Monday, Oct. 12, 1936

Black Justice

Last week in a Murfreesboro, Ark. courtroom a Negro named Charles Gentry, charged with murder, sat down for trial before a jury of his peers, found himself looking into twelve faces black as his own. Before testimony began his white lawyer pleaded unsuccessfully for dismissal of the charge because a white grand jury voted his black client's indictment. Sixty-five minutes after the testimony was completed and the State had made a plea for the death penalty, the twelve Negro sawmill workers found Negro Gentry guilty of slaying Negro Jasper Evans, sentenced him to five years. No one in Murfreesboro could recall a similar case in Arkansas history.

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