despite her competence of being both virtuous and accredited for having a “man’s brain,” is excluded from the role of a heroic savior (Stoker
This is a reflection on the Victorian life, when women were unequal to men, and people valued the sight of a women’s weakness. Mina Harker; Jonathan Harker’s wife, helps develop such truth in the novel by her lack of advancement in herself and more preferably success in the service’s of men. She is the Ideal Victorian women Intelligent and Innocent. Mina surrounds her life with her husband, as most Victorian women do. She even memorized the train schedules to be handy to Jonathan in case he was ever in a hurry or emergency. Mina makes every effort to aid to Jonathan and to be a good women demonstrating Victorian values. Jonathan is Mina’s top concern as she is always thinking of what she could do to be of more use to Jonathan. We note that she almost never speaks of her personal goals or wishes or does anything for her own fulfillment other than marrying and being useful to Jonathan. Interestingly enough, Mina physical description is never given at any point in the novel because Mina stays a mystery in a manner that she always will endure her purity and not act on any sexual desires and impulses. This evidently shows how women of the Victorian period have much the same as Mina have been valued for the weakness. Mina is valued for her weakness as a result of the time period. Her weakness being that she is the perfect ideal Victorian women, intelligent, diligent, virtuous, motherly, nurturing, conservative and reserved; all of these being in services to others. Valuing bravery among men during the Victorian Period was a considerable major component even in the novel Dracula. For instance when Dr. Van Helsing, the Dutch professor; Jonathan, the solicitor or lawyer, John Seward, a talented young doctor once Dr. Van Helsing’s pupil; Arthur Holmwood, Lucy’s Fianceé, Quincey Morris, a plainspoken American from Texas and Mina Harker have finally collected all the necessary
Mina Murray was engaged to Jonathan Harker and when Dracula kept him prisoner, the Count wrote letters to Harker’s boss and pretended to be Jonathan and to inform his boss and his fiancé that things were going good with his business trip. The Count was giving Mina and Jonathan’s boss false hope and keeping Harker prisoner at his castle. Dracula would even dress up in Harker’s clothes and mail the letters so it would not arise any suspicion. The Count seemed to only focus on turning women into vampires and he used the men to lure the women into his trap. Therefore, that is why he was keeping Jonathan alive. Everything Dracula did was made with lots of forethought. Such as when Lucy a young woman who also was a friend of Mina was mysteriously getting ill and sleep-walking during the night no one knew what was happening to Lucy because she would get sicker after they discovered she was sleepwalking. Lucy was sleep walking because she had gotten bite by Dracula and every night he called to her so he could feed off her again. He also made sure she was alone and waited a few days before attempting to suck her blood again. Although, Dracula was a smart man in his cunning actions he could not hide the fact that something evil was