Justice Tomorrow

Who lynched Henry Johnson?

Young investigators Madeline Sterling and Socractes Gray head a team sent to a Georgia town in 1965 to learn who lynched the son of a local civil rights leader.

Sterling doesn’t have her head on straight from her last assignment. And Gray knows pretty little Crossville, Georgia is no place for her or the handsom rookie she’s training to be a detective for the civil rights group, Justice Tomorrow.

The town’s seething with rage. Both Black and white commuinities are lashing out a the wrong enemy.

Sterling and Gray suspect someone is using prejudice, murder, arson, and feuds dating back to the Civil War to hide larceny on a grand scale. But it's hard to think when they're fighting a forbidden attraction.

Suddenly, their lives are in danger and time is running out for the investigators. Sterling and Gray must unravel a hundred-year-old murder to get justice for Henry Johnson--and somehow get out alive.

Meet Socrates Gray...
1961
Socrates Gray knew they would come at him sometime during his time at Yale University. He’d endured plenty of racial slights and slurs in his three years on the New Haven campus, but he always expected a physical attack that left him bruised and bloodied. Or dead.

Still, it surprised him when two white men stepped from the shadows of the trees and blocked his path from the apartment he shared with his younger brother. His eyes swept the park-like area warming in the spring afternoon sun. Empty. As he knew it would be. The men had planned the assault.

The taller and younger of the two men, had a hand—the one carrying his weapon no doubt—behind his back. The men didn’t hide their faces, which meant they came to kill so he couldn’t identify them. Not that the New Haven, Connecticut police would really try to find to those who killed or brutalized a black student.

“Socrates Gray?” The older man asked. His green eyes seemed to sparkle in the sun. He was much shorter than his companion or Gray. His shoulders squared, his lips pursed, and he appeared like a butler announcing dinner rather than an assassin.

Gray had learned to be wary of appearances. Some of the most proper, preppy-looking Yalies had peppered him with insults and threats.

“Gray. Call me Gray.” His weight shifting to his back foot.

“I’m Arthur Woolworth. Might we have a word?” His hand swept to a nearby park bench.
“I’m late. . .” Gray gathered his breath. For the first time he noticed they both wore suits. And the taller man’s hands were empty. No weapons. “I-I’m late for class.”

“It won’t take long, I promise. We have an extraordinary offer for you to consider,” said Woolworth. “If you say no, you can continue on to class—or we will drive you if you wish.”
“W-what—What kind of offer?”

Woolworth nodded to his companion and the taller man stepped aside, out of earshot. His eyes, however, scanned the area as though an assault was imminent.

“Please, can we sit. I’m not as young as I used to be and the blasted sun isn’t as warm as I’d hoped.” Before he sat, Woolworth flipped back his dark wool coat, reached into his hip pocket, and took out a billfold. He flipped through the contents a moment, then founded a picture to hand Gray.

The photo had white rippled edges like older Kodak pictures and there was no writing on the back. When Gray turned it over, he gasped.

“I see you recognize two of the people in the picture,” Woolworth said.

Gray sat on the bench. The Eiffel Tower in Paris filled the grainy background of the photo. Six, no eight, young people laughed at the camera. Two of them were his parents. Another was the younger version of the man in front of him.

“Your mother was so fair skinned she passed for white in Paris,” Woolworth said. “She thought it was funny. She actually made a game of it when we were around Americans. Florence—your mother—was daring. What she endured and the horrible stories she told..."

“She was a wonderful storyteller. My father, brother and I loved to hear her spin a yarn.” Gray stared at the photo, felt his eyes burn.

“Well, we were, all of us, idealists, philosophers, painters, and writers who would change the world with our vision. Back then we felt invincible. And we had plans. Your father came late to our gang of adventurers. Your mother met him—.”

“In a French café opposite the Sorbonne where he was a student,” Gray finished.

“As the war clouds gathered, all of us went home. First one, then another. They followed their dream of educating young Negroes in the South, hoping the South would become, well, as free and accepting as Paris. I went to war then followed dreams of a practical nature.You may recognize others in the picture as wealthy, influential people now. One is very well connected in government.” For a moment Woolworth studied his bony hands popping with blue veins. “I still paint a little.”

“You knew them.” Gray couldn’t believe his luck. Someone who could actually speak of his parents, what they were like, how they moved, who they loved.

Woolworth nodded. “For what it’s worth, even then I tried to talk them out of returning to the South after the war. Nothing changed there, even for men like your father who fought Hitler in the same trenches as whites. They were…they were warriors. I am sorry for you and your brother. I never knew of your existence until later. Much later.”

“We moved in with my aunt and kept our heads down. She tried to turn us into God-fearing Christians, who forgave our enemies.” Gray swallowed hard. “Too much to forgive.”


Jackie Ross Flaum
Born and raised in Ashland, Kentucky, I began my professional career as a reporter for The Hartford Courant in Connecticut. More fun than anything! I won a Sigma Delta Chi prize for editorial writing – and met my future husband, David, there.

After David became a business reporter we moved our little poodle Tucky and daughters Stephanie and Becky to Memphis. That’s where my new career in public relations, marketing, and executive speech writing began.

In Memphis, I wrote something different every week: speeches, magazine or newspaper stories, ad copy, even books. I did things like:
Executive speeches for Federal Express
A nationally syndicated newspaper column as a ghost-writer
A prize-winning national marketing plan for a local travel agency
Copy for an on-line city guide that won an Addy award
A Memphis magazine story on women in a Tennessee prison
Parts of AJ’s Tax Court (St. Luke’s Press) and Sex, Drugs, Rock and Roll (Professional Counselor Books).

Finally, I abandoned fact for fiction.

I entered an unfinished novel and won the 21st annual River City Romance Writers Duel on the Delta for romantic suspense. "One in Ten Thousand," alas, remains unfinished.
And I won the June short story then came in second in the six-month contests at Short Story Land.

I’m about to release the first novel. Hang on.

Outside writing and my family (I now have five grandchildren) my real passion is working to improve the lives of children.