GEORGIA: Rivers’ Revenge

Massachusetts’ Governor Charles Francis Hurley last July refused to extradite an escaped Georgia chain-gang convict who had been caught running a Boston lottery. He added insult to injury by giving as his reason that Georgia’s prison system was inhumane. Georgia’s Governor Eureth Dickinson Rivers last week had his chance for revenge. Lawyers for a Negro barber named Fleming (“Sing”) Willis, who had served less than a month of a ten months’ sentence for operating an Atlanta lottery, applied for a parole: “Applicant feels that the attitude of Governor Hurley of Massachusetts towards those similarly situated to applicant is more in keeping with the happiness and welfare of applicant than is to be found in the State of Georgia.”

Governor Rivers was gleeful. He granted the parole on condition that Barber Willis spend the next nine months in Massachusetts. Said he: “Governor Hurley seems to be in need of extra lottery operators. I am accommodating both Governor Hurley and this prisoner. . . .”

Next day, when Governor Rivers got applications for six more paroles on the same conditions, two from burglars and four from life-term murderers, it gave him a chance to continue in the same vein: “. . . Governor Hurley may have solved our prison problem for us. . . . We may not have to keep anyone in our chain gangs under the conditions he [Hurley] complained about.” Informed that chain-gang camps had been placarded with signs saying, “Spend your holiday in Cape Cod,” Governor Rivers grinned. He announced that July 27—the day Governor Hurley refused to extradite the escaped convict—would henceforth be “Hurley Day” in Georgia prisons and that “Hurley Day will be observed annually in serving all State prisoners codfish cakes and Boston baked beans. . . .”

When these jibes had failed to bring any reply. Governor Rivers belatedly learned that Governor Hurley had spent most of the week at the bedside of his 8-year-old daughter, ill at the Hurley summer home in Hull, Mass. He wired: “Having a daughter and granddaughter of my own . . . I can sympathize with you. May the spirit of the all-wise Creator comfort you in your trouble.”