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“But you can be impartial in this case?”
“Yes.”
“You’re aware, no doubt, of the murders of Robert Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.?”
Ambrose said, “We’re not getting into any of that, Miss DuBose. No politics in my courtroom. And I’ll hold the other side to the same standard,” he added, pointing his gavel at Battle and shooting Howard Pickett a stern look.
“Do you have any Black friends or business colleagues, Mr. Talmadge?”
“Colleagues!” he barked before catching himself. “Um, got a boy does the cleanin’ up, and another ni—another man does the detailing on the used cars I sell.”
She turned to the bench. “Judge, I’d like to strike this potential juror for cause.”
“What cause?” said Ambrose, looking surprised.
“That he caught himself right before he called a Black person a n——.”
He looked at Talmadge with a grim expression. “Is that what you were going to say, sir? And I’ll remind you that you’re under oath.”
“No, Judge. I was gonna say... nice man. I got me another nice man.”
Ambrose gazed at him skeptically for a long moment. “All right. Miss DuBose, if you want to strike him you’ll have to use one of your preemptory challenges.”
“Then I’ll have to seek to strike him on that basis, Judge.”
Ambrose said sternly to the man, “You are excused from this jury pool, sir.”
A scowling Talmadge got off the stand and left the courtroom.
DuBose walked back to her chair as Ambrose called up the next potential juror.
Jack looked over at Jerome and Pearl. He was staring down at his hands, and Pearl had her gaze fixed resolutely on her husband. She reached out and took his big hand in hers, until a deputy rushed over and removed it.
In the audience, Hilly Lee had her gaze directly on Judge Ambrose.
Jack rose to question the next potential juror after Ambrose had finished with his standard line of questioning and Battle, again, had no questions.
“You’re a mechanic, Mr. Runnel,” he said.
Runnel nodded. “How’d you know?”
“Well, it says so right here on this paper. But I would have known anyway. It’s your hands. My daddy pulls wrenches for a living and he has the same set of thick, strong fingers you got.”
“Work over at Associated Truckin’. Been there twenty-four years.”
“Hard work?”
He grinned. “Yeah, but I don’t mind it. Keeps me outta trouble, or so my wife tells me.”
“Associated Trucking? Now, I read about them in the papers recently. They were just unionized, correct?”
“Yes sir, about damn time, too.”
Ripples of laughter swirled around the room and Runnel looked embarrassed.
“And unless I’m mistaken they also were the first large trucking company in the country to do away with separate bathrooms for Blacks and whites.”
“About damn time for that, too,” said Runnel.
