A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1)

by John Grisham

Billy Ray Cobb was the younger and smaller of the two rednecks.

Ozzie Walls was the only black sheriff in Mississippi. There had been a few others in recent history, but for the moment he was the only one. He took great pride in that fact, since Ford County was seventy-four percent white and the other black sheriffs had been from much blacker counties. Not since Reconstruction had a black sheriff been elected in a white county in Mississippi.

Jake had often wondered why every small Southern town had an Adams,

a Jefferson, and a Washington, but no Lincoln or Grant. Washington Street ran east and west on the north side of the Clanton square.

K.T. Bruster, or Cat Bruster, as he was known, was, to his knowledge, the only one-eyed black millionaire in Memphis.

“The system reflects society. It’s not always fair, but it’s as fair as the system in New York, or Massachusetts, or California. It’s as fair as biased, emotional humans can make it.”

Blacks had an excuse for being worthless, but for whites in a white world, there were no excuses.