Episode 6: I’m Deeply Sorry

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:	03:21:34	This is Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff. There have been many surprising moments during my three year exploration into the life and legacy of Isaiah Nixon. One of the biggest was when my Emory students discovered his grave site. Now that ended a 67 year mystery.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:21:54	There’s an Isaiah Nixon?
Ellie Studdard:	03:21:55	Yeah. That’s what I was … So I saw something that said Isaiah, so I uncovered the date, it said September 10, 1948.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:22:03	Wow.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:22:07	The times that Dorothy had visited Alston, she’d stopped by the cemetery where her father was buried, but not since she was six had she known the exact location of her father’s final resting place. That was about to change. She drove north from Jacksonville, Florida with her husband of 51 years, Sam Williams, and their son Tony. Their daughter Joy was unable to make the trip. At the same time, I drove south from Atlanta with a van load of students and others from Emory University. The rain was relentless during the three hour drive from Atlanta. It continued as we crossed into Montgomery County and drove into the town of Uvalda, where we met up with Dorothy.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:22:59	My students gathered outside her car like groupies drawn to a rockstar, and she emerged under an umbrella, to extend this high-wattage smile, and then she pulled them close for hugs. Soon, we were part of a small caravan of cars headed to Old Salem Cemetery. Now, that cemetery is at the end of a dirt road that runs three miles into the woods. The rain had made the road a muddy mess. Cars in front of us were slipping one way, cars behind us were sliding another, but soon we arrived in the clearing in the woods that is the cemetery. As if cued up, just as Dorothy stepped out of her car, the rain stopped. It quickly became apparent that this was not going to be a small private Nixon family gathering.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:24:01	Some 10, 15, 20, maybe 25 people had gathered here, and guess who they were? Mostly family members of the men who had stood with Isaiah Nixon and voted in defiance of white supremacy on September 8, 1948. They were the descendants of Dover Carter and John Harris and they had come to bear witness to Dorothy’s moment as she reunited with her father. Dorothy began walking toward her father’s grave, flanked on both sides by my Emory students, and as she got closer and saw the blank headstone, she paused in astonishment.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:24:47	Well, I’ll be damned. Look at that. Mm-mm.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:24:52	She’d seen this headstone before many times, but because it had no name carved into it, no one ever associated it with her father.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:24:59	It was just that close.
Ellie Studdard:	03:25:01	Yep. Yes ma’am.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:25:01	Golly.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:25:07	She moved forward, closer, ’til she was standing over the grave site looking down.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:25:17	How many times did we walk down by here?
Hank Klibanoff:	03:25:20	Dorothy touched the top of the headstone the word Father had been crudely drawn in wet cement. Dorothy knelt, then slowly, lightly traced her fingers over the letters of her father’s name. From the I in Isaiah, to the N in Nixon, and then over his date of birth, April 3, 1920 and then over the date of his death.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:25:51	September the 10th.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:25:54	She stood, a bit wobbly, turned to her son Tony, buried her face into his shoulder, and wept.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:26:09	Dorothy had told me earlier that she did not intend to say anything on that day. I felt the occasion shouldn’t end without some remarks to commemorate this extraordinary moment. And I had brought a passage from the Book of Isaiah to read, and then Dorothy’s son Tony introduced himself.
Tony Williams:	03:26:30	She couldn’t speak, but I just wanted to thank Hank and his class. Hank, for making sure that my grandfather’s story lives on past her…
Hank Klibanoff:	03:26:39	He smiled and nodded towards his mother.
Tony Williams:	03:26:47	…, past my daughter. It’s rare I’m at a loss for words, but I am. I just wanted to say thank you, and this was very necessary.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:26:57	Then Dorothy was moved to speak. Surrounded by the children and relatives of Dover Carter and John Harris, she decided that this should not be a reenactment of the funeral. I mean, there had been enough sadness right here in 1948. This was, well, this was a celebration, really. Not even of the gravesite discovery, but of what that discovery now allowed. See, it allowed Dorothy to let go.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:27:26	I want to thank all of you all for being here. It’s just so awesome. I’ve never seen a group of students as eager, persistent to find everything that they could about my father. They were sincerely into it. I could see it from the very first time I met them and your faces will always be in my mind. Always. And when I heard the video that Hank sent and then I heard, “I found it! I found it!” It was amazing. They came here not to find Daddy’s grave, but just to visit the site in which he was buried, and they found it. That just shows you what a group of students they are.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:28:30	And this led to a really nice moment. As Dorothy’s talking, she turns to Ellie Studdard, the student who found her father’s grave site and addressed her directly.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:28:41	You have to invite me to your wedding! (Laughter)
Dorothy Nixon:	03:28:44	Yeah. I saw them all on their knees trying to clear off and somebody saying, “Well, I found a bottle of water. I’ll go get it and clear off and see.” The whole thing to me is just surreal and then looking at this, it’s just unreal. I can’t say anymore, except all that’s coming in my mind is thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:29:23	Clearly, Dorothy is grateful. She’s moved, and as you heard, she describes all these events as surreal. Well, she had no idea how surreal this defining story in her life was about to become.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:29:49	You know, the many times I’ve visited Montgomery County, I also had the opportunity to visit the gravesites of John Harris and Dover Carter. John Harris, the handyman, never left Alston. He lived for another 46 years after that election day when Claude Sharpe warned him not to vote. He died at age 87. He and his wife Sadie, you remember the one who boarded up the house on that election day, well, they’re buried at Old Salem Cemetery as well, about 30 yards from Isaiah Nixon.
James Harris:	03:30:21	He was kind of like what they would call a jack of all trades.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:30:26	I stood there with his son James Harris recently as he reflected on his father.
James Harris:	03:30:33	Really, the way he carried himself, he was well respected by both black and white.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:30:40	Standing over the grave of John Harris, I asked James if he could say anything that’s on his mind, what would it be?
James Harris:	03:30:48	That I love him. I thank him for the way that he raised us.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:31:01	What about Dover Carter, the NCAAP organizer? Now remember, in 1948 he left Montgomery County. He loaded his 10 children on the Silver Meteor train in Atlanta and headed for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’ve learned more about him over the years.
Carter daughter:	03:31:18	So, I thank my dad for the heritage and also my mother because she was brave too…
Hank Klibanoff:	03:31:24	In the summer of 2016, I spent a long and wonderful afternoon at a church in West Philadelphia with some 20 family members, including six of the children who were on that train to Philadelphia. Now in their 70s and 80s, they stood up one by one and recalled Dover and Bessie Carter with such love and such passion, often through tears.
Carter son:	03:31:48	He was a strong, stern, stern, man, he was a God-fearing man.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:31:55	Then, a year after I met the family in that church, I attended the Dover family reunion back in Montgomery County. Dover Carter’s son, Aaron, allowed me to accompany him to his parents’ burial place.
Aaron Carter:	03:32:09	The main highway, because that look like 280 out there.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:32:13	During this drive, Aaron Carter got reflective and then emotional.
Aaron Carter:	03:32:20	They played a major part in my life, and made me the man that I am today. They’re still playing a major role because I’m always asking myself when I come across problems, things that happen, I ask myself all the time, “How would pop handle this, what would mom say or do?” So, to that end there, very much a part of my life today.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:32:58	A few minutes later, we arrive at Live Oak Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, Georgia. It’s a sweet country church with a small cemetery behind it. As we walked to the gravesite of his parents, Dover and Bessie Carter, a chorus of crickets and cicadas greet us. Now Dover Carter may have fled Alston in fear, but Aaron says his dad always wanted to be buried back in Georgia.
Aaron Carter:	03:33:25	He always wanted to be here. Here’s where he wanted to be.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:33:29	Dover Carter lived to age 81, almost 40 years after that fateful election day. His wife, Bessie, well, looking at her headstone I was able to do some fast arithmetic and I smiled. She was born in the year 1910, and she died in 2009. My goodness, she lived 99 years, but wait, this gets better. I need to tell you that in the time I’ve spent with the
		families of Isaiah Nixon and John Harris and Dover Carter, I’ve noticed many strong and similar threads. They believe deeply in God. Education is the ticket to a worthy and worthwhile life. And nothing should ever keep them from voting on election day. It’s remarkable to learn that Bessie Carter lived long enough to cast her ballot for a black man for president, Barack Obama.
Aaron Carter:	03:34:33	Oh, I think it was one of the proudest minutes of her life. I can imagine how that, looking back, when she wasn’t allowed to even vote, but then now she’s voting for a black man. It was the crowning part, I think, of her life.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:35:00	Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Bessie Carter would die five days later.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:35:09	When the Carters held this family reunion back in Georgia, I was there. As I stood outside the hall where the dinner was about to start, three women approached. They were striding with smiles and joyful spirits in anticipation of the evening’s events. They’re three of Dover and Bessie Carter’s daughters, Mary, Obadiah, and Bessie. I have just one question for them, standing as we are, not that far from where their dad was brutally beaten, “Why no anger?” There’s been no justice, so why no anger? “Their parents were believers,” says one. “They taught us the scriptures,” says another, “not to keep in our heads, but to keep in our hearts.” “It’s a matter of praying,” says a third sister, “and leaving it in God’s hands.”
Hank Klibanoff:	03:36:22	My producer asks if there’s any kind of poem or song that captures what they’re describing. Obadiah blurts out “Yes!” and off they went.
Speaker 11:	03:36:34	(singing) Look where he brought us from. Hmm. Look where he brought us from. Well, he brought me out of darkness, walking in the light. You just look where he brought me from. (joyous laughter) It’s okay. It’s okay. We didn’t know …
Hank Klibanoff:	03:37:13	After Dorothy Nixon-Williams visit to her father’s long lost gravesite, she returned to her home in Jacksonville, where credenzas and tabletops display photos of the Nixon family back in Alston, and the family she raised in Florida. The Wall Street Journal, which had sent a reporter to cover Dorothy’s visit, ran a story about it.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:37:35	A few days later, something unexpected and a bit disturbing arrived through email. “My name is Keith Johnson,” the email began, “I am a nephew of Jim A. And Johnnie Johnson. I would love an opportunity to speak with you about this case.” I felt a sudden tightness. Certainly, we wanted to talk to the family of the Johnson brothers, but
		I had hardly expected them to come to us. I wasn’t sure where this guy was coming from. Since this is a student project, I had a student call them. She spoke with him, got some information about his interest, and returned to tell me that he sounded sincere. Then my student told me where he was living, Jacksonville, Florida. The nephew of the men who killed Isaiah Nixon, was living fewer than 10 miles from Dorothy. I’ll soon learn that Keith Johnson wants to do something more. He wants to meet Dorothy. He wants to talk with her, and he says, he wants to apologize.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:38:44	Keith Johnson, nephew of Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson, lives less than 10 miles from Dorothy Nixon-Williams, and all these years later, he wants to talk? I called Dorothy and told her that Keith wanted to meet her. I did not say that he wanted to apologize, that’s for him to do. Dorothy expressed reluctance to take that step. It just didn’t feel right to her. Throughout 2016, both Ellie Studdard, that’s the student who had discovered his grave, and I kept in touch with Dorothy and with Keith. Sadly, Dorothy’s husband of a half century, Sam, passed away that spring. Toward the end of that year 2016, Dorothy began warming to the idea of meeting Keith. Now, she was saying, “Well, if you and Ellie conclude that Keith’s okay, that he’s sincere,” she might meet him.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:39:45	Well you can go first I don’t think you will guide me in a wrong direction, but I’d really prefer you talk to him first.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:39:56	So, in early 2017, a few of us headed down to Jacksonville to meet Keith Johnson.
Hank Klibanoff:	00:00:00	Keith.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:02	Hello. Yeah, come on in.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:40:03	How are you? I’m Hank.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:04	Nice to meet you.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:40:04	Hank Klibanoff.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:04	Nice to meet you.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:40:05	Good to meet you too.
Ellie Studdard:	03:40:06	I’m Ellie.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:08	Nice to meet you.
Ellie Studdard:	03:40:08	Hi.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:08	Come on in.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:40:08	He greets us at the door and we sit at his dining room table, in a house he shares with Chris, his partner of 23 years.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:16	23 years today, in fact. Yeah, so…
Hank Klibanoff:	03:40:19	Keith is an elementary math teacher who’s in his mid-50s, and he’s looking at old pictures of his uncles, the men who killed Isaiah Nixon.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:27	Jim A. was kind of a larger man. When I say larger, he was heavier. Johnnie, I would say Johnnie was probably about my size, 6 feet tall, like 200 pounds.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:40:38	Keith was born in 1962, 14 years after his uncles killed Isaiah Nixon. Both Johnson brothers died in the late 1970s when Keith was a teenager. Although the whole family lived close to one another, Keith didn’t spend too much time with his uncles, who lived and worked on his grandmother’s farm.
Keith Johnson:	03:40:58	He would be there, and he would work. But then he would just kind of go away and be gone for a while. Nobody seemed to know where he was. Then he would show back up. Both he and Johnnie were really bad alcoholics. They were … drank really bad. In fact, that’s probably … that is what they died from.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:41:19	For Keith, the story of Isaiah Nixon started a few years ago when he got a phone call.
Keith Johnson:	03:41:26	I was sitting in that chair, in the family room, and the phone rang, and it was my brother. And …
Hank Klibanoff:	03:41:31	Craig had seen a story online about how Isaiah, a 28-year- old black man, had been killed outside his home for voting in 1948. And so, Craig calls Keith.
Keith Johnson:	03:41:42	He’s like, “Have you ever heard anything about it?” I’m like, “No, I’ve never heard anything about it.” I said, “But I know how I can find out, and so I just start Googling it.” I’m like, “Yeah. It’s right here.” I guess initially I didn’t want to believe it, but after doing further research and reading, I was like, “This happened.” Initially, I was shocked, embarrassed, even though it happened that long ago, that somebody in our family could’ve done that. Then I felt like they probably got away with murder.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:42:24	Right away, Keith started talking with everyone in his family about it. He talked to his elderly mother. He talked to a cousin who would’ve been a young teenager at the time.
		But, these days, few living relatives are old enough to actually remember 1948.
Keith Johnson:	03:42:40	They either don’t remember or don’t want to talk about it, or, I’m not really sure.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:42:47	What does your instinct tell you?
Keith Johnson:	03:42:48	I think probably more they don’t want to talk about it. It’s just very strange to me that growing up in such a small community, a close-knit community, that nobody ever talked about it. And maybe that’s why they didn’t talk about it because they were so close-knit and they didn’t really want to discuss it. It was just better left unsaid.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:43:10	No one was saying, “Oh gosh, we knew Jim A. and Johnnie. They would never do that.”
Keith Johnson:	03:43:14	I don’t think anybody necessarily said they couldn’t believe that they would do something like that, but I don’t think they would have ever thought that they would do something … does that make sense? I never really heard anybody say really anything bad about them. I had heard that Jim A. could be mean. I never saw that from him. When I say mean, I don’t really know, there’s not any specific things that people have said that he had done or would do. They just said that when he was drinking, he sometimes wasn’t very nice.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:43:49	I wanted to know how Keith responded to his uncles’ claim of self-defense.
Keith Johnson:	03:43:55	Do I really feel like it was self-defense? I didn’t really feel like that it was self-defense. Deep in my soul, I know that that was not an act of self-defense. They can say that it was, but why were they there in the first place? You say, “Oh, well the story says they were going to get him to work.” Really?
Hank Klibanoff:	03:44:21	And if it was self-defense, Keith asks, why was everybody so secretive about it?
Keith Johnson:	03:44:26	If you were innocent and you did this to save yourself, then why wouldn’t you talk about it?
Hank Klibanoff:	03:44:32	No matter what provoked the crime, Keith says, knowing about it now, makes him feel ashamed.
Keith Johnson:	03:44:40	We weren’t raised to be racist, or not be kind to people, and treat people with respect. That’s not how we were raised and brought up.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:44:54	Keith tells us he remembers his grandmother, now that’s Jim A. and Johnnie Johnson’s mother, welcoming people in need into the Johnson home, white and black.
Keith Johnson:	03:45:05	She would just take people in, like people that … like drifters or whoever, that needed a place to stay or needed food or whatever. She would take … So, I mean, what you consider to be good, kind, wholesome people. That’s why I guess too, well you don’t really expect something like that to happen in your family, that close.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:45:26	The more I talked to Keith, the more confident I am that he is truly remorseful. Not just from his words, but from his actions. See, it turns out that Keith had already, a few years ago, reached out to Isaiah Nixon’s widow, Sally. Keith explains how he went to her home to apologize, face to face. He figured he knew the answer to the first question on his mind.
Keith Johnson:	03:45:50	Did anybody ever say they were sorry that that happened, from our family? Did anybody ever apologize to them? I just wanted to do that. I wanted to be able to tell her, that I was sorry for the pain and suffering that someone in my family caused her and her family.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:46:06	Incidentally, I later talked to Dorothy about this. She says her mother did once mention that a man from the Johnson family did come and meet with her once, to say he was sorry. But Dorothy at the time, thought her elderly mother was probably just confused, and she didn’t believe her.
Keith Johnson:	03:46:23	I think my sadness is for his family though. It’s for, especially when I met Mrs. Nixon, and I’m like uh, here this lady, what she had to go through, like witnessing that, and having to live through that with her small kids, and having to raise her kids by herself without her husband or without their dad, and the sadness comes from that. It’s just really sad and it’s a horrible thing for them to have had to go through.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:46:49	Now, for the same reasons, he wants to meet with Dorothy. Keith wants to tell her the exact same thing. He wants to tell her that he’s sorry. The next morning, I’m at Dorothy’s home. I’m with my student, Ellie, and with a producer. We tell Dorothy that we think he’s genuine. He’s sincere. So, is Dorothy ready now? She looks back on the past year.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:47:17	You know, I just wasn’t ready.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:47:21	And now?
Dorothy Nixon:	03:47:22	Now, I’m ready to meet him.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:47:35	Keith Johnson wants to apologize for what his uncles did. Well, what does an apology mean?
Hank Klibanoff:	03:47:45	In recent decades, in the civil rights cold cases where no justice was, or will ever be achieved, a sense of closure has become the next best thing. But, it’s a distant second. When Robert Muller said the FBI would reopen and examine unpunished, racially-motivated murders, he didn’t promise justice. Instead, he hoped to bring closure to the families. Families of many victims received their closure in letters from the Justice Department. Most of the letters included the words, “We regret to inform you.” And many of the letters said that the people responsible for the death, and they did say death, not murder, were themselves now dead, so there would be no further investigation.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:48:35	Now, Dorothy has known for a long time that her family would never receive justice, but an apology from someone in the Johnson family, that might help. Now keep in mind, this nation has never tackled its history of white supremacy and violence, through any sort of truth and reconciliation proceedings, the way South Africa did in the 1990s. So, an apology, well, it’s better than nothing.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:49:05	Here’s one example of many apologies that have been offered in recent years. In Mississippi, a klansman who helped abduct and torture two black 19-year-olds in 1964 revealed the truth at a trial 42 years later. That testimony led to the conviction of the klansman who’d actually killed those young men. From the witness stand, the klansman who told the truth, then turned, unexpectedly by the way, to the families of the victims, and he apologized for his role. The families personally forgave him.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:49:45	In recent years, a handful of police chiefs in the South have also offered apologies. In 1940, in LaGrange, Georgia, a lynch mob invaded a city jail, grabbed a black man named Austin Callaway, then drove him out of town, where they shot and killed him. In 2017, LaGrange police chief, Lou Dekmar, apologized.
Lou Dekmar:	03:50:08	I sincerely regret and denounce the role our police department played in Austin’s lynching, both through our action and our inaction, and for that, I’m profoundly sorry. It should never have happened.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:50:25	Now, some of these people from the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, they may not apologize but instead take actions that might put them on the right side of history.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:50:42	Remember Henry Durrence the assistant US attorney in Savannah? The one who seemed so intent on discouraging the Justice Department from investigating the
		Dover Carter and Isaiah Nixon cases? More than a decade later, in 1961, Henry Durance was a state judge in southeast Georgia, and he made news when he named the first black person to a county board of voter registration.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:51:10	In the South, and well beyond it, right now we’re seeing a lot of state and local governments, as well as universities, grappling awkwardly with their histories. They’re weighing whether and when and how to apologize. The University of Mississippi has decided to retitle a building that’s named after James K. Vardaman. Now, he was a former governor and US senator, and his racist views, the university said, were morally odious.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:51:40	Georgia surprised a lot of people when it removed the statue of white supremacist Tom Watson from the state capitol grounds a couple of years ago and replaced him with a statue of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Georgia governor Nathan Deal spoke at the event to commemorate the statue of Dr. King.
Nathan Deal:	03:52:01	Our actions here today symbolize the evolved mindset of our state as we continue to reconcile our history and our hearts.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:52:20	Some changes of names and removals of monuments and other symbols of the past have been going on longer than most people realize. The most dominant monument inside the Mississippi State Capitol when I arrived there as a newspaper reporter in 1973, was a statue of former governor and U.S. Senator, Theodore Bilbo. Bilbo advocated shipping black Americans back to Africa. When the all-white primary was struck down, he famously said that “the only way now to stop blacks from voting was the night before.” That prominent statue of Bilbo, it was removed in 1982 because it was offensive. A few months ago in Jacksonville, Mississippi, I returned to the capital and was looking for it. What happened to the statue? And I found it, in the most far away, difficult-to-find legislative hearing room. There he was, standing alone, in the dark.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:53:25	We’re at the point, it seems, when the history we know, see, and teach, is changing in two important ways. We are pushing historically significant white supremacists off their pedestals and hiding them in dark corners. At the same time, we’re bringing forth more visibly the stories of the unknown victims of that period. People like Isaiah Nixon, Dover Carter, John Harris, who were killed, beaten, and harassed, just because they tried to vote. And yet, with all these attempts to square up with the past, another starker reality is this, attempts to suppress black voters are on the upswing. Since 2010, 20 states have adopted restrictive
		voting laws. What some democrats in the South did in the 1940s, some republicans are doing today – purging voter roles, curtailing the number of voting days and hours, closing or moving polling places, discriminatory redistricting. And of course, pushing for voter IDs, with the argument, as yet unproven, that it is necessary to overcome pervasive voter fraud.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:54:42	I began this podcast saying that when we understand who we were, we can better understand who we are. We’re struggling today with loud echoes from our history. I would just point out, as this podcast has, that black voters have some experience in this field. White politicians for a long time have given them reason to be suspicious. Black voters can calculate from experience, how these changes in voting procedures would, and already do, disproportionately restrict the black vote more than the white vote, in the same way that the all white primary did. Given our history, it’s going to be hard to convince black voters that there’s not a hidden motive behind these moves. We can’t change our history, but we can let it guide us to understanding.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:55:45	Dorothy Nixon-Williams has said she’s ready to welcome Keith Johnson at her home, but uncertain. The image of his uncles arriving at her farm, calling out for her father, shooting him, hearing her mother screaming, “Fall, Isaiah, fall.” All of that is still vivid in her mind. And now this man who’s about to arrive at her home is close kin to the men who did it.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:56:13	I have no idea what I’m going to say to Mr. Johnson, but I do know that he has nothing to do with what his relatives did 67 years ago. I realize that and so, I know I’m not going to treat him as if he did. I can honestly say, I don’t know what I’m going to say to him. I’m just going to be myself.
Keith Johnson:	03:56:42	Hey.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:56:43	When Keith Johnson arrives, he’s understandably nervous.
Keith Johnson:	03:56:47	May I give you a hug?
Dorothy Nixon:	03:56:48	Sure.
Keith Johnson:	03:56:49	So nice to meet you.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:56:51	You looked like you were a hugger.
Keith Johnson:	03:56:53	Thanks for meeting me. I really appreciate it.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:56:54	They moved toward two sofas. Keith tells Dorothy she looks like her mother, which brings a smile to Dorothy’s face, and then he gets straight to it.
Keith Johnson:	03:57:04	I wanted to meet you just to express how sorry I am for my family, for what members of my family put your family through. I just found out about everything that happened, I guess about three or four years ago. It was almost like it was a big family secret in our family that nobody ever spoke of it, and when I found out about it and found out that your mom lived here, I just I wanted to meet her and tell her how sorry that I was for what my family put your family through. I just felt like, deep in my soul, that had probably never been said to your family before.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:57:45	You’re the very first person that’s said that, but you the first person I met from the family. And you don’t share any responsible for that.
Keith Johnson:	03:57:59	I guess kind of in a way I do feel something responsibility. I feel a lot of embarrassment and remorse that they did that.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:58:13	At this moment, Dorothy becomes the psychiatric nurse she’s trained to be. Her eyes never leave his. She nods her head and she shows she’s listening. Yes, he’s there for her, but she knows, this man across from her needs to be heard and understood. Keith, in response, opens up.
Keith Johnson:	03:58:38	It’s just a horrible thing that they did, horrible thing and it’s unexcusable. I’m just deeply sorry.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:58:48	I don’t know what to say or …
Keith Johnson:	03:58:51	You don’t have to say anything.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:59:00	… Except it’s great to meet you and to get a picture of you. It’s been a tough road. it’s really been pretty tough.
Hank Klibanoff:	03:59:07	Dorothy is curious about a few things, had he ever heard about this growing up? “No,” Keith says.
Keith Johnson:	03:59:14	So, I grew up around there but-
Dorothy Nixon:	03:59:15	So, there’s nobody living today that’s old, old age that remembers that?
Keith Johnson:	03:59:20	That … well, my mom. But, my mom has no really recollection of it because she, when I asked her about it, when I found out about it, I was like, ” Do you remember this happening?” I said, “Did Dad ever talk about it,” and she said she remembered when it happened, but she said my dad never talked about it. She said that he was embarrassed by it, so he just never really spoke about it.
Dorothy Nixon:	03:59:46	Just listening to you, you do sound like a very good person. And there are many things that happen in our families that we are not proud of at times and so forth. I would apologize too just like you did, that you had family members that could do something so horrific, but you can’t carry that burden that somebody else did, does that make sense to you?
Keith Johnson:	04:00:12	It does.
Dorothy Nixon:	04:00:14	I hope just after meeting me and so forth, it will resolve some of that.
Keith Johnson:	04:00:19	I think being able to meet your mom that day and just express that to her and then being able to express it to you. I just felt like it was something that needed to be done because it had not been done.
Hank Klibanoff:	04:00:32	Dorothy listens, looks away, where I’m not sure, then turns back to Keith. She becomes self-analytical in a way I’d not heard before.
Dorothy Nixon:	04:00:42	You need to find some resolution somewhere. I think I did myself an injustice to wait as long as I did to reach that point, you know.
Hank Klibanoff:	04:00:51	She smiles.
Dorothy Nixon:	04:00:54	But I feel okay.
Hank Klibanoff:	04:00:57	He reaches out, takes her hand, and squeezes gently. Dorothy’s eyes light up and that high wattage smile returns. As Keith leaves, Dorothy stands in the doorway and waves.
Keith Johnson:	04:01:12	All right. You have a good rest of your day. Thanks again. I really appreciate it.
Dorothy Nixon:	04:01:16	All right. You too.
Hank Klibanoff:	04:01:17	Keith gets in his car, turns around a corner, and he’s gone. But I’m happy to say that Keith and Dorothy are still in touch today.
Dorothy Nixon:	04:01:33	At this point in my life, all of this happened for a purpose. Right now, I feel very comfortable. I don’t feel any animosity or anything like that. I feel at peace. I really do with that. I’ve accepted it and that’s good. It’s good for me and it’s good for the family too.
Hank Klibanoff:	04:01:59	Good for her, good for the family, and for Isaiah Nixon. At the cemetery where he’s buried, at that clearing in the woods, at the end of three miles of dirt road, at Isaiah Nixon’s gravesite, the slab with his name crudely etched by a finger in wet cement is fully cleaned and clear. The old headstone, well, it’s been removed and in its place, Isaiah Nixon’s family has placed a new and beautiful headstone. It’s made of Georgia granite and it radiates respect. Underneath ann etching of hands folded in prayer, the headstone gives the dates of his birth and of his death and then, in all capital letters, it reads, “IN LOVING MEMORY, ISAIAH NIXON, FATHER, OUR HERO.”
Announcer:	04:03:12	CREDITS: Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas, and the executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Our production team would love to hear from you. There are a couple ways you can reach out to us. On Apple Podcasts, you can rate us and leave us a review, that literally helps more people find the show. If you have questions about the case or want to share your own stories about how this podcast has affected you, send us an email, stories@buriedtruths.org. Please also follow us on social media at Buried Truths Podcasts, where you’ll find photographs and documents related to the case. Hank Klibanoff is a former newspaper reporter and editor. He’s co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Race Beat, and today he’s a professor at Emory University. 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 Gadston who helped create and teach the course. Thanks to Emory University and its center for digital scholarship and faculty excellence for their support. Special thanks to two past students, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Buried Truths Is a production of WABE Atlanta.