John Warren Smith

Goodbye to Innocence John Warren Smith

Brian Hanley, pretty good athlete, is growing up in the apple-pie town of Pinedale, Texas, amidst Saturday night football games, Halloween pranks, occasional traveling carnivals, and folks he's always known. The sleepy pleasantry is shattered when a burned-out cabin reveals bodies with bullets in them. A semi-nude white man was seen on the premises the night of the burning. A bullying sheriff, together with a politically ambitious D. A, soon have a young black man in custody and force from him a confession. The underside of this All-American town is soon exposed: the other half - the black half in the ghetto - never gets to enjoy the Halloween trick-or-treating or the ballgames in the all-white stadium, and by law are ineligible to attend the state university in their midst. Gripping trial scenes are intertwined with Brian's slow farewell to innocence. In one scene, the closest neighbor to the burned out home - a blind black woman - says to the defense attorney, "you must be blind as me if'n you expect to learn 'bout justice in a place that don't know what justice is. The state of Texas been executin' innocent niggahs fo years; we be's known ovah in Awkansas as the butcher shop o' the nation." Will the Negro be executed? Will the white mystery man be exposed? Will Brian make it through? For a good read, take a deep breath and hang on.