Mary C. Curtis

Contributor

A Tom Joyner Family Reunion

Posted:

10/15/09

Filed Under:Race, Woman Up

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Tom Joyner is celebrating, with good reason. The radio host of the syndicated "Tom Joyner Morning Show" traveled with family members on Wednesday to Columbia, S.C., to witness an event that changed their lives. A posthumous pardon was granted for Joyner's two great-uncles, who were wrongfully executed in 1915 in the death of John Q. Lewis, a 73-year-old white Confederate veteran.

The Parole and Pardon Board voted unanimously to clear the names of Thomas and Meeks Griffin in the 1913 murder. It's thought to be the first post-conviction pardon in South Carolina for someone sentenced to death, according to a story in The State newspaper.

Joyner, who lives in Dallas, first learned of the Griffin brothers' story during the February 2008 PBS documentary, "African American Lives 2," researched and reported by Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Albany Law School professor Paul Finkelman. Yes, that's the same Skip Gates known for his front-porch arrest in Cambridge, Mass., and a beer summit at the White House. He was a scholar before that, and he still is.

Gates used genealogical methods and DNA analysis to reconstruct the family history of prominent African-Americans, including comedian Chris Rock – who also has S.C. roots – and entertainer Tina Turner. Gates attended the Columbia ceremony, and said, "I'm happy for the Joyner family," which had been working to clear their ancestors' names. "We can't change black history, but we can change the way black history is going to be remembered," Gates told Joyner's radio audience.

When I wrote about a New York Times story on First Lady Michelle Obama's Southern roots that stretched back to slavery and encompassed black and white, then shared my own story, some commenters seemed to think that even mentioning what came before is a form of living in the past, whining or wanting something.

As the Griffin brothers' story showed, it's not about that at all. If it were only history, it would be interesting. We study history, after all. So why not make that history complete in ways that show tragedy, triumph and the links we share?

Who would argue for ignorance just because knowledge makes some uncomfortable?

Often -- as in Joyner's case -- that history confounds expectations.

The Griffins died in the South Carolina electric chair in September 1915, along with two other black men, Nelson Brice and John Crosby, in part on the accusation of a fifth black man, Monk Stevenson, who got a life sentence though he had Lewis' knife after the murder, The State reports. But many prominent whites at the time defended the Griffins, respected black farmers in Chester County, even signing a petition on their behalf. In a South Carolina plagued by lynchings and Jim Crow, that was unusual.

Unfortunately, other restrictive rules of the day prevailed. The defense had just one day to prepare a case, the governor and State Supreme Court refused to step in and the petitions were ignored.

In a story repeated throughout the South, in particular, the brothers lost 130 acres of family land, sold quickly to pay for their losing legal defense, and Joyner's grandmother was rushed off to Florida, where family members believed their history began before Gates' research set it right.

Before someone yells "Payback!" know that Joyner, his family and their attorneys are not interested in reparations for the material things that were lost. (Though it sheds some light on how little black wealth has been handed down through the generations and makes you wonder about the folks who ended up with the spoils.)

No, Joyner and his family gained something more important to them, something that should be important to everyone – justice.

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Mary C. Curtis

Mary C. Curtis, an NPR contributor based in Charlotte, N.C., was previously a writer and editor for The New York Times and the Charlotte Observer... more

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Margaret Opine

4:01PM Oct 15th 2009

STRANGE THING ANALYSIS...The victims want to clear their names in history; the opportunists who made a gain from the victimization wants to keep their material gain and cry fowl: "Don't live in the past." WELL, JUST KNOW FROM NOW ON THAT....The Constitution of the U.S., the Bill of Rights, the gaining of Civil Rights, the Civil War, the Revolutionary War.....ARE allllll IN THE PAST, SHALL WE STOP LIVING THEM TODAY?
--MO

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kathy

3:23AM Oct 16th 2009

Great story Mary. Thank God and the vigilance of Gates and others to get that conviction reversed. It is too late for the victims, but for the family, Justice has been served.

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