00:00Break in the Frank trial may come with the hearing of Jim Conley's testimony, Atlanta Constitution, August 3, 1913, by
00:06Britt Craig.
00:07Jim Conley isn't a cornfield Negro. He's more of the present-day type of city darky, and that's the only
00:13difference between him and Newt Lee.
00:15Outside of that, there is but little variance.
00:18However, Jim's ancestors hewed cotton and plowed bottom lands long before Jim had an idea of existing.
00:24He's got the good old country strain in him, and he's as black as tar.
00:27Some folks say he'll make a witness as good as Newt, and others say he won't.
00:31That all remains to be seen. One thing is sure, there'll be plenty of pyrotechnics when he begins to show
00:36whatever kind of witness he is.
00:38Jim is the hinge of the Frank case. His testimony is expected to swing it one way or the other.
00:44If his story sticks, and he is as firm as he has been thus far, things will look quite melancholy
00:49for the white man.
00:50If he falls down as the defense expects, then lord help his neck.
00:53It's a question of Jim Conley or Leo Frank with Jim Conley's testimony as the scales.
00:58As has been said, Jim's complexion is not unlike the ace of spades, and his features are coarse.
01:03He is as full of native dialect as Newt Lee, and those who heard Newt will agree that that is
01:07a whole lot.
01:09Particular about details, he talks slowly and deliberately with a kind of African drawl,
01:14and some of this vocabulary is so peculiarly niggerish that it is hard to distinguish at times what he means.
01:20He isn't bashful by any means and has Newt Lee's aptitude for unconsciously running over the other fellow's rights when
01:26contradicted.
01:27He's squibble over a jun bug and lightning bug illustration just as quickly as Newt contradicted
01:32attorney Rosser when that lawyer called his pet light out of its name.
01:35Friday afternoon, kind, heartfelt police authorities took him from his cell and gave him a bath.
01:42They took him into the backyard where nobody could see, it is said, and turned a liberal hose on him.
01:47They scoured and scraped and scoured and scraped, and had him as shiny as the brass trimmings on a 1914
01:54model auto.
01:55Then they took him back into the prison and sicked a negro barber on him.
02:00The barber shaved his head and in his face until it was as slick as an egg.
02:04Jim has an eye for immaculateness.
02:06It was his desire to look presentable that caused his arrest when he washed out his faded blue shirt
02:12in the pencil factory in preparation to attend the coroner's inquest that afternoon.
02:17Watchman Holloway, who had an eager eve out for clues and anything else that might throw light
02:22on the murder that had been committed the preceding Saturday, saw Jim performing his meager washing.
02:28Maybe Jim's shirt was bloody, and that was why he was washing it.
02:32Maybe there was something else that.
02:34Maybe there was anything.
02:35Maybe Jim knew something of the murder.
02:37He called the police, and Jim, shirt and all, were taken to headquarters.
02:42From that time until the last Friday afternoon, he has remained in prison shaveless, hair cutless,
02:47but quite content with the buffetings of fate, has dropped his swagger.
02:52Jim was born in the country and raised in the city.
02:54Although there is still within him the vein of bucolic manners and ignorance, he has contracted
03:00quite a bit of city airs and city ways that are to his detriment.
03:03One of these is a swagger, which he used to assume, but very likely has dropped completely
03:08during the past few months.
03:10Another is a rising admiration of himself and a feeling of superiority that is as common
03:15to the city-bred negro as his love for ham.
03:18Recent reports, however, say that Jim has lost these weaknesses and has satisfactorily
03:22reverted to type.
03:24Then, too, Jim, like most city-bred negroes, is a bit vain.
03:27He doesn't hate himself by any means.
03:29He considered himself some bear with the women folks, and it was with the probable expectation
03:34that he might meet some of his ladies of color at the inquest that he washed the shirt
03:38that caused his arrest.
03:40Police officials and Jim's attorneys say that they have been unable to budge him in his story,
03:45and that he sticks to it as firmly as a leech.
03:48They hopefully expect him to hold up on the stand.
03:50They say that it isn't the rough, bittering kind of tactics that elicits information from
03:55him, but kindness and gentleness.
03:57During the rigorous third degree under which he was put at police headquarters for a solid
04:01week, the detectives hammered and hammered on him in vain.
04:04They could easily tell that he had a secret, was withholding something, was doing a good job
04:09on the withholding, but as long as they blazed upon him with police fury, he was as adamant
04:13as a new tile sidewalk.
04:15When he told his story, when somebody suggested gentle tactics and scientific procedure upon
04:20the negro and forthwith inaugurated these methods, Jim's story began coming bit by bit, and
04:25eventually spilled out as though the bottom had dropped.
04:27He kicked in with the whole business.
04:29It is either a question of pride or vanity or sulkiness with Jim.
04:33If you pounce upon him and try to shake it out of him, like shaking a fox terrier loose
04:38from a bone, he'll talk just about as freely as he'd submit to as unnecessary pulling of
04:43a back tooth.
04:44But if Jim is approached gently and scientifically, he'll rattle away like a 2007 gazump, pulling
04:50Hunter Street on low gear.
04:51The prospects are that he is going to be a witness as interesting as Newt Lee.
04:56Not that he already is, in fact, more interest centers on him than on any other of the case,
05:01purely because of the importance of his testimony.
05:03But, from a standpoint of character, fortitude and deliverance, speculation is wide and varied.
05:09It all remains to be seen.
05:12Jim Conley never was so important before.
05:14The odds are he wishes he never had been.
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