On June 6, 1960, Bibb County Superior Judge Oscar L. Long greeted a new grand jury in his courtroom in Macon, Georgia. The judge had also invited local reporters, who received a printed copy of the instruction he was about to give to the jurors. Judge Long—and the two other judges of the Macon Circuit—had something important to say, and wanted it heard far and wide.
Black people in Bibb County were voting. Not in proportion to their numbers, mind you—that would have been unthinkable in 1960. Bibb County’s population was about one-third Black, while the Black vote accounted for only about 15 percent of the county’s total. But there were enough Black voters to sway a close election. (In Bibb County, “Negro” and white voters used separate ballot boxes and their votes were totaled in separate columns.)
The three judges had jointly decided that the new grand jury (Georgia grand juries, selected by clerks as “upright and intelligent” citizens, were always overwhelmingly white), was to investigate the “inane and inexplicable pattern of Negro bloc voting.” Like political figures all over the segregated South, Long found it inexplicable that Black voters would band together into political organizations and vote together for candidates they chose.
The investigation, Long explained, was sparked by “persistent rumors and accusations concerning the methods used in the solicitation of the Negro vote and the alleged bartering of the bloc vote.” He asked the jurors to investigate this suspicious activity: “Was the Negro vote delivered in bloc to any candidate or candidates . . .What money was involved, if any?…What promises did the candidate make, if any, in order to obtain the bloc vote?” And Long added that the grand jurors’ job went beyond mere criminal charges; whether they indicted anyone or not, they should, Long said, also “bring to light those practices which, while not technically in violation of any law, are yet so immoral or corrupt as to be destructive of the purposes of our system of elections.”
Even though the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act still lay in the future, Long was right to be nervous; there were rumblings of change in Bibb County. The state’s venerable “county unit” system (akin to the national electoral college) was under challenge. County voters would, a few years later, elect their first Republican legislators. Sheriff James I. Wood, like Judge Long, was an elected official. The details of Bibb County politics are hazy, but he seems to have come from a different political faction, and indeed may have benefited from the Black vote; at any rate, he felt less unfriendly toward Black voting than the Superior Court judges did. The day after Long delivered his instructions, Wood issued an open letter to the grand jury protesting the instruction. “This is the type of political-legal action which brings down ridicule and demands for civil right legislation against the South,” he warned. “Negro people will find little difference in principle between attempted intimidation of their people by judicial summons and inquiry and attempted intimidation by physical demonstration such as used by the K.K.K.” He added that if the judges wanted an investigation of “bloc voting,” they should investigate “that gigantic ‘bloc vote’ which is controlled by a handful of men known as the Bibb County Democratic Executive Committee.”
The Superior Court (which had issued the instruction) promptly slapped Wood with three counts of contempt and interference with a grand jury, each carrying a sentence of 20 days in jail and a $600 fine. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the contempt convictions. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that Sheriff Wood was simply engaging in “the types of activity envisioned by the Founders in presenting the First Amendment for ratification.”
Wood v. Georgia is a very minor First Amendment precedent; but Judge Long’s instruction to the grand jury is worth careful study. It elegantly states a persistent racist Southern belief: When Black people vote, there is probably vote fraud; when Black-supported candidates win, there is definitely corruption. If not an exchange of money, then “influence” on Black voters, who (unlike whites) don’t really think for themselves. Are the “rumors and accusations” true? Maybe and maybe not, but at any rate white people don’t … well, gosh darn it, they just don’t feel good about it. And when white people don’t feel good, that’s a crisis.
