Racist Roots
Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty

A Comprehensive Report by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation

A Juror’s Childhood Memories: ‘They’d take him out and kill him’

By CDPL Staff
Mass Incarceration
Backlash to Civil Rights
Centralized Death Penalty
Slavery & Jim Crow
Introduction

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The legacy of lynching lives on, and sometimes it walks right into our courtrooms. In 1994, this white juror was called to serve on a capital trial in Davidson County, North Carolina. He was excused before making it onto the final jury, but his words chillingly reveal how growing up in a culture of lynching shaped his notions of American “justice.” 

This was the juror’s response when the prosecutor asked whether he believed that, if proven guilty, the defendant should automatically get the death penalty regardless of any mitigating evidence: 

Next – Growing Up with Racism: A Conversation with Andre Smith, Father of a Murdered Son

I lived on an Army post until I was in fourth grade. It was completely integrated. My best friend was white. That was the only world I knew. And then, in fourth grade, my mother moved us to Washington Terrace in Raleigh. It was my first time seeing segregated schools, segregated water fountains… There was a chain link fence that divided the black community from the white community. I remember looking at that fence and just grappling, just struggling to understand. I didn’t know where I fit.

Andre Smith has spent much of his life searching for a home in a world infected by racism. His first response was anger. In high school, he and some other kids started calling themselves the “Black Panthers.” They would walk into the cafeteria at their newly integrated school and sit down at tables filled with white students. He had verbal arguments and fist fights and, after teachers branded him a troublemaker, dropped out of school. 

As he grew older, he went in the opposite direction, searching for utopian communities free of racism.

I want to take this guy who did this to my son and give him an opportunity to do something with his life… I bet this guy can do something good. I bet he already has done something good.

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Previous – In Black & White: Lynching & the Death Penalty were Two Sides of the Same Coin
Next – Growing Up with Racism: A Conversation with Andre Smith, Father of a Murdered Son

Racist Roots is a project of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, in collaboration with scholars, advocates, historians, artists, poets and people directly affected by the death penalty. It aims to place North Carolina’s modern death penalty within the context of 400 years of history and to expose its deep entanglement with the aims of white supremacy. This project is the result of more than a year of research, writing, and relationship building. Read about our sources. This project would not be possible without the generous support of many individuals and foundations.

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