Settling Scores

Murder in black and white

Three-quarters of Tchula, Miss. (pop. 1,900), is black, and the town was proud five years ago when the first black mayor took office. Eddie Carthan's election was seen as a triumph of fair play after decades of rigged politics. But things did not turn out so simply. Last year Carthan, 33, was convicted of assaulting a policeman and forced to leave office. Now he is on trial again, accused of arranging the murder of his principal black political opponent in town. Carthan says he has been framed by the white Establishment of Tchula and Holmes County, and his case has become a cause celebre.

When Carthan was elected mayor, four other blacks were elected to the five-member board of aldermen. With the support of three of them, Carthan embarked on an ambitious agenda, building a day care center and public housing. The anti-Carthan aldermen were Roosevelt Granderson, a grocery store clerk, and John Edgar Hays, a white cotton farmer. In 1978, one of Carthan's bloc resigned. He was replaced by another black, an ally of Granderson and Hays. The political balance shifted, and acrimony intensified.

In 1980, Carthan chose a black to be chief of police. The aldermen chose a white. Carthan and six companions went to the tiny police station and confronted the aldermen's chief. There was a melee. Carthan and his accomplices were convicted of assault and given three-year jail sentences; all but Carthan's were suspended. (He began serving his term last summer.) The mayor was required to resign, and Granderson was appointed in his place. Tchula's elections in June 1981 were a last, unequivocal rejection of Carthan's fitful reign: his two supporters on the board of aldermen were defeated, and his white predecessor as mayor was returned to office.

Three weeks later Vincent Bolden and David Hester, cousins from East St. Louis, robbed the grocery store where Granderson worked of $5,000, hustled him to a back room and shot him dead. According to prosecutors, Bolden and Hester were hitmen, contracted by the vengeful ex-mayor to assassinate Granderson for $10,000. Defense attorneys say that a drug dispute may have been the motive: Hester, an admitted dealer, testified that he once sold Granderson cocaine worth $200,000.

Bolden, 30, struck a deal with the prosecutors: in return for pleading guilty to murder and testifying that Carthan hired him, he was offered the likelihood of only eight years in prison instead of a possible death sentence. He took the stand last Wednesday in the murder trial of Carthan, but much of his testimony was ruled inadmissible as hearsay, since Hester alone had made all the alleged arrangements with Carthan. The next day a new plea bargain was struck, this one with Hester: for testifying that he and Bolden had killed Granderson on Carthan's orders and for pleading guilty to felonious assault, he would not be prosecuted for murder.

Carthan's legal squad, which calls its first witness this week, is being furnished by the Washington-based Christie Institute, a liberal public-interest law firm, and by the World Council of Churches. Over the past year Carthan (whose $115,000 bail was put up by local black farmers) has spoken at fund raisers in Eddie Carthan 66 cities, sometimes appearing with celebrated Black Actor Ossie Davis.

Carthan says he is the target of a "racist conspiracy" determined to eliminate "a black man who refuses to be their little boy, who will not bow down to the racist system." The jury of twelve blacks is to decide simply if he was part of a murder.

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