Two men. One black. The other white. Both experienced a racially motivated
murder some 40 years ago. On Monday, Hal Dahmer and Lee Cody, who don’t
know each other, came to Hattiesburg to share their stories. Both men
had been broken by these murders and the subsequent imperfect justice.
Dahmer arrived at the Shady Grove Baptist Church wearing a blue checkered
shirt and overalls. He had started his day plowing his okra field. Pausing
for a moment, he reflected on whether justice had been served in the 1966
murder of his father, Vernon Dahmer, a voting rights activist who did not
live long enough to ever cast a ballot.
“Justice has been served, but what? That’s as far as I can
go. There’s a lot of things I don’t feel good about. But you
have to feel good about something. Because it did happen.” After 32
years and four hung juries, Klan leader Sam Bowers was sentenced to life
in prison in 1998 for murdering the elder Dahmer in a firebombing attack
on the family’s rural farmhouse.
Another man was also waiting to speak to us when our bus pulled into the
thick woods of Hattiesburg. Lee Cody, Jr. was clutching his black briefcase
and standing on the hot pavement. His calm and quiet manner belied his urgent
need to right a wrong that occurred 40 years ago.
Cody began his journey in Jacksonville, Florida, where in March 1964, working
as a homicide detective, he and his partner solved a murder, securing key
confessions and tracking down the gun, only to find out the case had mysteriously
been pulled from the records. When they persisted in trying to get a conviction,
the two investigators were pulled off the case and later fired.
The murder victim, Johnnie Mae Chappell, was a domestic worker. On that
day, rioting had erupted in Jacksonville as black residents protested race
laws that relegated them to separate drinking fountains and backs of buses.
But Chappell was preoccupied with buying ice cream for her 10 children. Somewhere
on the way home, her wallet had fallen out of her soggy grocery bag. When
she went back to retrace her steps, she was fatally shot by someone in a
passing car.
“The only thing we done was do what was right and try and uphold
the law and protect the civil rights of a black American,” Cody said.
Cody still bristles at the thought that only one person was convicted with
a three-year sentence in the Chappell case. He speaks of cover-ups and says
his life has never been the same. He is haunted by demons of failed relationships,
too much drinking, and revenge.
“It made me bitter. Horribly bitter. It was tough for me. It devastated
my life. I never acted normal again,” he says with a nervous laugh. “It
was something inside me grinding: You are not going to get away with this.
I’m going to tell on you and the whole world is going to know what
happened. I took exception to it then and I take exception to it now. That’s
why I am here today.”
After telling his story, Cody abruptly left. He didn’t go into the
Shady Grove Chapel to hear the speakers and allow the gospel music to fill
his wounds like a healing salve. More than 130 people had turned out to welcome
us and record their experiences. Many had come after only seeing a flyer.
I wish that Cody had stayed. Although he has befriended Chappell’s
son, whom he says is like a son to him, I sense that he lacks the community
that has buffered Dahmer and his family all these years. As the afternoon
wore on, my thoughts centered on these two men’s stories. And I came
away with an understanding of how racism can poison so many lives. Children.
Wives. Neighbors. And homicide detectives who try to take on the system and
are instead consumed by it.
