A gripping saga of race and retribution in the Deep South. “Like a real-life To Kill a Mockingbird, but with even more subtlety and complexity.” —Walter Isaacson, New York Times-bestselling author
In 1945, Willie McGee, a young African-American man from Laurel, Mississippi, was sentenced to death for allegedly raping Willette Hawkins, a white housewife. At first, McGee’s case was barely noticed, until Bella Abzug, a young New York labor lawyer, was hired to oversee McGee’s defense. Together with William Patterson, the son of a slave and a devout believer in the need for revolutionary change, Abzug and a group of white Mississippi lawyers risked their lives to plead McGee’s case. After years of court battles, McGee’s supporters flooded President Harry S. Truman and the U.S. Supreme Court with clemency pleas, and famous Americans—including William Faulkner, Albert Einstein, Jessica Mitford, Paul Robeson, Norman Mailer, and Josephine Baker—spoke out on McGee’s behalf.
By the time the case ended in 1951 with McGee’s public execution in Mississippi’s infamous traveling electric chair, their movement had succeeded in convincing millions of people worldwide that McGee had been framed and that the real story involved a consensual love affair between him and Mrs. Hawkins—one that she had instigated and controlled. As Heard discovered, this controversial theory is a doorway to a tangle of secrets that spawned a legacy of confusion, misinformation, and pain that still resonates today.
Based on exhaustive documentary research—court transcripts, newspaper reports, archived papers, letters, FBI documents, and the recollections of family members on both sides—Mississippi native Alex Heard tells a moving and unforgettable story that evokes the bitter conflicts between black and white, North and South, in America.
Alex Heard is the editorial director of Outside magazine. He has worked as an editor and writer at The New York Times Magazine, Slate, Wired, and The New Republic, and is the author of Apocalypse Pretty Soon. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Table of Contents
1 The Hot Seat 1
2 A Man Wasn't Born to Live Forever 27
3 Take Your Choice 55
4 Her Jitterbug 81
5 God Don't Like Ugly 105
6 The Malady of Meddler's Itch 128
7 The Odds Against Smiling Johnny 151
8 A Rumpus of Reds 180
9 Country Girl 209
10 Communists Coming Here 233
11 A Long, Low Song 261
12 Bare-Legged Women 285
13 Sorrow Night 309
Epilogue: Whiskey in a Paper Sack 337
Acknowledgments 351
Bibliography 355
Notes 367
Index 397
What People are Saying About This
Douglas Brinkley
“A stout argument can now be made that the execution of Willie McGee in 1951 launched the civil rights movement. A stunning narrative achievement based on a bevy of new documentary evidence. Essential reading for all Americans.”
Jon Meacham
“In this gripping story of a world at once remote yet painfully familiar, Alex Heard has crafted a memorable narrative of a civil rights case that deserves a larger place in American memory.”
Walter Isaacson
“In this riveting personal journey, Alex Heard explores the political and social forces at play and then reveals the fascinating human drama underneath it all. It’s like a real-life To Kill a Mockingbird, but with even more subtlety and complexity.”
Susan Brownmiller
“The story of Willie McGee was one of the most haunting cases to come out of the forcibly segregated, violence-ridden South in its time. Alex Heard uses McGee’s story to shed light on an America we’d like to forget—a time when mob rule and lynching prevailed. A magisterial book.”
Jacob Weisberg
“The Eyes of Willie McGee re-creates a drama of race, class, crime, and politics that helped set the stage for both the McCarthy Era and the civil rights revolution. Heard’s story reads like “Radical Chic” in 1940s Mississippi. It’s a gripping, disturbing treat.”
John Grisham
“The case of Willie McGee is an enduring mystery, but there’s no doubt he was the victim of a primitive and unfair judicial system. Alex Heard’s excellent account of his life and death is tragic, sad, and very compelling.”
Mary Roach
“Alex Heard has peeled back the tarp on the American South ten long years before Rosa Parks boarded the bus. Willie McGee is the epicenter of an addictive mystery that draws you in even as it repels you. This is an extraordinary book.”
