Episode 2: Fall, Isaiah, Fall

Note: This transcript has been generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers. It may contain errors. Whenever possible, we strongly encourage you to listen to the Buried Truths audio.

Hank Klibanoff:	00:50:20	This is Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff. In Alston, Georgia, a sleepy little farming community in Montgomery County, it’s a hot and sunny election morning. There’s one major intersection, West Broad Street and Railroad Avenue, and today is voting day, September 8th, 1948. It’s a grand occasion for a small town. Communities like this would routinely hang the red, white, and blue bunting and the American flag with 48 stars. Here in Alston, black residents from all over the area will vote. People like Dover Carter, head of the NAACP. Here’s his son, Aaron Carter.
Aaron Carter:	00:51:10	I think the injustice that he saw was the thing that motivated him.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:51:17	Another voter today: Isaiah Nixon, the farmer. His daughter, Dorothy, says her dad was absolutely going to vote.
Dorothy Nixon:	00:51:25	He wasn’t afraid, because if he was afraid he would not have gone.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:51:30	And another black voter today, John Harris, the handyman. He’s the one who shared the story at the end of the last episode about a white man who’d walked uninvited into an NAACP meeting at a black church. He was carrying a whip. We learned about John Harris in this disturbing story from his son James Harris.
James Harris:	00:51:58	So he would walk in the church, walk from the back to the front with his whip. Said he would walk up the aisle and pop it and go out the door. They say he never said anything.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:52:15	Today is a special election for Georgia governor. Two men are running. There’s the moderate and incumbent, Melvin Thompson, and he’s up against . . . well, he’s up against the Talmadge dynasty and the Ku Klux Klan as they seek to regain their power. Only this time, the Talmadge on the ballot is not the late Gene Talmadge, but his son, Hermon Talmadge. But given the way the Talmadge political machine, and the Klan, have been intimidating black voters in South Georgia over the last few weeks, the big question is who’s going to show up? Who’s going to vote?
Hank Klibanoff:	00:52:50	One of the voters today, John Harris, he’s on his way to the polls. Two clusters of men had gathered outside the polling places, one’s white, the other black. Now for the white men, this is a place of long held traditions and community. For the black men, it’s now a place of opportunity and defiance.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:53:25	The first sign of trouble comes with a gesture from a white man sitting in a light blue Ford. That man is Claude Sharpee. He’s 6′ 2″, 225 pounds, and he’d been elected sheriff of Montgomery County. He’d take office in January. Now he’s gesturing at a group of black men gathered together. One of them, yes, John Harris, walks over to his car. Now the two men knew each other pretty well, but on this tense day, when these black men were about to test their new legal right to vote, that didn’t mean that John Harris could ignore Claude Sharpee’s beckoning wave. He had to go visit.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:54:13	Now before we get to what they talked about, let me pause here for a moment to tell you what it meant to be sheriff in the South back then. You know, it’d be hard to have seen news and media accounts of the last 60 years without noticing how rural Southern sheriffs were portrayed, you know, large and in charge, all powerful, corrupt, bullheaded enforcers of the law, and many were. It wasn’t an accident that sheriffs were such potent forces.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:54:43	In the rural South, many counties had virtually no other government, no cities. And without a city government or with only small, weak towns, the county was the basic form of local government, sometimes the only form. So instead of several police departments with small jurisdictions, all that fell to the sheriff, so he had a lot of power. He had the power to arrest you. He had the power to look the other way. The power to hand out jobs. The power to deputize just about anyone, a lazy son, a hard drinking cousin, a local klansman.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:55:21	When it came to enforcing the laws of the South, it also meant one other thing, enforcing the customs and the practices of white supremacy. Why? Get this, legislators in southern states were changing laws to require racial segregation, to mandate racial discrimination, and the chief enforcer of these laws and the established ways of southern life, yes, the sheriff.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:55:56	So here, in Alston, this incoming sheriff, Claude Sharpee, sits in his light blue Ford outside the polling place. The black man he’s summoned, John Harris, walks up to him. The other black men look on uneasily. Their conversation took place not too far from what today is the town’s most colorful icon, a large, red train caboose. It’s probably only 50 paces from the old polling place. So I went to the same area, right where these two men spoke, to hear what happened next. To get the story, I spoke with John Harris’ son, James.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:56:36	Tell me where we’re standing in terms of past history.
James Harris:	00:56:40	We’re standing where the old polling place used to be back in 1948.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:56:46	The polling place is here, and the African-American men who have decided to vote, including your father, are standing . . .
James Harris:	00:56:55	Over here by this service station where it used to be right over here, right in front of us.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:57:00	Can you tell us the story though of what happened?
James Harris:	00:57:03	From what I always heard, was told that Claude Sharpee, he called for my father to come to his car and he wanted to talk with him. He told him that if he knew what was best that he wouldn’t vote. So my father said, “You know, well maybe you don’t know what’s best for me, you know, but I’m going to vote.”
Hank Klibanoff:	00:57:25	So John Harris goes back to his friends. He tells them of Claude Sharpee’s grim words.
James Harris:	00:57:31	So they asked him, “Well, what are you going to do?” He say, “I came here to vote and I reckon that’s what I’m going to do.” And so he voted. Man of few words, but when he said something, he meant it.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:57:51	But that warning from Claude Sharpee was enough to put John Harris’s wife, Sadie, on high alert. She quickly put the kids in the house, some of them got under the beds. Even in that sweltering south Georgia heat, she began nailing up windows and doors. John Harris’s daughter, Rosa, was thirteen at the time, and she remembers that election day in 1948 very well.
Rosa:	00:58:18	That was the year I’d never forget.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:58:21	When I said I was there to talk to her about the election of 1948, her eyes narrowed, she sat straight up, and she looked me in the eye, and she began recalling a lot of detail from 70 years earlier.
Rosa:	00:58:37	Because my mother had us locked in so tight, and it was so hot, that this wood house with windows, but she had it nailed up. She felt that if we were all together, it was all locked in, we would be safe. We’d become prisoners that night.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:59:01	Her mother was hammering in the final nails just as her father, John Harris, returned from casting his vote. Even in the face of that fear that he saw in his wife and his kids, John Harris was not second-guessing his decision to vote.
Rosa:	00:59:16	That was the one thing that my daddy stood firm on is voting. From the day that I can remember until the day he passed, he was always firm on the voting.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:59:35	So with the Harris family locked up in their home and fearful for what might happen next, I want to turn my attention to Dover Carter. Remember now, he was the head of the local chapter of the NAACP, which by 1948 had an impressive 100 members. Dover Carter had been working for 2 years to make voting a reality for the black community here, and now on election day he was all in. He even planned to use his own pickup to shuttle black voters to the polls.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:00:06	Now what I’ve told you about Dover Carter to this point comes mainly from his children, including his son, Aaron, who tells me that Dover Carter was just a very religious man. He and the other children can recall being awakened at night hearing Dover Carter praying from his bedroom or walking around the house quoting scripture.
Aaron Carter:	01:00:29	He quoted it loud enough that if you was in the house, you heard him.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:00:32	Dover Carter’s children described him as a quiet man, strict, serious, with a fairly simple prescription for life.
Aaron Carter:	01:00:40	He was a God fearing man. I think his attitude was that the Lord will protect me.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:00:48	He was in his early 40s and he was responsible for a wife and 10 children. By helping people get to and from the polls on this election day, Dover Carter was putting a lot on the line.
Aaron Carter:	01:01:02	Well, he went on and did what he was asked to do, and that is pick up people and take them back and forth to poll.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:01:10	Now just a few days before this election, Dover Carter faced a direct threat from the Ku Klux Klan. He was walking near his home shortly after a Klan rally had been taking place nearby. A klansman drove by. He pointed a finger at him and said four words meant to intimidate and rattle him, four words that Dover Carter would remember for the rest of his life. Those words, “There he is now.”
Hank Klibanoff:	01:01:48	In rallying black voters, Dover Carter’s scope wasn’t limited just to men. He’d inspired quite a few women to go to the polls as well. So when Dover Carter made his way into Alston to vote, he brought his wife, Bessie Carter, who had cast her vote as well. But the threats and the scare tactics on this election day would not end.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:02:16	Through the day, Dover Carter would shuttle more voters to the polls. In the afternoon, he was driving a woman and her son. They were on a winding road in Alston when suddenly a black sedan came up fast from behind and passed him. As Dover Carter came around the curve in the road he saw the same car, and now it was blocking the road. He had no choice but to stop his truck. He saw two white men inside the car. Once again, here’s Dover Carter’s son, Aaron.
Aaron Carter:	01:02:47	And so the fellas got on the curve and blocked the highway, and so when he got to the curve he had to stop, and that’s when they approached him.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:02:55	As they approached, the woman and son riding with Dover Carter ran off leaving him alone in his truck. The two men walked toward him. Dover Carter recognized them. One was 22-year-old Johnnie Johnson. He hauled logs and pulpwood for a living. He had two scars on his face, one running between his eyes and up into his forehead. The other was 34-year-old Thomas Wilson. Wilson was an auto mechanic.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:03:21	These two men, brothers-in-law, knew that Dover Carter had been shuttling people back and forth to the polls. What Johnson and Wilson would do would be exactly what you might expect on this final day of another scruffy, race- baiting political campaign. They’d hear the echo of Gene Talmadge and the more recent call from his son, Herman, to return the Democratic party to its all white purity and to punish those who sullied it. And now, here on this road, these two white men would respond.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:03:59	So Johnnie Johnson approached over Carter’s truck with these words, “We’re going to beat the hell out of you.” Dover Carter had a shotgun in his truck on the floorboard next to him.
Aaron Carter:	01:04:09	He reached down. He had a pump shotgun. He reached down to get that and guy put a gun to his head and told him he touched it he would blow his brains out.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:04:17	The guy was Thomas Wilson. He held his own shotgun on Dover Carter as Johnnie Johnson began a ferocious two- fisted beating that lasted so long that he had to periodically stop and rest. The assault was severe enough to leave Dover Carter with a broken wrist. He was bruised and he was bleeding from the head.
Aaron Carter:	01:04:40	They continued to beat him until he cried out, “Lord, have mercy.” And when he cried out, he said it seemed like something came between him and the man and knocked the fella back. And if he hadn’t have cried out, “Lord, have
		mercy,” he probably would’ve continued to beat him, probably beat him to death.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:04:59	Johnnie Johnson and Thomas Wilson told Dover Carter they were willing to stop beating him if he promised to not bring any more people to the polls. But that’s exactly where Dover Carter would go. He dragged himself back into his pickup truck and he returned to the polling place. There he told election officials of his ordeal and asked for help. Soon he’d make his way home. So let’s look at where we stand. The Harris family is huddled in fear inside a boarded up, overheated farmhouse. Dover Carter is bloodied and battered, his wrist is broken, but at least he’s home now, and a white doctor has treated him. And yet, at the farmhouse of Isaiah Nixon, the worst was yet to come. We’ll bring you that story in a moment. This is Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:05:58	This is Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff. Now when we left off, Dover Carter had been stopped on the side of the road by two white men and badly beaten, but he’s seen a doctor and is now home. So next, let’s look at what happened to Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:06:23	As Isaiah Nixon drove home from the polls on his horse and wagon, we could only imagine how he felt. He joined with other black residents in Alston to cast his vote. He’d brought his mom with him today, Daisy Davis, and she, too, had cast her vote. Now I don’t know for certain, but I’m thinking they might have been in a hurry to get home. Isaiah Nixon’s wife, Sally, had given birth recently and was home with the six kids. But at the same time, I’m thinking that perhaps they were driving home in silence, quietly pleased. By voting, they’d done what they wanted to do, and they’d done what they needed to do.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:07:07	Later that afternoon, Dorothy Nixon, who as six at the time, was with her grandmother, Daisy, in the garden alongside the farmhouse. They heard a commotion out front. They could see two white men had pulled up in a black car. Well, it was the familiar faces of the Johnson brothers. They were parked in front of the farmhouse. Now their arrival wouldn’t ordinarily be a cause for concern. The Johnsons had grown up with Isaiah Nixon. Here’s his daughter, Dorothy.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:07:37	My grandmother said they played with my daddy when they were kids. They ate at her table.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:07:44	The men who had just arrived, the ones who played with Isaiah Nixon when they were all kids, were Johnnie Johnson . . he’d just beaten up Dover Carter . . . and his older brother, 32-year-old Jim Atlas Johnson, known to all
		as Jim A. Like his younger brother, he too hauled logs and pulpwood for a living.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:08:08	We heard the commotion. So we could hear really good when they said, “Isaiah, come out here.”
Hank Klibanoff:	01:08:14	But it was the way they called out for Isaiah Nixon that concerned Dorothy’s grandmother, Daisy.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:08:21	We heard them say, “Isaiah, come out here.” Well, my grandmother, I just followed her out. I’m not sure that the voices alerted me that something was wrong necessarily, but it sure alerted her.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:08:35	So potent, so visceral was this call, “Isaiah, come out here,” that a neighbor visiting with the Nixons at the time heard the tone of their voice and he literally ran away. Jim A. got out of the car with a revolver in his hand, and Johnnie got out of the other side with a shotgun. Jim A. did all the talking. Isaiah Nixon stepped out of the farmhouse onto the porch. A wire fence separated the Johnson brothers from Isaiah Nixon, but Jim A. climbed over it. Johnnie stood on the other side with his shotgun pointed toward the house.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:09:18	And he came out and they wanted him to come, and he said, “No.” So he walked down the steps.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:09:26	Jim A. approached Isaiah Nixon. He had two questions, had he voted, and who did he vote for? Nixon said he reckoned he voted for Mr. Thompson. That was the wrong answer. And now, the Johnson brothers insisted that Isaiah Nixon go for a ride with them.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:09:50	Daddy wouldn’t get in the car, wouldn’t go with them, and they wanted to take him away.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:09:55	Dorothy’s mom, Sally Nixon, who had just given birth 13 days earlier, watched the face off. The men stood just a few feet apart. Isaiah Nixon began backing away.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:10:07	Next thing I know, they were shooting.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:10:10	Isaiah Nixon’s mother, his wife, his children, watched as Jim A. Johnson shot Isaiah Nixon three times.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:10:22	He just kept taking bullets. My mother came out, and said, “Fall, Isaiah, fall!”
Hank Klibanoff:	01:10:29	But, Isaiah Nixon, either he couldn’t fall, or he wouldn’t fall.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:10:34	She said, “Fall!” He fell.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:10:41	Jim A. Johnson turned. He climbed back over the wire fence. He got in the car, and the Johnson brothers left.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:10:52	Sally Nixon rushed to her husband’s side. He’d been shot twice in the legs, once in the stomach. The grandmother, Daisy, and the children watched as Sally, a small woman who had been on bedrest, did something entirely unexpected.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:11:07	You’d be surprised what adrenaline will do. It’s unbelievable, as small as she was. She picked him up.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:11:17	She carried him up the three steps to the farm house porch, then into the house, and onto their bed. Isaiah Nixon was badly wounded. The gunshots, at close range, had pierced his liver, his stomach, his small intestines, his kidney, were all damaged. He needed to get to a hospital. But how? He didn’t have a car. His horse and wagon certainly wouldn’t cut it. He didn’t have a telephone to call anyone.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:11:46	And then after that, it was just a lot of commotion. All I heard was him moaning and moaning.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:11:53	Moaning and moaning. Finally, someone reached a family friend with a car.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:11:59	It seemed like forever before they picked him up. They did before the night was over. They took him.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:12:06	They got Isaiah Nixon in the car, then faced the hard reality that the closest hospital that would take a black man was Claxton Hospital in Dublin, Georgia, two counties and 52 miles away.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:12:24	There was no quick or smooth route to Dublin. Even today you’d still be mostly on state roads, but back then, they weren’t fully paved. Today it takes about an hour. Back then, with the life bleeding out of Isaiah Nixon, it would take forever.
Dorothy Nixon:	01:12:49	People have questioned me many times. “How you remember so vividly?” I can see it, now. It was because I lived it, every day, for a long time.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:13:14	Back in Alston, as night falls, John Harris’ family is still boarded up in their home. At the Dover Carter farmhouse, friends and relatives were arriving. Many of them, are armed. As his son, Aaron Carter recalls, they would keep watch that entire night.
Aaron Carter:	01:13:33	They was at the front of the house, back of the house, and out in the field. I know that they came to protect him. There
		had to be fear. And there had to be some, how can I say it, some love and concern, that they would put their lives on the line for him.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:13:58	Put their lives on the line to protect Dover Carter from the Ku Klux Klan, or from the guys who beat him up.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:14:08	On the evening of September 8th, 1948, the returns are coming in. It becomes clear, that Herman Talmadge, the Talmadge Dynasty, and the Klan, have prevailed. Herman Talmadge will go on to become governor.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:14:27	The next morning Dover Carter gets out of Alston. His broken wrist and his sore body are a painful reminder of his beating. He’s headed to the nearest hospital. That hospital, yes, is the same Claxton Hospital in Dublin where he sees his good friend Isaiah Nixon. No doubt lying in a hospital bed. Nixon, struggling to live, to return to his farm, to see his family, to hold his newborn son.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:14:57	Isaiah Nixon begins to speak. He describes, in detail, how the Johnson brothers came to his farmhouse with their guns out, asked him about his vote, then shot him. Dover Carter is stunned. He’s hearing an even more harrowing tale than his own. Nixon’s words make an indelible impression. This is a story Dover Carter will never forget. After this conversation, well, Dover Carter has a decision to make. Would he turn around and head back home, back to Alston? Or would he be as courageous as he was when he started that chapter of the NAACP? Or when he watched as the Klansman pointed him out on the street? Or when he stepped into a voting booth for the very first time?
Hank Klibanoff:	01:16:05	For now, I can tell you this. Had Dover Carter not done what he was about to do, I wouldn’t be able to share this story with you now, these 70 years later. What Dover Carter did and how we came to know about it, is a pretty astonishing story. That’s all on the next episode of Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff.
Announcer:	01:16:45	CREDITS: Buried Truths is hosted by Hank Klibanoff, former reporter, editor, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, “The Race Beat.” Today, he’s a professor at Emory University. Buried Truths is produced by David Baraosain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas. The executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Please subscribe to the show, and if you have a moment, leave us a review in Apple Podcast. We’d love to hear what you think, and your review will help others find the show. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to this email address: stories@buriedtruths.org. You can also follow us on social media, at Buried Truths Podcast. There you’ll find photographs and documents related to this case. We had help on this episode from the nearly 100 students, who’ve taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases Class, that Hank Klibanoff teaches at Emory. Thanks to professor Brett Gadsden, who helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to two former students, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Thanks to Emory University and its Centers for Digital Scholarship and Faculty Excellence, for their support. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.