Let The Circle Be Unbroken

One day at school, the students get the news that TJ is going to stand trial for murder. The trial date has been set for December 10, and Stacey wants to attend because he feels guilty for not talking TJ out of the burglary. That evening as she walks home, Cassie recalls the night of the murder. A group of angry white men wanted to lynch TJ on the spot until they noticed a field on fire. Though it was on the Logan property, they feared that it might spread to the adjacent white Granger plantation. Instead of lynching TJ, they helped contain the blaze. No one knew that Cassie’s father had started the fire to distract the lynching party. He lost a quarter of his crops but saved a boy’s life.

That evening, the Logans receive a visit from white attorney Wade Jamison. He is on good terms with the family, but his defense of TJ has angered the white community. Jamison has had his office burned, his dog poisoned, and he and his wife have received death threats. He has come to discuss some of the testimony that will be given at trial. Jamison says that the judge won’t be sympathetic, but he can appeal the case if TJ is found guilty. He also discourages any of the family from attending the proceedings because it might provoke a hostile reaction.

In the days that follow, everyone in the neighborhood is tense. Cassie says, “I was worried about Stacey too. I knew that he was upset not only because of what was happening to TJ but because Mama and Papa were not allowing him to go to the trial” (42-43). On the way to school on the morning of the trial, Cassie overhears her brother and his friends planning to catch a ride to the courthouse in Strawberry, which is 22 miles away. She tries to talk her brother out of going but to no avail. Then, Cassie makes a plan of her own to stow away in the truck bed with her two younger brothers.

By the time Cassie and her brothers are discovered, it’s too late to send them back. When all the children arrive at the courthouse, they meet Jeremy Simms, the younger brother of TJ’s partners in crime. Unlike his older siblings, Jeremy is on friendly terms with the Logans. He tells them the trial hasn’t begun yet because it took all morning to select the jury. While they wait, Christopher-John and Little Man go into the courthouse to use the bathroom, and Cassie drinks from the water fountain in the corridor. Jeremy immediately grabs all three and hustles them outside, saying that Black people aren’t allowed to use the facilities or the water fountain. Stacey explains to his siblings that they might have been killed if anybody saw them. Shortly afterward, the children learn that the trial is about to begin.

Because the section reserved for Black spectators in the courtroom is very small and completely filled, the children climb a tree outside the courtroom window where they can hear the proceedings. The murdered man’s widow insists that three Black men entered the store, robbed it, and killed her husband. Under cross-examination, Jamison succeeds in disputing her testimony. The electric lighting in the store wasn’t working, and the widow was nearsighted and without her glasses. Jamison produces black stockings, which the two attackers wore, and the widow mistook for their skin color. Further, TJ is too short to be one of the attackers, whom she identified as being five feet 10 inches tall. The Simms brothers are exactly the right height. Even though they deny being near the store, a respectable eyewitness places their car in the vicinity shortly before the crime.

During his testimony, TJ admitted to entering the store because the Simms boys promised him a pearl-handled gun and said they would pay for it on Monday when the store opened. He slipped through an open window and let them in, but they committed the burglary and the murder. TJ only went along because he was following orders. In his summation, Jamison remarks, “We demand they follow us docilely, and if they should dare to disobey, we punish them for their disobedience [...]. TJ murdered no one. His guilt lies more in his gullibility” (81). Afterward, it only takes the jury half an hour to bring in a unanimous guilty verdict.