Justice for Ella

DRIVING WHILE BLACK
Shuqualak, Mississippi. February 22, 1959
3:00 p.m.
“Nelse! What’s wrong?” Ella whispered.
He’d been slowing down and watching the rear view mirror. She could see blinking red lights reflecting off the dashboard.
“I don’t know,” Nelse said, carefully pulling his shiny Ford Fairlane over to the shoulder. Their four children in back sat quiet as baby birds in a disturbed nest.
Within seconds, the Gaston family found themselves surrounded by white men with badges, guns, nightsticks and nasty attitudes.
Nelse rolled down his window far enough to hear one of them yell, “Get out, nigger!”
It was hard to be called “nigger” in front of his family, but Nelse complied.
As soon as his feet hit the ground, the officer dragged him to the back of the car out of his family’s sight.
“Put your hands up!” they could hear the officer shouting.
“I said put your hands up, nigger!”
The distinctive sound of fist on skull came next, and the car heaved as Nelse fell against it. Ella sensed he was on the ground and all four white men were scrambling against gravel on asphalt to get a lick in. She could hear their grunts and curses.
“Stop it! Quit!” another white voice shouted and the thudding commotion ceased.
Pulled to his feet, scraped and bleeding, Nelse was handcuffed behind his back. He was weaving a little where he stood, and a welt on his forehead stuck out like a hen egg.
“What’s in the trunk, nigger?”
“Nothing.”
“Aw, you gonna lie now?”
“There’s nothing in there, man.”
“Well, we’re fixin’ to find out.”
“Wait man! Wait! Get the key out of the ignition! Don’t tear up my car, man!”
It was too late.
The hacking had already started as a broad-shouldered officer tore off the Continental Kit with a tire iron and jimmied open the trunk for a look inside.
“You were right, nigger. Nothing. How ‘bout that?”
The passengers could hear chuckling and one or two loud guffaws.
Ella couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Be still children.”
She took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and stepped out of the car.
“What’s wrong? Why are you doing this to my husband?”
“Shut up, nigger,” a skinny officer said and grabbed her by the arm.
“Come on over here, and we’ll see what kind of trouble you’re in, gal.”
He spun her around and slammed her head and face into the car while he pressed against her, running his hands the length of her body and eventually slapping a set of handcuffs on her slim wrists.
The heat rising from his body and the smell of his sweat mixed with the trail of tobacco juice down his chin made Ella want to throw up. She was silent. So was Nelse as he watched.
The skinny one checked her all over one more time just to make sure she wasn’t concealing a weapon. She wasn’t, but her blouse had lost a button by the time he was done.
“Let’s get them outta here,” a uniformed one muttered.
As Mr. and Mrs. Gaston were shoved into the back of a patrol car, Ella looked over her shoulder and shouted to her children, “Call Hermene. Tell her to call Mrs. Mac!”
Then they were gone – red lights flashing, tires spinning and sirens blaring. Only the men in tan uniforms and the four children in the backseat of the Ford Fairlane were left on the road in front of Mr. Pete Flora’s house.
The 20-minute ride to Macon was interminable. Blood on Nelse’s face had quit running, and husband and wife sat thigh-to-thigh in the backseat, trying to draw strength from each other.
By the time the patrol car whipped up into the graveled back parking lot of the Noxubee County Jail, big sweat circles had formed under Nelse’s armpits, belying the fear he was trying to hide from his wife.
The jail, though lovely from the outside, was rotten on the inside. This Nelse knew. He’d been told tales of what happened inside those beautiful brick walls all his life. It wasn’t good for anybody, but it was awful for black men and rumored to be worse than that for black women.
He knew there was an eyelet in the tin ceiling in the middle of the cellblock where the hangman’s noose was supposed to go. He knew that sometimes there was an empty noose just hanging there, glowering. He knew that sometimes people went inside and came out beaten up or worse. He knew this was one place neither he nor his wife needed to be.
Soon enough, they were booked in.
Ella never told anyone exactly what she endured that night. But, whatever it was caused her and her friend Jewell McMahan to make a solemn pledge that Ella would never spend another night in jail. Never. Never again. No matter the cost and no matter what they had to do to prevent it.