monster; it would stir up more hate against him. Bessie’s death had not been mentioned during the inquest and all of the white faces in the room were utterly surprised. It was not because he had thought any the less of Bessie that he had forgotten her, but Mary’s death had caused him the most fear; not her death in itself, but what it meant to him as a Negro. They were bringing Bessie’s body in now to make the white men and women feel that nothing short of a quick blotting out of his life would make the city safe again. They were using his having killed Bessie to kill him for his having killed Mary, to cast him in a light that would sanction any action taken to destroy him. Though he had killed a black girl and a white girl, he knew that it would be for the death of the white girl that he would be punished. The black girl was merely “evidence.” And under it all he knew that the white people did not really care about Bessie’s being killed. White people never searched for Negroes who killed other Negroes. He had even heard it said that white people felt it was good when one Negro killed another; it meant that they had one Negro less to contend with. Crime for a Negro was only when he harmed whites, took white lives, or injured white property. As time passed he could not help looking and listening to what was going on in the room. His eyes rested wistfully on the still oblong white draped form under the sheet on the table and he felt a deeper sympathy for Bessie than at any time when she was alive. He knew that Bessie, too, though dead, though killed by him, would resent her dead body being used in this way. Anger quickened in him: an old feeling that Bessie had often described to him when she had come from long hours of hot toil in the white folks’ kitchens, a feeling of being forever commanded by others so much that thinking and feeling for one’s self was impossible. Not only had he lived where they told him to live, not only had he done what they told him to do, not only had he done these things until he had killed to be quit of them; but even after obeying, after killing, they still ruled him. He was their property, heart and soul, body and blood; what they did claimed every atom of him, sleeping and waking; it colored life and dictated the terms of death.
The coroner rapped for order, then rose and stepped to the table and with one sweep of his arm flung the sheet back from Bessie’s body. The sight, bloody and black, made Bigger flinch involuntarily and lift his hands to his eyes and at the same instant he saw blinding flashes of the silver bulbs flicking through the air. His eyes looked with painful effort to the back of the room, for he felt that if he saw Bessie again he would rise from his chair and sweep his arm in an attempt to blot out this room and the people in it. Every nerve of his body helped him to stare without seeing and to sit amid the noise without hearing.
A pain came to the front of his head, right above the eyes. As the slow minutes dragged, his body was drenched in cold sweat. His blood throbbed in his ears; his lips were parched and dry; he wanted to wet them with his tongue, but could not. The tense effort to keep out of his consciousness the terrible sight of Bessie and the drone of the voices would not allow him to move a single muscle. He sat still, surrounded by an invisible cast of concrete. Then he could hold out no longer. He bent forward and buried his face in his hands. He heard a far-away voice speaking from a great height….
“The jury will retire to the next room.”
Bigger lifted his head and saw the six men rise and file out through a rear door. The sheet had been pulled over Bessie’s body and he could not see her. The voices in the room grew loud and the coroner rapped for order. The six men filed slowly back to their chairs. One of them gave the coroner a slip of paper. The coroner rose, lifted his hand for silence and read a long string of words that Bigger could not understand. But he caught phrases:
“…the said Mary Dalton came to her death in the bedroom of her home, located at