Warnings of tropical storm Bonnie saturated the local news. For most of the previous day, it looked like the Tallahassee event would be a washout. Friday morning brought the promised rains, but no storm could stop James Colbert from attending the civil rights gathering at the Lincoln Community Center-not when you have a story like his.
Colbert was just 17 when officers arrived at his home "to talk." When he was taken to the police station, he would be interrogated for nearly two days as a suspect in the murder of a white teen a month earlier. A local general store had been firebombed, killing the owner's son inside.
According to Colbert, a 15-year-old who knew him had been promised $10,000 by police if he implicated some friends in the crime. Colbert says police deprived him of sleep, refused to let him call his family, and ultimately told him he would only be set free if he admitted to being in the car, even though he had a pretty good alibi. He was in jail at the time of the bombing, on a charge of driving without a license. Nobody ever checked it out. He was convicted of the murder and sentenced to life.
"I was just a boy. I never in trouble before and here I was in jail for murder," he said. "They didn't let me call my parents. They finally heard my name on the news."
A lot of guilty people claim their innocence. Colbert would claim it every day for three and a half years before the real killer came forward.
The father of the murdered boy finally confessed--he had shot the firebomb into his own store to claim insurance money, not realizing his son was inside.
Incredibly, Colbert says he feels lucky the truth ever came out at all: "The police needed someone to blame and they figured it was some Negroes who did it."
