Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism

by Mark Curriden, Leroy Phillips

Overview

In this profound and fascinating book, the authors revisit an overlooked Supreme Court decision that changed forever how justice is carried out in the United States.
In 1906, Ed Johnson was the innocent black man found guilty of the brutal rape of Nevada Taylor, a white woman, and sentenced to die in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two black lawyers, not even part of the original defense, appealed to the Supreme Court for a stay of execution, and the stay, incredibly, was granted. Frenzied with rage at the decision, locals responded by lynching Johnson, and what ensued was a breathtaking whirlwind of groundbreaking legal action whose import, Thurgood Marshall would claim, "has never been fully explained." Provocative, thorough, and gripping, Contempt of Court is a long-overdue look at events that clearly depict the peculiar and tenuous relationship between justice and the law.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385720823
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/20/2001
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.19(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Mark Curriden holds a B.A. in history from Tennessee Temple University and a J.D. from the Woodrow Wilson Law School in Atlanta. He’s a senior writer at ABA Journal and at the Texas Lawbook. He’s written for the Dallas Morning News as well as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and was the Writer in Residence at the SMU Dedman School of Law.
 
Leroy Phillips Jr. was born in Cattanooga in 1935 and graduated from the University of Tennessee College of Law in 1960. He practiced law for 44 years before retiring in 2005. His book, Contempt of Court, co-authored with Mark Curriden, won the American Bar Associations Silver Gavel Award for excellence in media and the arts in 2000. He died in 2011.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments
	Preface
1	A Plea for Justice	3
2	Scene of the Crime	20
3	Someone Must Pay	34
4	Pretense of Law and Order	51
5	"Can You Swear It?"	78
6	The Jury's Verdict	110
7	Enter Noah Parden	130
8	The Appeals Begin	142
9	Writ of Habeas Corpus	154
10	The Supreme Court Intervenes	169
11	Gallows Disappointed	188
12	God Bless You All; I Am Innocent	198
13	The Honor of the Court	215
14	Secret Service Men	236
15	Supreme Jurisdiction	256
16	Sheriff Shipp on Trial	285
17	"Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!"	317
	Epilogue	337
	Appendixes	353
	A Note on Sources	375
	Bibliography	377
	Sources for Illustrations	385
	Index	387

What People are Saying About This

Anchor Press

"Should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand how the Constitution protects individual citizens." --Dallas Morning News

"Brings into focus [a] grim, critical moment in American history." --The New York Times Book Review

"Curriden and Phillips have woven detail with a tragic story line to create an important book that is also a compelling read." --Chattanooga Free Press

Editorial Reviews

Contempt of Court should join the handful of books such as Anthony Lewis’ Gideon’s Trumpet as required reading for anyone who wants to understand how the Constitution protects individual citizens.”–Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

From the Publisher

Here are the compelling details of a case that led to a precedent-setting criminal trial unique in the annals of American jurisprudence. Ed Johnson, a black man, was wrongly convicted of rape in 1906 and sentenced to death in Tennessee. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan issued a stay of execution, declaring that Johnson's right to a fair trial had been violated. The intrusion of the Supreme Court was not well received in Tennessee, and a violent mob answered this federal "interference" by dragging Johnson from his jail cell and hanging him from a bridge. For the first and only time in history, an enraged Supreme Court conducted a criminal trial to enforce its authority. It brought contempt of court charges against the sheriff, his deputies, and members of the lynch mob. Contempt of Court, the first book written about these highly charged events, raises issues of federalism versus state rights that are as timely today as they were almost a century ago.

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