Clarence Horatious Pickett
Age 41
A Black Baptist minister and ad salesman for a Black paper
Columbus, Georgia
December 21, 1957
"We all know the routine. White cop, all white male jury... acquitted. We've seen it over and over again."
Avis Smith
Great-grandnephew of Pickett
START
AS: I was very young but I have a vague memory of my father returning home from the funeral. He was dressed in black pants and a green sport coat and I could see the anger in him.
People don’t like when family members are killed… you know?
My great uncle Clarence was a preacher, he attended Morehouse College and he wrote for various newspapers. And he spoke on a nationwide radio program. And uh, I was told by my father a lot of whites became annoyed with that.
My great uncle was accused of drunkenness and insulting a white woman.
He was picked up and put in jail around the 21st of December in 1957. And this white cop went into the cell and he started beating him. My great uncle was holding his head and when he was on the floor, the cop jumped on my great uncle’s stomach, damaging his internal organs. There were witnesses that saw this.
He had to be taken to the hospital. The doctor said, well, he has no broken bones so there’s nothing wrong with him.
He died the next day, two days before Christmas. He was 42 years old.
The cop was simply acquitted by an all white male jury. We all know the routine. White cop, all white male jury… acquitted. We’ve seen it over and over again.
My father said to me, there’s nothing can be done with these crackers. They’ll always go and tell a lie. And he was very angry about that.
But he knew had a family to raise.
And… as I get older, I don’t see that I should live with the death of my great uncle without trying to get some form of justice.
To this very day, I refuse to celebrate Christmas out of respect for my great uncle. He is very close in my heart.
Photo by Natiah Jones
Clarence Horatious Pickett was a Baptist minister and advertising salesman for the Columbus World, a Black newspaper in Georgia. On December 21, 1957, Pickett, who was Black, was arrested near his home for being “plain drunk,” according to a Department of Justice memo about his death. He was taken to the Columbus City Jail and placed in a cell for intoxicated detainees.
According to several other detainees later interviewed by law enforcement officials, Pickett yelled at his jailer, Columbus Police Department Officer Joseph Cameron, from the cell. Cameron then came into the cell and severely beat Pickett in the face and stomach. After Pickett fell to the floor and became unresponsive, Cameron continued to beat him in the head with a club and kicked him in the torso, witnesses said. One detainee, brought into the cell after the beating, said he thought Pickett was dead.
The next morning, Pickett complained of severe stomach pain and told other detainees, “Those officers should not have done me this way.” He was released around noon and taken home, where his family called an ambulance. A doctor examined Pickett but dismissed the severity of his pain and sent him home. Pickett died the following day.
An autopsy determined Pickett died of shock and blood poisoning from injuries to his intestines.
Initial Investigation
Cameron, the jailer, gave two statements to the Columbus Police Department. In the first, he did not mention beating Pickett; in the second he admitted using force but claimed that Pickett had grabbed his shirt and leg, which required Cameron to punch and kick him to get free. The other eyewitnesses all described Cameron, rather than Pickett, as the aggressor.
Within two weeks of Pickett’s death, the chief of police filed a murder complaint against Cameron, who was arrested. Two days later, a local coroner’s jury concluded that Pickett had died as a result of Cameron’s beating. A grand jury indicted Cameron, but at the trial, Cameron said he had only used force in response to Pickett’s actions and that he was not responsible for Pickett’s death. Another employee of the police department testified that she might have seen a different officer strike the victim — an officer who had died before the trial, so he could not be prosecuted. Another officer contradicted this statement.
After deliberating for about one and a half hours, the all-white male jury acquitted the jailer. Cameron was reinstated to the police department with full back pay.
As the local case advanced, at the request of the police department, the FBI opened its own investigation into Pickett’s death. The Department of Justice memo notes that the FBI interviewed “a large number of witnesses” and summarizes those interviews but does not explain how the investigation ended or why federal charges were not brought against Cameron.
Till Act Status
Beginning in fall 2008, the FBI reviewed the case again, retrieving the old case file and searching through Georgia death records. The agency learned that Cameron had died about a decade after he was acquitted. They failed to find Pickett’s next of kin.
The memo concluded that the killing “does not constitute a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes” because the primary suspect had died and because the statute of limitations had run out.
The case was closed on April 7, 2010.
Case Status closed
Closed 04/07/2010
Themes
- Closed All Subjects Deceased
- Closed Cases
- Deaths Involving Law Enforcement
- Men
- Storycorps Stories
About the Project
This multiplatform investigation draws upon more than two years of reporting, thousands of documents and dozens of first-hand interviews. FRONTLINE spoke to family and friends of the victims, and witnesses, some of whom had never been interviewed; current and former Justice Department officials and FBI agents, state and local law enforcement; lawmakers, civil-rights leaders and investigative journalists, to explore the Department of Justice’s reopening of civil rights-era cold cases under the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
In addition to an examination of the federal effort, the project features the first comprehensive, interactive list of all those whose cases were reopened by the Department of Justice. Today, the list stands at 151 names. Among the victims: voting rights advocates, veterans, Louisville’s first female prosecutor, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children.
The project consists of a web-based interactive experience, serialized podcast, a touring augmented-reality exhibit, documentary and companion education curriculum for high schools and universities.
A project like Un(re)solved would not be possible without the historic and contemporary contributions of universities, civil rights groups, and the press, particularly the Black press, who have ensured the ongoing public record of racist violence in the United States. To pay homage to these groups, the web interactive begins with a quote from journalist, activist and researcher Ida B. Wells, one of the first to document with precision the horrors of racial terror in America. “The way to right wrongs,” she wrote, “is to turn the light of truth upon them.”
At the outset of the project, FRONTLINE forged a relationship with Northeastern University’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ), bringing them on as an academic partner. Launched in 2007 by Distinguished Law Professor Margaret Burnham, CRRJ is a mission-driven program of interdisciplinary teaching, research and policy analysis on race, history, and criminal justice. Their work has expanded beyond the names on the Justice Department’s list, archiving documents in over 1,000 cases of racially motivated homicides.
With support from the CRRJ, FRONTLINE reporters gathered what could be known about the individuals on the list, conducting interviews with family, friends and witnesses, delving into newspaper archives and gathering documentation including headstone applications, draft cards and archival photographs.
At the heart of the project has been a drive to center the voices of the families of those on the list. FRONTLINE partnered with StoryCorps to record nearly two dozen oral histories with victims’ next of kin, which are featured both in the web-based interactive and traveling AR exhibit. These oral histories will also be archived in the National Library of Congress.
To lead the creative vision for the web experience and installation, FRONTLINE partnered with Ado Ato Pictures, a premier mixed reality studio founded by artist, filmmaker, and technologist Tamara Shogaolu.
Shogaolu rooted the visuals in the powerful symbolism of trees. In the United States, trees evoke the ideal of liberty, but also speak to an oppressive history of racially motivated violence. In Persian myth, trees are humanity’s ancestors, while in Toraja, Indonesia, they serve as sacred burial sites.
“I was really inspired by looking at the role of the tree as a symbol in American history” Shogaolu said. “It’s been looked at as a symbol of freedom, we look at it as a connector between generations, and also there’s the association of trees with racial terror.” When designing the creative vision for Un(re)solved Shogaolu wondered whether she might be able to reclaim the symbol of the tree. “As a person of color, we’re often terrified of being in isolated places in the woods. And I thought it was kind of crazy that there are natural environments that instinctually give great fear because of this connection with racial terror and I wanted to reclaim that — to turn these into beautiful spaces.”
Un(re)solved weaves imagery of trees, which also recall family ties, into patterns and textures from the American tradition of quilting. Among enslaved African Americans forbidden to read or write, quilts provided an important space to document family stories. Today, quilting remains a creative outlet rich with story and tradition for many American communities.
We invite you to enter this forest of quilted memories — a testimony to the lives of these individuals, and the multi-generational impact of their untimely, unjust loss.
(Credits to come)