The still Mississippi courtroom was suspended in a silence that can only be accompanied by prayer when Mose Wright rose from his chair. He stood slowly, as if his 64-year-old back were being unbent by something up in heavens and pointed his unshaking Black hand.
“There he is,” he said, pointing at the white man whose hate-filled eyes glowered back at back across the courtroom.
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But Mose did not lower his arm. He slid his arm slightly to the right and aimed his cotton-picking, murder-identifying hand toward the lie-spewing woman whose words had killed his great-nephew. Unlike her husband, she did not look at Mose. Maybe there was something in her lap. Perhaps it was shame.
During the closing arguments, a defense lawyer told the all-white jury that he was “sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men.” Before Mose took the stand on that late September 1955 afternoon, no Black man had ever testified to the guilt of a white man in the entire history of the state of Mississippi. Mose Wright, an eyewitness to the murder and abduction of his 14-year-old great-nephew, had not only pointed out the murderers in court, but he had publicly identified the woman who was responsible.
