Racially Charged Cases made for Long Hot Summer's in Pomona.

***The following story has some racial epitaphs that are in today's society frowned upon. But they are a part of history and court record and writing another word in there place would be to deny the importance of the cases, men and trials that followed.

The Inland Empire of 100 years ago was not exactly your southern State where Racial divide was still the norm well into the 1990's, but for a black man and a Japanese immigrant it might have seemed like it and the scales of justice were definitely against them and their families.....The two were shot to death in separate incidents at the hands of white men and in the subsequent trials, Juries found the two killers innocent of there deaths even though there was plenty of proof against them.

And nobody, well, almost nobody seemed to care or even to object the verdicts....That was soon to change.

It was illegal for Frank Sandoz to sell beer from the barn of his winery in what today is Montclair.....It was legal to sell wine, but not beer, but anyone who knew Sandoz's knew that a thirsty man could find a beer at his place....Most of the time it was 5 beers for a buck, so it was real easy for a man to get drunk and Sandoz was not the type to turn away a man who had the money to fill his pockets.

Washington, a 22-year-old horse trainer, was the only black man among the gang like men, drinking and playing horseshoes that hot Sunday afternoon.....Also in the crowd was one L.E. "Tough" Webster, a recent arrival from Oklahoma and a lineman for the Edison Company, whose friend Fred Drew would later admit had a natural hatred for negros, he being from the south and all.

There's no reason to believe that Washington or Webster had ever met, and the only thing they shared in common that day was their thirst for beer.....Not surprisingly, the heat and the alcohol quickly made the atmosphere ready for a fight and a Mexican man and a white man named Bowen made it a point it fight no matter what the reason, even for no reason at all.

In the dimness of the room, the lights kept low as to not arouse the suspicions of the neighbors and the police, Washington for some reason walked over and accused Drew of calling him "that Nigger".

Drew later would testify he had not been talking to Washington and told him so. But Webster barged in and began arguing with Washington. Drew was drunk, a point totally lost on the jury and the Defense attorney and was verbally abusing everyone who came within ear shot.

The venom in the words grew quickly, and suddenly Webster walked to his buggy, pulled out a shotgun loaded with bird shot and pointed it at Washington.....Washington stood his ground and told Webster that he was to drunk to know what he was doing and that he was bluffing....You ain't gonna shoot me or any one else.

Washington took two steps towards Webster and Webster fired both barrels hitting Washington square in the chest and killing him instantly.

"My God, man, what have you done!?" cried Drew, who caught Washington as he collapsed....."I have just killed that nigger," Drew quoted Webster as saying.

Later that evening, Webster was arrested and sent to jail in San Bernardino which took nearly a full day to get there....Not so much road conditions or lack of them, route 66 was two lanes by then, but it was because so many of Webster's friends followed the Jail Wagon.....The coroner's inquest followed, and then a preliminary hearing heard testimony from witnesses....There was no question Webster pulled the trigger on Washington.

It was five months before Webster's trial began in San Bernardino, and his friends did what they could to portray him as an upright and out standing fellow loved by every one in the community....Sounds strangely familiar doesn't it.

Sheriff John Ralph's received letters from Webster's hometown of Norman, Okla., including four affidavits with 95 signatures, testifying to the quality of his upbringing......Washington on the other hand was described as a common every day black gang banger thug by the Pomona Progress, which noted he had been jailed several times.....The paper often referred to him as "the darky," a common description of blacks in that time.

As the trial began in March 1907, it was obvious the scales had tipped toward Webster.....Witnesses were placed on the stand, but they all lied to save their friend, each proving to the jury, that this poor man (Webster) wine-befuddled brain had at the time taken little of the tragedy....Another words he was to drunk to realize what he was doing and should not be held accountable for his actions....It was the booze taking, not Webster....The prosecutor's case was slowly going the way of OJ.

On March 13, the jury needed only 10 minutes to return a verdict of not guilty for Webster.

Another case at the time also of rather dubious outcome was the shooting death of a Japanese immigrant by the name of Deyai, shot by a farmer for stealing two of his oranges......Deyai's death came in a much quieter locale, a cool refreshing Pomona orange orchard on San Bernardino Avenue.....Deyai, who was about 28, had arrived three days earlier from Japan and decided to take a couple of oranges to help a bout with dysentery.

At that same moment that Deyai made the fate decision to steal the two oranges, the owner of the orchard, David Held, was walking amid his trees carrying a shotgun.....He carried the gun because he was angry over the frequent thefts of his oranges by Japanese workers living in nearby labor camps, and he had told the owners of the camp and the local police that he would shoot the next man or woman he found stealing his oranges.

Later claiming Deyai made a threatening gesture at him, and that he was merely shooting in self defense, Held didn't fire until the man turned and started to run. He maintained he tried to shoot over the man's head but instead struck Deyai in the hip and the back.....The man died eight hours later at Pomona Hospital.....A coroner's jury and preliminary hearing determined Held was responsible, and he was ordered to stand trial for the murder of Deyai.

This time the Prosecutor decided to send this case to a Los Angeles court....The argument revolved around the legal right in those days of a property owner to fire on anybody committing a felony on private property.....A key question was whether taking a few oranges constituted a felony and whether taking a few oranges justified shooting someone in the back.

The jury deliberated for eight hours on Jan. 19, 1906, and for most of a second day, before returning a not guilty verdict.....It should have been a hung jury....the clerk of the court is reported to have said that one time the vote was 7 to 5 for conviction, and it went that way for several hours till the Jury Forman convinced everyone that they couldn't convict a man just because he had shot a Jap stealing oranges, that Held had every right to protect his crops....The final jury vote was never reported for some reason.....The other story that was released to the press was, that the jury was believed to have given up when an unanimous guilty decision could not be reached....Today if a verdict was to come down like that, the ACLU and every Civil Rights Attorney in the country would be clamoring for the juries heads.

It's reasonable to believe that if either Washington or Deyai had been white men, the decisions in the trials could have been different. Reading the history of that era, it's easy to see that the Inland Empire was not immune from racism against blacks and immigrants that permeated the nation 160 years ago.

And while the juries for the killers of Washington and Deyai apparently wouldn't convict a white man, not everyone agreed with the decisions....There were people in the community who were just as outraged at the frivolous jury verdicts as we would be today.

The Rev. T.H. Cornish of the Baptist Church in Pomona took a surprising stand as he spoke out in his sermon the day after the Held decision, which he called a travesty of justice.....For the life of me, I do not see how a jury of twelve intelligent men could, after the confession made by Held, bring in a verdict such as was brought in, the Reverend was to have said.

He noted the idea that Held, holding a shotgun facing an unarmed man, had to shoot in self-defense, is a practically impossible theory.....Cornish warned the congregation on that Sunday that the future of the nation hinged on having law-abiding citizens.....He also said that no man can take the law into his own hands.....I am not sure how that would apply in the first case, that was just plain murder.....But he was right about the Held shooting....and it something that the good citizens of the Inland Empire passed on to their descendants.

Gary Hall, theghostpainter