THE KISSING CASE On this date, October 28, 1958, two Black boys, 7-year-old James Hanover Thompson, and 9-year-old David “Fuzzy” Simpson, were among a group of children in Monroe, North Carolina, none more than 10, none younger than 6, were playing as young children do without much pattern or apparent direction. Most of the children were white.
One of the girls, Sissy Sutton, kissed Hanover on the cheek. When her mother overheard relaying the day’s events to her sister, she became livid. She called the other white parents, armed herself, gathered some friends, and went out looking for the boys. She intended to kill them.
Mrs. Sutton went to Hanover’s home with her posse, not only to kill the boys but to lynch the mothers. They arrived almost at the same time as six carloads of police — nearly the entire police force of Monroe. Fortunately, no one was at home.
Later that afternoon, a squad car spotted the two boys pulling a little red wagon filled with pop bottles. The police jumped from the car, guns drawn, snatched the boys, handcuffed them, and threw them into the car. One of cops slapped Hanover, the first of many beatings he would endure.
When they got to the jail, the boys were beaten unmercifully. They were held without counsel and their mothers were not allowed to see them.
For several nights the mothers were so frightened that they didn’t sleep in their own house. Gunmen in passing cars fired dozens of shots into the Thompson home. They killed Hanover’s dog. Both women were fired from their jobs as housekeepers. Mrs. Thompson was evicted from her home. The Klan held daily demonstrations outside of the jail.
On November 4, 1958, six days after taking the boys into custody, local authorities finally held a hearing. The boys had still not seen their parents, friends, or legal counsel. At the hearing, the judge found the boys guilty of three charges of assault (kissing) and molestation. He ordered that the boys be incarcerated in an adult facility for black prisoners, and told the boys that if they behaved, they might be released at age 21.
The state NAACP director didn’t want anything to do with the ‘sex case’ as he called it. Roy Wilkins, of the national NAACP, also declined to get involved. Eventually, it was the communists, the Socialist Workers’ Party, that came to the rescue.
Joyce Egginton, a reporter for the London News-Chronicle traveled to Monroe, she sneaked into the prison where the boys were held, under the pretense of being a social worker. She also sneaked in a camera. On December 15, 1958, a front page picture of Hanover and Fuzzy in the reformatory, along with an article, appeared all over Europe.
News organizations in England, Germany, Italy, France, Belgium, Spain, all carried the story. The United States Information Agency received more than 12,000 letters expressing outrage at the events. An international committee was formed in Europe to defend Thompson and Simpson. Huge demonstrations were held in Paris, Rome and Vienna and in Rotterdam against the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Brussels was stoned. It was an international embarrassment for the U.S. government.
In February, North Carolina officials asked the boys’ mothers to sign a waiver with the assurance that their children would be released. The mothers refused to sign the waiver, which would have required the boys to admit to being guilty of the charges.
Two days later, after the boys had spent three months in detention, the governor pardoned Thompson and Simpson without conditions or explanation. The state and city never apologized to the boys or their families for their treatment.
Can’t believe this is real! Here’s an article NPR did a few years ago with James Hanover Thompson.
my mother was a teenager when this happened. just for some perspective. for some more perspective, these kids would have been the right age (17-21, based on the ages given in the article) to happily pile into a car for a road trip to woodstock when it happened. don’t fall into the trap of thinking 1958 was so so long ago.
When Bucky does finally get introduced to Tony, like “This is Tony Stark, Howard’s kid”, and he goes all sad and quiet, looks at the ground and admits that he killed his parents, I want Tony to just nonchalantly start listing off all of the things that Stark Industries weapons are responsible for, look him in the eye and tell him “we all make mistakes when there’s someone else calling the shots.”
What really gets me about this is how if this was a teenage girl, who had her picture taken and posted on the internet without her consent and had attracted a herd of guys talking about how sexy she was and what they would do to her, this website would be up in arms about sexual harassment and how much of a violation of her privacy it would be. But hey, it’s a white boy, so that means it’s okay, right?
i was gonna post a mytery skulls drawing that i got too bored with to finish but now ive been working on it for an hour despite wanting to do other stuff
