When the all-white male jury acquitted both men after just ninety minutes of deliberation on September 23, with the predetermined outcome delayed only “to drink pop,” the outrage was electric, and global. Protests erupted in Chicago and across the country. Dr. Howard railed that “a white man in Mississippi will get no more of a sentence for killing a black person as he would for killing a deer out of season.” One international newspaper pronounced that “the life of a Negro in Mississippi” was “not worth a whistle.” 41
