I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction

by Kidada E. Williams

George Roper was one of several witnesses at the hearings who voluntarily put their bodies into evidence, verifying their claims of physical injury and pain.50 George, who had been struck several times by armed men, told investigators in Huntsville, “I have the pistol-ball now,” pointing to the knot underneath his clothed skin. George had paid a doctor ten dollars to remove one of the balls, and he removed his coat to show investigators the scar. “You can feel the bullet here above the elbow,” he said of the remaining ball.51 Of their own initiative and at the behest of examiners, witnesses displayed fresh stripes from whippings, scars from bullet wounds and stabbings, and burns from being hanged or dragged, revealing their familiarity with cultural practices demanding the display of bodily pain.52 Witnesses like George understood they could not simply tell investigators, so they let their bodies talk, avowing the truth of what they endured.53 Neither Leanna Garrison nor Charlotte Fowler had visible physical wounds, and their slain husbands had been buried. But in case investigators in Atlanta doubted her account of Jerry’s killing by massive gunfire, Leanna brought the bullet-ridden coat he had been wearing to show “he was willfully murdered,” she said.54 At a hearing in Spartanburg, Charlotte Fowler stated that one of her husband’s killers had dropped a chip from a fire on Wallace’s chest as he lay dying after being shot in the head; when lawmakers pressed her on the poi...