Bernard Powers

They arrest the father, and then the lieutenant asks his daughter, where's the pledge?

The daughter says, oh, it's right here, and opens the desk and hands him the pledge.

Merrill's people, the cavalry, are just riding through York County, just pulling people in by the dozen.

So they start to come in, they start to confess, and he's collecting this huge body of material.

These people are pleading out as rapidly as they possibly can.

They're just taking confessions like one after the other and telling them everything about what's happened.

It's absolutely chaotic.

The trials took place in the ballroom of the biggest hotel in Columbia, South Carolina, the capital of the state.

Picture this T-shape.

The judges are at the head of the T, and along one side of the T are the prosecution, and on the other side are the defense lawyers.

The jury is sitting over against the wall.

The rest of the room is filled, Black folks sitting on one side and white folks sitting on the other.

Well, there are two things that a prosecution wants to do.

They want to convict the Klansmen, obviously.

But what they want to do is they want to put teeth on the 14th Amendment.

They want to show that these crimes, hate crimes, are violations of the civil rights.

of the victims.

If you break into somebody's house, you're violating the Fourth Amendment.

If you break into somebody's house and take their guns, you're violating the Second Amendment.

These people are citizens.