1986 when Walter met Karen Kelly. Section 102 of the state constitution read:
The legislature shall never pass any law to authorise or legalise any marriage between any white person and a Negro or
descendant of a Negro.*No one expected a relatively successful and independent man like Walter to follow every
rule. Occasionally drinking too much, getting into a fight, or even having an extramarital
affair—these weren’t indiscretions significant enough to destroy the reputation and standing
of an honest and industrious black man who could be trusted to do good work. But interracial
dating, particularly with a married white woman, was for many whites, an unconscionable
act. In the South, crimes like murder or assault might send you to prison, but interracial sex
was a transgression in its own unique category of danger with correspondingly extreme
punishments. Hundreds of black men have been lynched for even unsubstantiated suggestions
of such intimacy.
Walter didn’t know the legal history, but like every black man in Alabama he knew deep in
his bones the perils of interracial romance. Nearly a dozen people had been lynched in
Monroe County alone since its incorporation. Dozens of additional lynchings had taken place
in neighboring counties—and the true power of those lynchings far exceeded their number.
They were acts of terror more than anything else, inspiring fear that any encounter with a
white person, any interracial social misstep, any unintended slight, any ill-advised look or
comment could trigger a gruesome and lethal response.
Walter heard his parents and relatives talk about lynchings when he was a young child.
When he was twelve, the body of Russell Charley, a black man from Monroe County, was
found hanging from a tree in Vredenburgh, Alabama. The lynching of Charley, who was
known by Walter’s family, was believed to have been prompted by an interracial romance.
Walter remembered well the terror that shot through the black community in Monroe County
when Charley’s lifeless, bullet-ridden body was found swinging in a tree.
And now it seemed to Walter that everyone in Monroe County was talking about his own
relationship with Karen Kelly. It worried him in a way that few things ever had.
A few weeks later, an even more unthinkable act shocked Monroeville. In the late morning of
November 1 , 1986 , Ronda Morrison, the beautiful young daughter of a respected local family,
was found dead on the floor of Monroe Cleaners, the shop where the eighteen-year-old
college student had worked. She had been shot in the back three times.
Murder was uncommon in Monroeville. An apparent robbery-murder in a popular
downtown business was unprecedented. The death of young Ronda was a crime unlike
anything the community had ever experienced. She was popular, an only child, and by all
accounts without blemish. She was the kind of girl whom the entire white community
embraced as a daughter. The police initially believed that no one from the community, black
or white, would have done something so horrific.
Two Latino men had been spotted in Monroeville looking for work the day Ronda
Morrison’s body was found, and they became the first suspects. Police tracked them down in
Florida and determined that the two men could not have committed the murder. The former
owner of the cleaners, an older white man named Miles Jackson, fell under suspicion, but
there was no evidence that pointed to him as a killer. The current owner of the cleaners, Rick