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Justice For Willie James

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By MARVIN DUNN

Published: November 18, 2007

The lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy in Mississippi in August 1955, riled black America as nothing had done before. But what happened to him in Mississippi had already happened to a black child in Florida a decade earlier, and there was no national outcry for justice.

Willie James Howard was born on July 13, 1928, in Live Oak. By the time he was in the 10th grade, he worked at the Van Priest Five and Dime Store downtown. On Christmas 1943, he sent Christmas cards to the other employees of the store, including one to Cynthia Goff, a popular and pretty white girl he later learned was upset about receiving the card.

Howard wrote the girl a letter of apology. Somehow the girl's father, Alexander P. Goff, a former state legislator, saw the letter. Enraged, he drove to the Howard home with two white companions, Reginald H. Scott and Seldon B. McCullers, the day after New Year's.

The boy's mother, Lula Howard, gave a sworn statement to David Lanier, the special investigator appointed by Gov. Spessard L. Holland to prepare a "quiet report," telling him the men used a gun to abduct the terrified boy, literally snatching him from his screaming mother's arms. They then drove to the father's place of employment, a lumber company, and put him in the car.

The car headed to the Suwannee River, about eight miles out of town. Goff would later admit in writing that he tied the boy's hands and feet on the way to the river. According to the father's sworn statement in the Lanier Report, upon reaching the high bank of the Suwannee they exited the car. Goff put his revolver to the child's head and told him to jump, which he did. He drowned.

The men drove the father, James Howard, back to the lumberyard where he was told to finish his shift as though nothing had happened. All he told his wife, Lula, was that Willie James wasn't coming home. It was several days before he told her what had happened to their son.

The Suwannee County sheriff, Tom Henry, a white man, ordered Ansel Brown, the local black undertaker, to retrieve the boy's body from the river and bury it immediately. No death certificate was ordered. The child's grave was unmarked for more than 60 years.

According to their written statement which was included in the Lanier Report, the three white men admitted taking the boy from his home and tying him up on the way to the river. They said he fell in accidentally. They were never arrested.

James and Lula Howard moved to Orlando within days of the murder. Willie James was their only child. James Howard died within a few years of the lynching, but Lula lived until 2004. According to her sister, Mamie Perry of Orlando, Lula never recovered.

A black attorney visiting Live Oak for Christmas heard of the lynching and wrote to Thurgood Marshall, then lead attorney for the national NAACP in New York. Because of external pressure, the governor appointed a special prosecutor who wrote that the men were guilty of first-degree murder if they were guilty of anything.

But the governor did nothing.

Because of pressure from the NAACP, the father appeared before the Suwannee County grand jury for its spring term in 1944. James Howard was asked only two questions by the all-white panel: "How old was the boy?" and "Did he deliver the letter in person?" The Howards never heard back from the grand jury, which refused to call any other witnesses and refused to indict the men.

In 2005, Douglas Udell, a black undertaker and sitting Suwannee County commissioner, paid for a headstone for Howard's grave and led a memorial service for him.

All three killers are dead and buried in the Live Oak Cemetery. They never had to answer for their crime.

This case presents two moral questions: If a person in Florida commits murder and dies before being caught, does he get a free ride into eternity? And, if the state knowingly helps a killer to escape justice, does the state get a free ride into eternity as well?

Over a year ago I petitioned the Florida attorney general to reopen the Howard case or at least to publicly identify his killers even though they are dead.

Although he has received hundreds of e-mails and letters from white and black Floridians asking him to reopen the case, Attorney General William McCollum has not responded.

Floridians, particularly African-Americans, should be outraged. In his silence, McCollum continues a sad tradition in Florida's inglorious racial history: protect the good ol' boys, even after they are dead.

Marvin Dunn retired from Florida International University in 2006 after 34 years as a professor in psychology. He is the author of "Black Miami in the Twentieth Century" and the co-author of "The Miami Riot of 1980: Crossing the Bounds." He is currently c

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