Old Lives In the New South

Walker Percy wrote shortly before his death in 1990, “It takes some doing to insert oneself in such a way as to not succumb to the ghosts of the Old South or the happy hustlers of the new Sunbelt South.” Twenty-six years later, the ghosts of the Old South are still stirring. Nine dead in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina recalled days many wish were long past. Accusations of whitewashing history in Texas textbooks, where slaves are called “workers.” The resurgence of states’ rights theories against federal intrusion, with even governors of Southern states talking loosely of secession.

The happy hustlers, meanwhile, are right where they ever were, always trying to make a buck by exploiting the image of the South. Luke Bryan still shakes his ass while singing about girls and trucks. Politicians still sell the old pie-in-the-sky policies of Huey Long. And, in an event noteworthy for the intrusion of hustlers into the high-brow world of classic literature, Harper Lee’s “caretaker” published “Go Set a Watchman,” ostensibly a sequel to “To Kill a Mockingbird” that seemed more like an uncomfortable early draft. There is Atticus Finch, the hero of “Mockingbird” twenty years later, spouting off the same old racist lunacy that he seemed to resist so well when defending Tom Robinson.

But the old ghosts and new hustlers are never really as far apart as the two depictions of Atticus Finch would suggest. It is simply the story of the moral strangeness of the South, told again and again through Southern lives. Take, for instance, the life of one Betrand DeBlanc, a real life Atticus Finch in the years after World War II.

The story of Bertrand DeBlanc begins with the story of Willie Francis. In the Cajun town of St. Martinville, Louisiana in 1945, closed in among swamps and bayous, a pharmacist was murdered. Several months later Francis, a 16-year old black juvenile, was arrested in the dark woods of east Texas on unrelated charges. The sheriff found the pharmacist’s wallet in his possession. After interrogation without counsel, Willie signed a written confession. Other evidence, including the ownership of the murder weapon that mysteriously disappeared from the sheriff’s custody days before Francis’ trial, pointed to a different culprit. Though the evidence of Willie’s guilt was less than convincing, an all-white jury convicted Francis and sentenced him to death after a two-day trial.

But Willie did not die on May 3, 1946 in the electric chair. Oh, he was strapped in. He was hooked up to the cables. The executioner did flip the switch. But after several horrifying seconds in an improperly set up electric chair, Willie shouted for the executioner to remove the hood and let him breathe. He had survived.

Louisiana set out to re-execute Willie Francis when Bertrand DeBlanc intervened. He took Francis' case to the US Supreme Court, arguing that a second execution of Francis would constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” In Francis v. Resweber, by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that the execution could proceed. The justices’ notes show that Felix Frankfurter initially sided with DeBlanc and Francis, but then changed his mind. Perhaps bothered by a guilty conscience, Frankfurter made behind-the-scenes attempts to convince the governor to commute Francis' sentence, but failed. On May 9, 1947, Willie Francis was executed a second time--this time successfully--for a crime he likely did not commit. He was 18 years old.

Bertrand DeBlanc was a young lawyer when he took on Francis' appeal. He was a close friend of the murdered pharmacist. His decision to represent Willie Francis was not a popular one in St. Martinville. Cajun Louisiana is close-knit region, a place where reputation matters, and family loyalties are strong; where magnanimity abounds but old wounds fester. Yet Bertrand took the matter because he believed executing Willie again was unjust. He took up an unpopular cause for an even more unpopular client, seemingly not for personal gain but for the greater good.

Bertrand came from a well-known family. His third great-grandfather was a French explorer who settled northern Louisiana and established the French claim for the region, while also creating trade routes with the Spanish in Texas and Mexico. His grandfather Alcibiades DeBlanc was a Louisiana Supreme Court justice. His nephew Jefferson DeBlanc received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Guadalcanal. The medal ceremony was on December 6, 1946, about the same time Bertrand was bringing Francis' case before the Supreme Court.

And yet, Willie Francis’s was not the only case Bertrand took to the US Supreme Court. In 1972, Bertrand DeBlanc represented Louisiana before the Supreme Court against an appeal by a black man convicted of rape in Lafayette Parish. In a county where the population was 21% black, there was 1 black man in the jury pool, and none on the jury that convicted him. DeBlanc lost this appeal as well, the Supreme Court unanimously overturning the verdict obtained from a segregated jury.

Cajun Louisiana is close-knit region, a place where reputation matters, and family loyalties are strong. That grandfather that sat on the Louisiana Supreme Court? Alcibiades was on the first state Supreme Court after Reconstruction, after the Union carpetbaggers were sent packing for home. Alcibiades was a colonel in General Robert E Lee’s army and injured at Gettysburg. After the Civil War, Alcibiades was a major instigator of a riot in New Orleans against the Union governor William Pitts.

Alcibiades DeBlanc is also my 4th great uncle. In 1849, he wrote a poem in French to my 3rd great grandmother on the occasion of her wedding. “My God, to Thee I lift my prayer for my sisters whom I love with pride,” he lovingly wrote. “They leave today their mother’s hearth. Grant that they may far from sadness bide. On me visit all their trials and woes. My own heart pierce with the stings meant for theirs. What hope you intend for me, give to them. Instead, I take to myself all their tears.” The author of the 1922 family genealogy in which it is preserved wrote, “These verses give but an imperfect idea of the great heart and generous love of that great man. This generous man could not, by any means, but die a good Christian.”

This same man, in 1867, founded the Knights of the White Camelia, a paramilitary organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan. The Knights terrorized blacks with such frequency and ferocity that Congress overturned the 1868 Louisiana election results because of the suppression of freedmen’s votes.

What to make, then, of Bertrand DeBlanc? Perhaps the legacy of his grandfather gave this real-life Atticus the political and social cover to take on Willie Francis’ case. Here was a man, others thought, who would be on the “right” side when the crucible of the Civil Rights movement came. And, it seems, he was. That same legacy also informed his decision to defend a racist jury system 25 years later. Perhaps the early stirrings of the New South gave Bertrand compassion for Willie; yet the long reach of the Old South prevented him from following through to the full conclusion.

In 2016, those stirrings for justice in the New South must still shake free from the dead grasp of the Old. Race and justice, heritage and hate, family and loyalty: These are the complex motivations still driving the competing narratives of Southern symbols and lives, whether it be the Stars and Bars, a fallen literary idol, or a dominating ancestral legacy.

People became lawyers because of Atticus Finch. Lawyers idealize the fight for unpopular but just causes, such as Bertrand’s. But people are flawed people, with all of the vices, weaknesses, neuroses, and concerns—and also virtues, strengths, joys, and comforts—that make them people. And the South remains a complicated, contradictory, gothic region. Even in these air conditioned Sunbelt times, reputation matters, and family loyalties are strong. Magnanimity abounds, but old wounds fester.