Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (12 page)

It did not help that Isabella Mitchell, Alice’s mother, rarely made public appearances. Newspapers noted that her only outings seemed to be long visits downtown with Alice, where she would ignore the press vying for her attention as she entered and exited the jail.
⁴⁹
Despite her reticence to engage, Isabella was spoken of often, her mental history was discussed in newspapers and in the courtroom; the defense would painstakingly review her hospitalizations in order to establish hereditary history, a requirement of the “present insanity” plea.

Freda was murdered a decade after her mother died, at which point her eldest sister, Ada Volkmar, became her surrogate mother. Although Ada was credited as the only person from either family to uncover the elopement in time to stop it, she was not commended for her foresight or her decisive action. No one seemed very interested in the steps she took to intervene, or the maternal authority she wielded over Freda. With just one disastrous exception—the last note she sent before supposedly quitting Memphis—Freda had cut off all contact with Alice, just as Ada had commanded. And
it was Ada who informed Isabella of Alice and Freda’s plans, and likewise implored her to impose a similarly tough stance. But the press rewarded Ada’s diligence by vaguely describing her as “not well,” a condition that was ironically the effect of the murder far more than, as the newspapers insinuated, an underlying cause of it. She rarely appeared in court.

Mrs. Johnson, Lillie’s mother, was yet another woman said to suffer from “nervous prostration,” and was thus confined to her room. Similarly, Mrs. Kimbrough, still playing host to the Wards, was said to have been experiencing heart trouble from all of the excitement the case had brought into her life. In the usual custom, the women’s first names were not mentioned.

In other words, the matrons were portrayed as incapacitated or silent or, most commonly, both. The young women, particularly Jo Ward, were held in high esteem as long as they demonstrated the kind vulnerability expected of women in the Victorian era.
⁵⁰
And of course, the prettier, the better.

R
EPORTERS WERE NO DOUBT GLAD TO SEE
Judge Julius DuBose, a notoriously bombastic character in Memphis, sitting on the bench. He was both intolerant and despotic, a misogynist and avowed bigot whose colorful interludes would earn their fair share of space in the dailies.
⁵¹
The son of a wealthy planter, Judge DuBose was an early leader in the Tennessee Ku Klux Klan, and former editor of the
Public Ledger
.
^52
,
53
He was elected to the criminal court in 1886, but his heavy-handed tactics earned
him plenty of enemies. Impeachment proceedings against him would begin in 1893, a year after Alice was arrested for Freda’s murder. In fact, it would be Luke Wright, one of Alice’s own attorneys, who would prosecute Judge DuBose before the state senate on an impressive tally of thirty-four counts. He would be impeached and convicted twice—for failing to recognize a writ of habeas corpus and overstepping his authority—but his position was eventually restored.

M
EMBERS OF THE JURY
had yet to be selected, but the press was not deterred from spirited conjecture. No juror who called himself a Southern gentleman, declared the
Commercial
, would indict a young, white lady from a good family. Even though the evidence was substantial and Alice’s guilt “indisputable,” the
Commercial
bemoaned the possibility of any judgment against this poor young woman of good standing. The tone of its coverage seemed to criticize—but was actually applauding, in advance—the Memphians who would eventually determine the fate of the nineteen-year-old woman. If there was one thing the nation should know about the men of Shelby County, the
Commercial
assured readers, it was that “their chivalry exceeds their sense of justice.”
⁵⁴

The jurors’ identities were still unknown, but their skin color and gender were not: The jury box was guaranteed to be stocked with white men. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 may have stated that “no citizen possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court in the United States, or of any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” but by 1883, inconsistent state rulings would culminate in a landmark Supreme Court verdict. The Justices overturned the law eight-to-one, ensuring people of color were denied the right to participate in the judicial sphere.
⁵⁵

What would happen if women
could
serve as jurors? The
Commercial
hypothesized that an all-female jury—by which they surely meant white women—would be free of the chivalrous regard expected of their male counterparts, and would thus find Alice Mitchell guilty. But, of course, this was a theoretical scenario; in 1892, women were barred from the polls, and even after the right to vote was finally won in 1920, states continued to deny them the opportunity to serve on juries. The very presence of women in the Shelby County courtroom was a peculiarity of the case, and while it was considered a challenging dose of modernity, an anomaly tolerated because the unusual saga was understood to have moral implications.
⁵⁶
Gender rules, it was thought, could be relaxed for a hearing that would ultimately reinforce them.

T
HERE WERE CONCERNED
but vastly outnumbered Memphians who implored the papers to pay less attention to the case, hoping it would allow for a speedier trial.

It is most devoutly to be wished that the trial of Alice Mitchell and Lillie Johnson may take place at a very early date, and the case removed from public consideration. Its prolongation would be deplorable. It is one of those cases which appeals strongly to morbid sentimentality and which tends unduly to excite disease of weak minds.
⁵⁷

But the trial was of the utmost importance to the nation for reasons far greater than entertainment—though it was certainly an added attraction. All the major mass media publications flocked to Memphis for the first time because the Mitchell case was not just about two young women,
same-sex love, murder, or even lunacy—it was about American modernity.

In the 1890s, the predominant national identity of whiteness—one that had been disrupted by the Civil War, Reconstruction, and an influx of Chinese and Mexican immigrants—was a narrative more uncertain than ever before.
⁵⁸
Whiteness was an inherently unstable ideology, constantly threatened by economic and political upheaval, and now Alice provided yet another perceived menace to the existing narrative: a gendered threat to white men’s authority, challenging their power across the spectrum—particularly in the domestic sphere. This was a battle for their own homes.

The kind of violence Alice had displayed with her father’s razor was a “masculine” act as much as it was a privilege of white men. If anyone else was seizing it for themselves—as the nascent suffrage movement, demands for broader political enfranchisement, calls for fair wages and greater opportunities suggested—the traditional power base of white America was in peril. And women were just the beginning. Soon all races and classes would follow. For many white men, the bloody developments in Memphis illustrated the dangers they collectively faced. It served as a dire call to claim what belonged to them, and to which they were duty bound, by natural and civil laws, to protect.

L
ILLIE HAD BEEN FRIENDS
with Alice for years, but in the months before the murder, it was as if she hardly knew her. When Freda cut off contact with Alice, Jo had done the same with Lillie, but her exile came with no explanation. Without any knowledge of Alice and Freda’s foiled elopement, the sudden severing of friendship with the Wards, especially with Jo, had been a great loss for Lillie—and a baffling one. She was confused and hurt, but her close-knit family offered solace, as did other friends. At that point, Lillie was far more concerned about Alice, who seemed altogether changed.

But nothing in Alice’s dark and brooding moods could have prepared Lillie for the events of that late afternoon in January. She had no idea that, while she lingered behind in the buggy, an old friend was being murdered at the hands of another.

“Oh! What have you done to her?” Lillie cried from the buggy as Alice barreled up the hill.

Alice climbed back into her seat and roughly steered the buggy away, ignoring Lillie’s questions. She rode with only one hand on the reins, while the other she shoved deep into her dress pocket, desperately fishing around for the razor, and, in the process, bloodying Freda’s last letter to her. Alice feared she had dropped it during the melee—and she wasn’t done with it.

Had everything gone as planned, Alice would have first cut Freda, and then herself, so that the two lovers could bleed out in each other’s arms in one final—and eternal—embrace. But Jo and the growing crowd had interfered, and in the ensuing struggle, Alice had lost track of the razor. Only days later, when her sisters searched the buggy, did the murder weapon reappear. By that time, she and Lillie would be together once again, this time as cellmates in jail.

Having safely maneuvered the buggy onto Court Street after the murder, Alice finally answered Lillie’s question.

“I have cut Freda’s throat,” she said.

“No, you haven’t—have you?” Lillie cried in disbelief.

“Yes, I have,” she said.

Alice had given up on the razor, and countered with her own alarming question. “What is the quickest way I can kill myself?”

“Don’t do it while you are here with me,” Lillie pleaded, still piecing together what was happening. “Go home and tell your mother what you have done.”

“Is there much blood on my face?” Alice asked, to which Lillie answered yes, as she held her young nephew close. Alice was covered in blood, a steady stream dripping down her face and onto her coatdress.

“Take my handkerchief out of my pocket,” Alice ordered, “and wipe it off.” But as Lillie moved a finely woven cloth toward her friend’s face, a new realization came to Alice.

“Oh, no,” she said now. “It’s Freda’s blood. Leave it there. I love her so.”
⁵⁹

“L
ADIES TO THE RIGHT, AND GENTS TO THE LEFT
,”
bellowed Judge DuBose.
⁶⁰
It was as if he were directing revelers in a dance hall, and not throngs of voyeurs at the habeas corpus hearing of a teenaged girl. The question of whether Lillie Johnson would be escorted back to Alice Mitchell’s jail cell or returned to her family was to be determined, and nobody wanted to miss a minute of the show.

It did not matter that no verdict would be handed down on that day in late February, 1892, or that an appearance by Alice was in no way guaranteed. Lillie may have been a minor character in the same-sex love murder, but it was still the hottest ticket in town. In the days before every American household had a radio and television, entertainment options were scarce; just like a theater troupe passing through town, a sensational trial offered a rare and brief spectacle. If the day’s show starred Lillie, then people happily turned their attention to her.

It had been a month since the grand jury indicted Alice and Lillie, and weeks since the arraignment, but the public’s interest had not waned in the least. Every moment of this case was unfolding like a serial drama, and the eager audience wanted to see the story progress.

Records of the grand jury proceedings have been lost, and its deliberations were closed to the public, but we know at least one witness testified that Lillie had been present during the murder—and had done nothing to prevent it. When Alice herself confessed to the authorities, she revealed that it was Lillie who had directed her home, to tell her mother of the murder, rather than advising her to proceed immediately to the police station and surrender. Under Tennessee law, that was enough evidence to charge Lillie with “aiding and abetting” Alice Mitchell in the murder of Freda Ward. It was on the basis of that testimony that she was taken into custody and held without bail.

Lillie’s attorneys argued that the grand jury lacked sufficient evidence to warrant their client’s arrest, but in order to prove it, they would have to call their own witnesses to the stand. It would be the first time that testimony was heard in an open courtroom, and
that
was what the public had come for.

But the show had been delayed until construction work on the courthouse was completed. Well aware that the case had become a national obsession, and that the local economy was getting a boost from the influx of visitors in town, Judge DuBose’s unorthodox request to expand the Criminal Court in Shelby County was granted—even though it took almost a full month to do so. Every few days, the court date was pushed back once again by the construction project. But Judge DuBose was enjoying the frenzy and attention, making full use of the time. His name appeared in the newspapers every single day; family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances,
and assorted others called on him at the courthouse and at his home at nearly every hour in pursuit of information. He had no hesitation about continually postponing the trial date to accommodate all corners—especially members of the press.

Knowing that the press was in control of the day-to-day public narrative of the trial, Judge DuBose made sure journalists had the best seats in the house. He ordered a special section of box seats for the press, a move that immediately set off squabbles among the reporters over which paper deserved the best spot. But even with the expanded space and the reserved seating, demand quickly overwhelmed the room. Reporters who managed to secure box seats were quick to mock those who scrambled around them.

The clamoring crowds gathered at the courthouse and the general public’s frantic curiosity in the trial were becoming the case’s main storylines. “Another Day of Thrilling Interest in the Criminal Court, The Attendance Was Even Greater Than on Opening Day, Opera Glasses Leveled on the Cowering Defendant Witness,” exclaimed the
Memphis Appeal Avalanche
.

It did not take long for one newspaper to distinguish itself from the pack. It was not the
Appeal Avalanche
, the
Commercial
, nor the big out-of-towners, like the
New York Times
or the
San Francisco Chronicle
. Judge DuBose’s former employer, the
Memphis Public Ledger
, was by far the most popular news outlet. It was available at the conclusion of each eventful day in court, however inconclusive, with exhaustive commentary on every detail of the unfolding case, keeping readers coming back for more.

According to the
Public Ledger
, Judge DuBose’s courtroom had quickly become the most democratic public place in all of Memphis. By the time President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, Tennessee had abolished slavery and returned to the Union fold, but Jim Crow laws helped maintain the South’s rigid, deeply entrenched racial hierarchy. These segregation laws mandated that African Americans were kept “separate and equal”—meaning separate and unequal. They ensured
systematic economic, educational, and social disadvantages well after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were passed.
⁶¹
But in this rare instance—the theater that was Judge DuBose’s courtroom—people from across class, race, and gender lines shared a space.
⁶²
They sat side-by-side as they would in almost no other setting in Memphis.

Staid Matrons and their young daughters sat check by jowl with women of doubtful character and women whose lack of all character was blazoned on their faces as plain as a pikestaff. There were white and black, mulattoes, quadroons, octoroons and a sprinkling of the genus whose class has never been distinctly defined—all eager to see two of their sex in peril of their lives, and hoping, perhaps, to hear something excitingly naughty.”
⁶³

Female spectators, who DuBose separated from the male spectators, featured prominently in print. The press, who were almost all white and male, never failed to describe the women’s craning necks, distracting bonnet plumes, and artificial flowers—all with a palpable degree of disdain.

“The best place for ladies to sit during the trial is about four feet from the hearthstone,” the
Avalanche Appeal
complained.

Judge DuBose himself took the lead on that front, constantly reminding women, lest they forget, that their continued attendance in the courtroom was at his discretion, and he could easily have them removed. But behind these displays of white male authority was a distinct anxiety
about
white male authority; the press and the judge made a point of asserting their power precisely because they were unnerved by the prospect of women watching courtroom proceedings and drawing their own conclusions. Alternate domesticities, such as two women coupling and sharing a home—and even the general notion of females expressing passion—were considered inappropriate for the “fairer sex,” especially for ladies of the higher classes. It was no coincidence that female witnesses went to great lengths to dress conservatively, donning capes and jackets over their dresses, and often covering their faces with heavy veils removed only upon request. And at that point, they further exaggerated modest affectations, bowing their heads until they were again told otherwise.