Episode 4: Thousands of Friends

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:	01:58:35	This is Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff. Where do we stand? You may remember as we finished the last episode that the men accused of killing Isaiah Nixon had been found not guilty by an all white, all male jury. The defendants, the Johnson brothers, had used what I called the secret password. Now that’s two simple words that in the rural South had kept white men out of jail for years after being accused of racial attacks. Those words, self- defense. It meant that the men, now free, could go back to their lives. But what about the three black families in this story? That’s the family of Isaiah Nixon, the farmer who was shot and killed for voting, Dover Carter, the NAACP leader who was beaten on the side of the road, and John Harris. Let’s start our story with him.
Hank Klibanoff:	01:59:35	The John Harris family. Now, you may remember his wife Sadie was the one who boarded up the house the morning of the 1948 election. They decided to stay in Alston and try to make the best out of a bad situation. We told you earlier that John Harris and the sheriff elect, Claude Sharpe, knew each other pretty well, and we had left it at that, but there’s more. What we didn’t tell you, more specifically, is that John Harris considered Claude Sharpe, now the sheriff elect, to be his friend. But to better understand why, well for that, let’s go back to the morning of election day. The moment when Claude Sharpe in his light blue Ford beckons John Harris over. The story is told here by John Harris’ son James.
James Harris:	02:00:26	He told me that he, Claude Sharpe, 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. He shouldn’t vote.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:00:41	Now when I saw this in writing in the FBI documents I assumed this was a threat. “If you know what’s best for you.” But John Harris didn’t hear it this way. He heard it more as a friendly warning, a caution, that something was about to go down, and that John Harris should stay away to avoid trouble. He saw it as a friendly warning because John Harris had known Claude Sharpe for years. They knew each other well because John Harris the handyman had worked for Claude Sharpe’s father, and while doing so, John Harris had gotten to know the son. The son, Claude Sharpe.
James Harris:	02:01:24	Well, I know for a fact that Claude Sharpe and my father was very good friends.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:01:30	John Harris, now he’s 12 years older than Claude Sharpe, he had taught Claude Sharpe how to plow when he was a
		boy. That is, the black guy taught the white kid how to keep the mules straight along the planting row, but it went the other way as well. Claude Sharpe also would claim John Harris as a friend. Sometimes he’d even make reference to their relationship when he was running for sheriff.
James Harris:	02:01:54	When Claude was running for sheriff, when he used to have those rallies, you know he would always say that my father helped raise him, my father taught him how to plow. And Claude would use that when it’s election. That’s to let the blacks know the relationship he had with black people, so he always used that in his speeches.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:02:27	Now, let’s talk about friendship and what it means, friendship across the racial lines in the segregated South. On the surface you could find the occasional good, warm, relationship between blacks and whites at certain points in the history of the rural South. You could see black and white kids chasing each other through the woods wth stick rifles, shouting, swinging off branches into the water filled quarry, but these friendships would break apart.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:02:58	As the children turned to their teenage years they became defined by where they went to school, by where they sat in movie theaters, by where they got jobs. They were also defined by the stern admonitions of their white parents, and those admonitions underscored the conventional wisdom that black people were morally, and intellectually, and socially inferior. But some friendships appear to endure into adulthood. Here’s a story James Harris tells about his father John Harris.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:03:37	Sometimes John Harris would have a bit too much to drink, and would get behind the wheel of his car, and on at least two occasions that we know of, Claude Sharpe pulled him over. But it wasn’t to give him a ticket, or to carry him back to the jail. On both occasions, the sheriff just drove John Harris back home. But this was not the norm. In these years in the rural South there was no such thing as friendship among equals across racial lines. Friendships, if you could truly call them that, were going to be on the white man’s terms.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:04:18	Still, I want to believe James Harris, that his father and Claude Sharpe were genuine friends. Now, James Harris would know this from personal experience. As a high school teen he worked on Claude Sharpe’s farm for a few weeks each summer. James Harris says he never saw Claude Sharpe exhibit any evidence of racism. But how does that explain what happened on election day in 1948? Let’s go back to the early morning warning, when now sheriff-elect, Claude Sharpe, talks to John Harris, here’s James again.
James Harris:	02:04:53	I guess he knew kind of like what was in the air, so that’s why he was more like giving him a warning.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:05:01	He knew what was in the air? Okay, now that leads me to a really nagging question. If Claude Sharpe was a good guy, and if he wasn’t racist, and if he wasn’t trying to keep blacks from voting, and if he knows that something is in the air, why would he warn only his friend, John Harris? Let’s not forget that Dover Carter said that Claude Sharpe tried to run him off the road, and Sharpe passed by Dover Carter’s beating without stopping. Of course, Sharpe’s excuse at the time was that it didn’t happen, but then he added that he didn’t get involved because he wasn’t sheriff yet.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:05:38	Let’s think about that. If Claude Sharpe had stopped those men, who beat up Dover Carter, then one of those same men might not have shown up at Isaiah Nixon’s farmhouse a few hours later with a gun. Let’s face it, these kinds of friendships across races in the American South, they’re just difficult to explain. So when it comes to matters of race, libraries are filled with books by researchers of this period of the South, and what you’ll find is that the researchers often came away bewildered. They’d found a region that was a bundle of contradictions built on paradoxes, incongruities woven into absurdities, and inconsistencies masked by…by a smile, and by Southern charm. So there’re a couple of other important details here that I want to share with you. They come from James Harris, and he provided a significant detail about Isaiah Nixon’s killing that his father learned from Sheriff Claude Sharpe. Sharpe revealed that the Johnson brothers had gone to the Nixon farm only with the intention of scaring Isaiah Nixon.
James Harris:	02:06:59	My father told me Claude told him that their intention was not to kill him. They was gonna get him, take him off in the woods, and beat him.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:07:10	To beat him, in other words, they weren’t there to offer Isaiah Nixon a job, and of course, if they weren’t there to offer him a job, then it’s pretty easy to conclude that Isaiah Nixon didn’t pull a knife.
James Harris:	02:07:22	Not necessarily kill him. I can kind of buy that, because that was… for the Klan, you know that’s what they would do. They would come get you, take you off, and beat you up.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:07:33	There is absolutely plenty of evidence that the Klan did love to go around and just beat up people, but I have to quickly say, we don’t know if Jim A, or Johnnie Johnson or Thomas Wilson were in the Klan. It’s just not information
		we have. But this brings me to one nagging question. How did Claude Sharpe know this? How did he know that the Johnson brothers went to Isaiah Nixon’s farmhouse only with the plan of beating him up? More than likely, because the men who did it told Claude Sharpe, but they didn’t tell him because he was sheriff. They told him because he was their first cousin.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:08:21	The Harris family decides to remain in Alston. Now, let’s turn our attention back to Dover Carter. He was the farmer, the NAACP organizer who was beaten on the side of the road in Alston on that election day. You may remember that he drove up to Atlanta and told the FBI all he’d seen, and all he’d learned, and he’d stay in Atlanta for the next three months, and he’d continue working with the NAACP there. But he’s thinking of moving, moving north to Philadelphia where his brother lives. When the NAACP heard about what’d happened with Dover Carter they wanted to come to his aid, and they recognized that he could perhaps come to theirs.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:09:02	So, they drafted a press release seeking to raise money around the Dover Carter story, and once they sent it out, the money started coming in. San Jose branch chipped in $15. There was money coming from Orange County, Santa Anna, California, and finally, and this may have been the most gratifying for him, was $20 from the NAACP branch back in Montgomery County, his home county in Georgia. Some of the money from these donations would be used to help Dover Carter and his family, but the money was insufficient to support them, or to calm the fears that had become a constant presence in their lives. Put simply, the Carters could not stay, could not go back to their lives, so Dover Carter returned to the idea of moving North to join his brother. Dover Carter, his wife, and his 10 children got on a train, the Silver Meteor in Atlanta, and traveled north to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:10:17	Meanwhile, what’s happened to the Isaiah Nixon family? Within months of his murder, his family would pack up and leave Alston. His widow, his six kids, his mother, they just couldn’t stay. They find a tenant, say goodbye to the farm they loved, and head south to Jacksonville, Florida. This move is sudden, and this move is permanent. Even though the Isaiah Nixon family moved to Florida, and Dover Carter’s family moved to Pennsylvania, their new lives had some similarities. For starters, they both moved in with family, they lived in crowded conditions. Here’s Isaiah Nixon’s daughter, Dorothy, talking about her new home in Jacksonville.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:11:05	I think it was just two bedrooms, but I know it was a little house, and I know four of us slept in this little bed, and two
		slept to the top, and two slept to the bottom, so we were just piled up on each other for a while.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:11:20	Now maybe that’s a figure of speech, but with the Dover Carter family that would have been literal. In the winter of 1949, Dover Carter moved his wife and 10 children into a West Philadelphia apartment where his brother lived. But his brother had a wife, and five kids, so that’s four adults, and 15 kids packed together. One NAACP official visiting the Dover Carter family came away deeply disturbed about their living conditions writing, “It was one of the most shocking scenes imaginable.” Shocking because Dover Carter and his family were crammed into one-and-a-half rooms, and because they didn’t have access to a kitchen, and because they had one stove. It was used to cook all the food, and heat all the rooms.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:12:18	Soon there were exchanges among local child welfare agencies that maybe the children of Dover and Bessie Carter would be better served if placed with other families. Down South in Jacksonville, Florida, the family of Isaiah Nixon would face the same question, should the children be moved? But both families reached the same conclusion. No, no matter what, the families would get through it together. For the kids, the adjustment to life off the farm out of Georgia, that was pretty tough. New environment, new friends, living in a city, some of the kids would get into fights. Here’s Dover Carter’s son, Aaron.
Aaron Carter:	02:13:06	Adjusting to the life here in Philly was, I guess, hard for me. Thing was, back then you didn’t have counselors. I walked around with a chip on my shoulder, fighting practically every day in the week.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:13:20	Even Dorothy, who, at a young age, was quite a good student, got into an altercation with, of all people, a teacher.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:13:29	The teacher had this math problem that she put on the board, and I told her it was wrong. So, fast me, I walk up to the board and worked the problem correctly. She didn’t like that, so she went to her desk and she threw the flower pot at me. She was wrong. Today she’d lose her job. So, I went up and I hit her. Then I got a whipping in front of the teacher.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:14:06	In Philadelphia, Dover Carter was restless, desperate to not be forgotten in a big city. He knew something needed to change. He picked up his pen. Now Dover Carter’s handwriting is a slanted, full-bodied cursive. His words and his ideas are packed closely together, so he wrote a three- page letter to Thurgood Marshall. Yes, that Thurgood Marshall, but this was years before he’d become a justice
		on the Supreme Court. At the time Thurgood Marshall was the NAACP’s top lawyer, and Dover Carter was writing with a plea for help.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:14:46	Now, Thurgood Marshall’s team is well aware of the work that Dover Carter did for the organization, and the beating he suffered back on that winding road in Alston. So, Thurgood Marshall’s top aid quickly assigned a Philadelphia attorney to meet him and to talk with Dover Carter. The organization decided they would help the Dover Carter who did so much work for them back in Georgia.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:15:13	The NAACP has arranged for a non-profit group to support the Dover Carter family. Pennsylvania law will not provide public assistance until the family’s lived there a year, so the Family Society of Philadelphia stepped in. It provided the equivalent of what today is $470 a week, and it arranged a number of job interviews for Dover Carter. But it appears that the jobs he’s being offered are just day laborer jobs, picking berries. This passage from a Dover Carter letter is read here by an actor.
Actor Dover:	02:15:50	Well, I told you when you visited us that I didn’t want to work on a farm as a laborer, and I think I had a good reason for this. I have been on a farm most of my life, and I have seen boom and depressions on down, and I think I know who gets the cream, believe it or not. As long as labor are temp as it is now, those farmers are not going to get a living price for a day laborer.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:16:12	The support Dover Carter was receiving from the Family Society of Philadelphia was on shaky ground. He continued to look for work, but his prospects looked bleak.
Actor Dover:	02:16:23	So I found a little water, a job offered only $30 per week working in a café beginning July 11th, 1949. I must keep on digging, although it may be another year before I can find enough water to supply my family. Surely, God will not let me die.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:16:43	For a time Dover Carter had a job at a hospital. He even found a job digging ditches, and he knows that the help from the NAACP is about to dry up. He’s frustrated with his job prospects, and no doubt at the turn his life has taken.
Actor Dover:	02:16:59	If you and others would do what you can by the help of Almighty God, we will get a job and a decent living here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where my children can get the benefit of education opportunities as they should.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:17:18	Then that agency that had been helping the Dover Carter family recommends, with much reluctance, that its support
		must come to an end. The last donation it makes to him is about $175, that’s nearly $2,000 today. Now Dover Carter seems appreciative, and in a handwritten letter he offers to do future work for the NAACP if needed, and he thanks them for all their support, and they part ways.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:17:57	But around this time Dover Carter would get a sliver of good news. His truck, which had been back in Alston, would be brought to him in Philadelphia. Now this truck would give him more freedom. It would make it easier to look for employment. He’d get a few odd jobs hauling, and then eventually he’d start his own produce business. The many times we interviewed Dover Carter’s son, Aaron Carter, he always stressed his dad’s faith, talking about how he’d pray for hours at a time. How he’d walk around the house just quoting Bible verses. In fact, Aaron Carter says, one of his father’s favorite passages was really very simple, “The Lord will provide.”
Hank Klibanoff:	02:18:49	What Dover Carter wouldn’t know here, a year after his assault, living in crowded conditions with his wife Sadie, his 10 kids, and a world of uncertainty, was how true this was. He wouldn’t know that years from that very moment most of his sons and daughters would finish high school. Some would go on to college, all would be employed, productive, citizens. He wouldn’t know that all of his sons would be inspired enough by him to each start their own businesses.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:19:26	What Dover Carter wouldn’t know at this low point in his life was that he’d have 31 grandkids. There’s an architect, a lawyer, there’s a nurse, there’s a banker, a missionary, a teacher. What Dover Carter also wouldn’t know at this point was that his produce business would grow, and that Dover Carter and his wife and his family would survive.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:20:06	Some more good news coming up after the break. I’m going to tell you what happened to the family of Isaiah Nixon in Florida, and it’s going to be as much of a surprise to you as it was to them. This is Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:20:24	Surviving. It was also on the mind of the family of Isaiah Nixon. His mother Daisy, his wife Sally, and his children including Dorothy had moved south and were now in Jacksonville, Florida. The Nixon family might well have been forgotten if it hadn’t been for the work of the Pittsburgh Courier.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:20:50	Back then, most people got their news from newspapers, but white papers tended to ignore the stories of black people. Black people just weren’t newsworthy to them. Of course, unless it was to report their crimes. Newspaper
		readers older than 50, you’re going to know what I’m talking about here. If two young white men assaulted an elderly woman and took her purse, they appeared in the paper as two young men, but if young black men did that, the headline, the story would focus on two young negro men.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:21:23	The word negro was the equivalent of click bait in headlines in newspapers in the day. Particularly if they could pair with that word rape. So you know, in an earlier episode I talked about how white people were really persuaded to believe that black people were more inclined toward criminality. I’m going to have to tell you … and I’m not proud of this as a former newspaper person … but white newspapers in thousands of headlines and stories over 50, 60, I mean, even 100 years … helped feed that myth. That narrative of black criminality. So what did blacks do? They created their own press. Now, this is back in 1827. It got started in New York with a newspaper called Freedom’s Journal. From that point on, scours and scours of black newspapers emerged across the land. Writing upbeat stories about black achievements as well as downbeat stories about white discrimination. Black newspapers began to be known as a fighting press. Foremost among them, the Pittsburgh Courier. Delivered by buses up and down the eastern seaboard.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:22:43	So, I was surprised, and more than mildly surprised, to learn of one white man in Georgia, who was quite familiar with it: Georgia’s Herman Talmadge. He read the paper, but with deep concern. Here’s part of a radio address he gave in 1946 when campaigning for his father, Gene Talmadge.
Herman Talmadge:	02:23:03	The Pittsburgh Courier and is the largest negro newspaper in the world. I quote from their editorial of April the 13th. Quote, “It is well understood that once Negros start voting in large numbers in states like Georgia and Texas, the Jim Crow laws will be endangered, and the whole elaborate pattern of segregation will be threatened and finally destroyed.” Unquote.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:23:47	The Pittsburgh Courier’s first publisher and founder was Robert Vann, but he died in 1940. His widow, Jessie Vann, took over as publisher and it was clear … under her leadership through the 1940s … that the Pittsburgh Courier loved a good crusade. Here’s a couple of examples. It helped to get blacks to support the US entry into World War II. It put baseball player Jackie Robinson in front of Brooklyn Dodger’s president Branch Rickey who hired him – made him the first black baseball player in the major leagues, and a year later, the Pittsburgh Courier focused on another crusade: to help the family of Isaiah Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:24:29	Two months after Isaiah Nixon was shot and killed, the Pittsburgh Courier reporter, Alexander Rivera … you recall … the guy who dressed as a chauffer? He was back on the story. Alexander Rivera and two other Pittsburgh Courier reporters would write some 40 or more stories and take many photos to help raise awareness of the Nixon’s family’s circumstances.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:24:56	But the newspaper would do a lot more than that. On January 1st, 1949, the Pittsburgh Courier launched it’s New Year’s resolution, announced in all capital letters across the top of the newspaper. A NEW HOME FOR THE NIXONS. They established a full-throated campaign to buy property for the Nixons in Jacksonville, to build them a home, and to furnish it.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:25:22	A few days later, the Pittsburgh Courier stretched three photographs of the Nixon family under the headline that read, The Nixon Story: The Worst Kind of Poverty. The Worst Kind of Tragedy. Week after week, Alexander Rivera, Evelyn Cunningham, and Hazel Garland … all big names in black journalism at the time … were in and out of Jacksonville writing stories about the Nixons, and week after week, story after story … many of them overwritten and overwrought … painted Isaiah Nixon’s widow Sally as desperate.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:26:04	But it worked. Money began flowing in. Someone named Eugene Bailey from Ottumwa, Iowa, $5. The Mount Elon Baptist Church in Altoona, Pennsylvania, $11.10. Three anonymous garage attendants in Pittsburgh, 10 bucks. The drive, which had started with about $1300, had nearly doubled that amount a month later. Today, that would be about $25000. So artists, musicians, and athletes start chipping in. The owner of the Harlem Globe Trotters came up with $50. Then he arranged a benefit game and raised $500 for the Nixons.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:26:50	But another surprise lay ahead, an architect wanted to help too. His name, Paul R. Williams. He was better known in Los Angeles where he lived and where he had designed the homes of … get this … Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, Danny Thomas. Paul Williams, perhaps the most celebrated black architect of his time, agreed to design the Nixon home.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:27:15	Two and a half months into the campaign, the Pittsburgh Courier had raised enough money … about $47,000 today … to buy a lot for the house and to start developing plans and drawings. More money came in after that, and pretty soon, it was enough to buy the Nixons some property in Jacksonville, to build them a five room bungalow, and to furnish it. The location was perfect. A
		desirable neighborhood … as the newspaper put it … within walking distance of the elementary school where three Nixon children would go to school.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:27:58	It’s Christmas, 1949. It’s been just over a year since the death of Isaiah Nixon and now his family is about to move into their new home. Here the kids would have their own beds, their own space. Stepping inside, the children looked up to see a large decorated Christmas tree, and a visitor had made her way down to Jacksonville for this moment. It was the publisher of the Pittsburgh Courier, Jessie Vann. Here are the exact words Jessie Vann said to the Nixon family.
Jessie Vann:	02:28:48	This is an occasion for which I have been waiting for a long time, and it gives me great pleasure to present to you the keys and deed to this house, which is completely paid for and free of all debt. God has been good to you Mrs. Nixon, for despite the loss of your husband, he has given you thousands of friends. Many of whom you will probably never know, who have rallied to the cause in helping to secure you this home. Make this a house of God. Send your children to Sunday school and church so that they may grow up into fine young men and women and will never forget how kind God has been.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:29:36	Sally Nixon expressed her gratitude, and then sobbed, “I am too happy to say a word.”
Hank Klibanoff:	02:29:53	So appreciated was the Pittsburgh Courier that publisher Jessie Vann was featured on this show.
TV Host:	02:29:59	This is Your Life. America’s most talked about program is brought to you by…
Hank Klibanoff:	02:30:04	If you’re not familiar with this old television program, the premise was simple. They invite a notable person on and have people from that person’s past talk about their memories of them. On this particular night, they were showcasing the Pittsburgh Courier and the work of Jessie Vann.
TV Host:	02:30:22	…getting you here for this surprise. Did you, Mrs. Vann?
Jessie Vann:	02:30:23	No, I certainly didn’t. I thought I was here to do a job.
TV Host:	02:30:26	Well, you’re…
Hank Klibanoff:	02:30:27	As the show looked back at the life of Jessie Vann, they needed people to not just talk about her but to attest to her character. To do this, the show would usually feature an old friend, a coworker, and in the case of Jessie Vann, they’d bring in someone she had helped. Helped when they were
		down. When they needed a new start. A new home. Yes, on this particular episode, they invited Isaiah Nixon’s wife, his widow, Sally Nixon.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:30:56	So when we talked to Sally Nixon at her retirement home in Florida, she was excited about seeing the show. She had never seen it. This is Robert Vann.
Sally Nixon:	02:31:04	Yes.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:31:05	This Is Your Life, here.
Sally Nixon:	02:31:07	Ohhhhh!
Hank Klibanoff:	02:31:09	Oh, this was going to fun. You can just tell how happy she was to hear that I had brought a copy of the show. So I opened up my laptop. Some of her family stood behind her, and we all leaned in and watched the show together.
TV Host:	02:31:22	Wow, we have a wonderful audience here at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood tonight. Just like you wonderful people across the nation. Coast to coast.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:31:29	And now to the moment when they revealed to Jessie Vann one of her surprise guests. A voice from behind the curtain speaks anonymously, and it’s Sally Nixon.
Sally Nixon:	02:31:41	That woman will never forget it either.
TV Host:	02:31:44	Do you know who that is, Mrs. Vann?
Jessie Vann:	02:31:46	It must be Sally Nixon.
Speaker 5:	02:31:47	The woman you raised funds to help. Now in Jacksonville, Florida – Mrs. Sally Nixon. Would you tell us please, Mrs. Nixon, how Mrs. Vann helped you and your six children?
Sally Nixon:	02:32:04	After my husband got killed in Georgia, Mrs. Vann put a plea in the Pittsburgh Courier to help us.
TV Host:	02:32:12	Yes. A response came from every race in all parts of the country, didn’t it Ms. Vann?
Jessie Vann:	02:32:17	May I say, that the people’s, our readers, throughout the country contributed.
TV Host:	02:32:24	How was this money used, Mrs. Nixon?
Sally Nixon:	02:32:25	Well, Ms. Vann built us a home and furnished it.
TV Host:	02:32:28	Isn’t it.
Sally Nixon:	02:32:29	That was a wonderful Christmas forever.
TV Host: Jessie Vann:	02:32:31 02:32:32	I’m sure it was. Well, the readers of the Courier built it, and the funds
		that …
Hank Klibanoff:	02:32:36	Now, even after all these years, Sally Nixon still remembers the generous spirit of Jessie Vann.
Sally Nixon:	02:32:43	They built this home that I raised these children. The Pittsburgh Courier.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:32:52	Right.
TV Host:	02:32:52	Thank you. Goodnight to you ladies and gentlemen till next week at this time on This is Your Life. Goodnight.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:32:54	By many standards, Dorothy Nixon’s life really did seem to be improving, but there was no way to get around the reason they’d moved to Florida in the first place. Frankly, the memory of her father’s killing made her angry, and she stayed angry. Especially when she began reading and discovering just how much a person’s color mattered in America.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:33:18	It was just so painful for me to know how the black man had no power over his wife or his daughters and how they were abused. I read a lot, and…because I was trying to understand of why.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:33:35	But one other frustration would grow in her life. The family would not, could not return to Alston for some time. But when they did go back, when they went to the cemetery where they buried Isaiah Nixon, they came to a terrible realization. They could not find where Isaiah Nixon was buried. They knew they were at the right place. They’d all been at his funeral, but they could not find the exact location of his gravesite. No headstone. No foot marker. No cement slab. Nothing.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:34:15	Sometimes in life, there’s a person who helps you out unexpectedly. Not a random one time thing, but a person who watches out for you. Sometimes watches over you. For Dorothy Nixon, that person was her grandmother. Isaiah Nixon’s mother, Daisy.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:34:32	If it wasn’t for her, I don’t think psychologically I would’ve made it through all of that.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:34:38	Remember, on that election day, when Isaiah Nixon was shot, they both witnessed it. Dorothy lost her father. Daisy lost her only son, and so Daisy understood the foundation of Dorothy’s anger.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:34:52	She was the strongest woman I’ve ever known, and she always told the girls what they could accomplish. She always wanted us to make positive out of what happened to my father, because, she said, we would do him an injustice if we didn’t do something with our lives.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:35:17	And so it was with that in mind, that Isaiah Nixon’s mother, Daisy, encouraged Dorothy to go to school.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:35:25	My grandmother wanted me to become a nurse, so I did.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:35:29	It would be a turning point, but another lay ahead. All because of a single class she took at Florida A&M.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:35:37	I start to read that beginning psychology course, and I’m saying, “Why do people behave the way they do?” I just started studying, and behind the scenes, I just helped people with the same strength that my grandmother helped me. Then when I took my psych course in nursing, I felt their pain. It sounds really weird, but I felt their pain.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:36:10	Felt their pain, but her pain was still there. Just below the surface… Anger. A real and present anger.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:36:20	For a long time, I just wanted to kill white men, and literally kill. I think it was 1962. I was a sophomore or junior in college when college students started sitting in. I didn’t go. My roommate went. My sister went, but I knew if I went out there, I probably would have tried to hurt somebody. So, what could I do that was constructive? So, I ran around with some of my other dorm people, and we collected personal items for the girls that were put in jail and that kind of stuff. That’s how I could help. I know I had these strong feelings, but I also knew I had to keep them under control.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:37:13	In school, an early assignment was working with schizophrenic patients. Her instructor told Dorothy about one such patient. A young lady who, for whatever reason, wouldn’t talk, and so Dorothy’s teacher gave her an assignment that would shape both her grade and her life. Her teacher said that if Dorothy could get the patient to talk before the semester was over, she’d get an A for the course.
Dorothy Nixon:	02:37:39	We did a lot of things together including washing clothes, but she never spoke a word. Then, at the end of my semester, and she used to always stand right up at the elevator waiting on me to get off, and that morning, the elevator opened and she said, “Good morning, Ms. Nixon.” I’ll never forget that. “Good morning, Ms. Nixon.”
Hank Klibanoff:	02:38:06	She got her A, and she got a foothold in her career as well because after this incident, Dorothy’s psych teacher wanted to have a conversation. The instructor told Dorothy that she would be going back to school soon and would need a replacement, and she wanted Dorothy to be that replacement. Dorothy would go on to get her masters degree in nursing at the University of Maryland and was on her way to a career in psychiatric nursing.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:38:41	While it was nice to learn and grow, to be appreciated by the Pittsburgh Courier and by her teachers, to have that new house, to see her mom on TV, in the back of her mind, Dorothy still knew what she’d lost. Think about it. Her childhood, her farm, her father, and somehow, somehow the family had even lost the exact location of Isaiah Nixon’s grave, but instead of retreating as an adult, Dorothy would take on a willingness to truly evolve. That willingness would change her life.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:39:22	Years after Isaiah Nixon’s death, someone steps in to unlock the past. It’s the FBI and a voice you might not know, but a name you will: Former FBI director, Robert Mueller.
Robert Mueller:	02:39:38	We cannot turn back the clock. We cannot right these wrongs. But we can try to bring a measure of justice to those who remain.
Hank Klibanoff:	02:39:50	That’s on the next episode of Buried Truths.
Announcer:	02:39:56	CREDITS: Hank Klibanoff is a former newspaper reporter and editor. He’s also coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize book, The Race Beat. Today, he’s a professor at Emory University. Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney. Our editor is 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 Buried Truths. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to stories@buriedtruths. org. You can follow us on social media at buriedtruthspodcasts. There, you’ll find photographs and documents related to the case. On this episode, we had help from the nearly 100 students who’ve taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases class that Hank Klibanoff teaches. Thanks to Professor Brett Gadsden who helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to two past students who’ve stayed really close to this project, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Thanks to Emory University and its centers for digital scholarship and faculty excellence for their support. The audio that you heard from This is Your Life was courtesy of Ralph Edwards Productions. Thanks to Valerie Jackson who played the voice of Jessie Vann, and finally, thanks to the actor David Atkins who played the voice of Dover Carter. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.