"The can? I threw it in the garbage can."

"Well, how many women did you rape, two or three?"

"Oh, I raped three." Tommy smiled.

Richard Hines said, "They sure messed that boy up," referring to his newly-jailed son. The Hines family has always lived in Decatur's low-income housing projects. The father is retired and his mother has never worked. Their only source of income is Richard's monthly retirement check.

The police held Hines in custody for two days during which no one but teachers from the Cherry Street School were allowed to see him. The teachers reported that Tommy seemed very unhappy and wanted very much to go home. He refused to talk to them--something very unusual, for Tommy had always seemed more than willing to open up to friends. The police said Tommy readily offered information. In fact, they said, he had voluntarily waived his rights.

"Tommy can only respond to simple requests. He'll always tell you what he perceives you'll want to hear. He always wants to please. Authority is something he gives in to--like a child," said Hines' lawyer, Henry Mims. A committee composed of Steve Wynn, a Decatur black businessman, Dr. Densmore Robinson, the white principal of the Cherry Street School and past president of the Alabama Association of the Disabled and Handicapped, and Rev. Alphonso Robinson, the minister of the Newcomb Street Church of Christ, the Hines' family church, asked Mims to take the case.

Six months earlier, Mims, a Huntsville attorney, argued a case for the Decatur community against the City of Decatur Board of Education. The plaintiffs wanted to stop the re-bussing of a Lecatur school; the Committee felt he knew the community and could do a good job on the basis of his record.

After two days the committee put up the money for the $25,000 bond and the police freed Hines. Mims later regretted that most of the committee membership is black: "It should not have a color line--this is not a black and white issue, it's an issue of human rights. Calling it black or white polarizes the community. The community should be together on this," he said.

Rev. R.B Cottonreader, national field director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), arrived in Decatur the same day Mims took over as Hines' lawyer. Cottonreader immediately tried to mobilize Decatur blacks for marches and protests. The first protest took place in Decatur a week later with approximately 150 marchers--a large number for the hot, humid, early summers that come to Alabama. Singing the songs of the old civil rights days, the marchers harmonized in a rendition of "We Shall Overcome" as they walked on, braving the heat, stares from reporters and curious faces. The group, composed of mostly young people, loudly shouted "Free Tommy Hines" as they approached the courthouse. Decatur police and Alabama state troopers stood in front of the entrances to the courthouse, allowing only lawyers and those appearing to be on court business inside. Cottonreader and two associates approached but were told they could not enter on the pretext they might incite a riot. Most of the marchers returned with blankets and camped out on the front lawn of the building until a court order removed them.

Hines' church offered its facilities for mass rallies and as general headquarters for the SCLC effort. Members of the congregation often told of how one or two members would go to the Hines home and bring Tommy to church and bring him home after services. Rev. Robinson, Hines' friend, said he would come and sit in the front row every Sunday morning and smile.

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama, a city of over 160,000 and the third largest in the state, overshadows nearby Decatur. Huntsville grew phenomenally in the '50s because of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration--Werner von Braun and his associates built and designed the first Saturn rockets there. Due to the top-secret level of the project, Huntsville grew out of Redstone Arsenal Army base--a major Army installation. The government took over the growth of the city and its surrounding vicinity. As a result, school desegregation met with few problems; integrated neighborhoods have always been common in both Huntsville and Decatur. Governor George C. Wallace stopped carrying North Alabama in 1970.

But that didn't stop the Ku Klux Klan from planting in fertile soil.

The KKK in North Alabama are members of the "integrated neighborhoods." Their children attend public, racially integrated schools. Some are old. Some are ministers. 5000 people attended the first Klan rally held after Hines' arrest. At that time, an 80-year-old Baptist minister told a reporter, "God will have a special place for the Ku Klux Klan in heaven." A black Huntsville minister brought the clipping of the quote to his church the following Sunday morning. "The Ku Klux Klan will have a special place in hell! That's fool talk! There's nothing worse than an old fool...I'm going to pray for this man and I ask you to pray for him, too," he told his congregation. That morning, following the service, the church received a bomb threat. On Labor Day weekend, another Klan meeting drew 9000 people.

While Klan forces built up over the summer, Tommy was ordered to undergo a mental competency test. As tensions built in anticipation of the trial, the SCLC held their national convention in Birmingham (only one and one-half hours south of Decatur) during the week of August 18. The delegates to the convention hopped on chartered busses to Decatur to march from the church to the courthouse. With the presence of the Ku Klux Klan, the members of both groups were not allowed on courthouse property. The marchers stood around the property, swaying from side to side, singing their songs of protest while the Klan, cloaked in their white robes and hoods, taunted, called names and distributed membership information to white passersby.

IN THE FIRST WEEK of September, Mims asked the court for a change of venue because of substantial publicity in both Morgan County and Huntsville's Madison County. The judge agreed, but he chose Cullman County as "the nearest adjacent county without prejudice." Less than 1% of the total voting population is black in Cullman County. Because of hiring practices, the small city of Cullman has historically kept blacks out. This, then, would be the "unprejudiced" site of Tommy Lee Hines' trial.