Fate is fickle. And justice is unsure. And often slow.
On Jan. 23, 1906, a white Chattanooga woman named Nevada Taylor was choked with a leather strap and raped while walking home from her trolley stop near Forest Hills Cemetery.
A black man in his early 20s, Ed Johnson, was arrested for the crime, despite multiple eyewitnesses testifying Johnson was working at the Last Chance Saloon on that night and at the time of the attack. But Johnson’s all-white, all-male jury overlooked the testimony of Johnson’s innocence. Taylor told the jury she believed Johnson was the person who attacked her, despite saying on the night of the attack that she did not see the attacker’s face.
Johnson’s family urged local Black attorneys Noah Parden and Styles Hutchins to file an appeal, and they did, despite becoming themselves targets of violent threats and intimidation. Locally and at the Tennessee Supreme Court, their appeals were denied, but their argument that Johnson’s constitutional rights were violated found an audience before the U.S. District Court in Knoxville, which led to a seven-day stay on Johnson’s execution, issued by the governor.
Meanwhile, Parden, working with a Washington, D.C., attorney, secured a 10-minute meeting with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan, and on March 18, Harlan issued a stay of Johnson’s execution so the full court could hear the case.