BY: Vincent L. Hall
If you don’t believe that journalism matters, consider the recent exoneration of Tommy Lee Walker. Mary Mapes, an outstanding journalist, made the case in a D Magazine article that catalyzed the Dallas County District Attorney and the Commissioners’ Court to right a 70-year wrong.
Let’s begin with a bit of the story as she penned it more than 10 years ago. Ms. Mapes put in some “shoe leather.” On-the-ground tactics, physical presence, and the like have been replaced by social media and veiled plagiarism, but the intensity of her words reveals the difference.
“It was dark when she left her job at the dime store and headed across Northwest Highway, but Venice Parker did not walk to the nearest bus stop. Instead, she turned in the opposite direction, toward the distant lights of Love Field, across an overpass and into the night, to catch a less convenient bus at a lonely place in the shadows of Lemmon Avenue.
She was found dead soon after.
In the chaos following the crime, District Attorney Henry Wade and the Dallas Police Department took a decidedly old-school approach to solving the crime. They simply rounded up dozens of African American men for questioning.
One of those men was Tommy Lee Walker, brought in four months after the murder. In what appears to have been a coerced confession after hours of questioning, the 19-year-old with no criminal record told police what they wanted to hear, that he had killed Venice Parker.
He quickly recanted, saying he had confessed only because he was so scared. There was never any physical evidence. He lived about five miles from the crime scene and had no car. Nine alibi witnesses testified that they were with him before, during, and after the crime occurred — and he was at the hospital early the next morning for the birth of his son.
A young Black attorney named Kenneth Holbert happened to be at the county jail that weekend… when he overheard Tommy Lee, distraught and protesting that he had been coerced into signing a confession for a crime he did not commit.
“His story was so striking,” Holbert says. “I thought, not him. He’s not big enough to do that. He was a small fellow, about 5-foot-3, weighed maybe 118 pounds. My first thought was, what is this kid doing in jail and what can we do to get him out?”
Holbert went back to the law office where he worked for W J Durham, one of Dallas’ first well known Black attorneys. He told him about the Tommy Lee Walker case, and, eventually the team agreed to represent him at trial. Holbert recalls with bitterness the efficiency of Henry Wade’s operation.
None of this mattered to the all-White jury that heard the case. He was found guilty within an hour and sentenced to death in the electric chair.
His body was displayed in a small South Dallas funeral home for two days. More than 5000 people walked past his cardboard casket in protest. The Dallas Express, a Black paper run by Marion Butts, listed the name of every person who came to the viewing.
On the day of the funeral, Butts wrote a searing column condemning the handling of the case. “Walker is dead,” he wrote, “but he will forever live in the minds and conscience of those who have the ability to reason.”
As I watched Walker’s son embrace Venice’s son in court yesterday, I watched to see how many others beside me were in tears.
The two men, both more than 70 years old, were cloaked in the grief of two crimes. The first crime was the absence of a mother and father. The second criminal act was committed by Henry Wade, the Dallas Police, and the local media. The circus-like hysteria they created required a sacrifice and Walker was the victim.
If journalism has no other function, it has always been to defend the innocent. Thank God for Mary Mapes.
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.
