Mack Ingram Trial (1951-1953)

While I certainly am not attempting to open old wounds, I believe the trial of Matt Ingram deserves coverage on the CCHA website. If you feel differently, please let me know why. Historian William S. Powell provided some information on the matter in his history of Caswell County (When the Past Refused to Die: A History of Caswell County North Carolina 1777-1977 at 537).

Note that Matt Ingram consistently was called Mack (and even Mark).

This Mack/Matt naming issue has been around for a while. Mack/Matt Ingram was born June 6, 1910. Thus, he was counted in three US censuses (1920, 1930, and 1940). On all three he was enumerated as Mat or Matt. However, this was the census taker ascribing the name.

The name Mack first shows up in his World War II Draft Registration Card (October 1940), and he signed this card as "Mack."

His Virginia death certificate shows: "James Mack Ingram" and this name is on his grave marker at the Sassafras Grove Baptist Church. The informant on the death certificate is his daughter Mattie.

Several who have researched this matter have arrived at different conclusions:

"Ebony" magazine published extensively on the case, including spending considerable time with the family. That magazine used: "Matt"

However, "Time" magazine called him "Mack"

Mary Frances Berry in her article published in "The Journal of African American History" referred to him as Matt.

The African American Intellectual History Society uses "Mack"

Of course it is possible that he went by both names, with one being a nickname.

To fresh your memory, in 1951 black Caswell County farmer Matt Ingram, 44, was convicted in a Yanceyville court of assault on a female because he allegedly leered at 17-year-old white Willa Jean Boswell from a distance of 50 feet. The initial charge had been assault with intent to commit rape, but the court (Ralph Vernon) persuaded the prosecutor (W. Banks Horton) to reduce the charges.

The matter apparently was retried by a higher court (superior court)and resulted in a hung jury. This resulted in the matter being brought before the Yanceyville lower court for retrial; and Matt Ingram was again found guilty and sentenced to a six-month suspended jail term and probation.

Finally, in 1953 a North Carolina appellate court "resoundingly reversed the lower-court conviction, stating that, even if Ingram had leered (which he denied), there had been 'no overt act, no threat of violence ... We cannot convict him . . . solely for what may have been on his mind. Human law does not reach that far.'"

National and international news publications carried the stories, including Time Magazine and The International Herald Tribune. The first Time article (23 July 1951) claimed that the guilty verdict did not even make the local paper, which would have been The Caswell Messenger.

I am looking for contemporaneous materials to supplement my research on this matter. Surely there are photographs and local news articles.I find it difficult to believe that The Caswell Messenger did not cover the trial.

Please submit materials to me either through this message board (if you would like to share them with others) or directly to rick@ncccha.org

Thank you.

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Assault by Leer Ruling Made Today

Raleigh, N.C. -- (U.P.) -- The state Supreme Court overruled the "assault by leer" case of Negro sharecropper Mack Ingram today by deciding he could not be convicted of a criminal offense "solely for what may have been in his mind."

The state high court thus in effect ruled the old statute under which Ingram was convicted of assault by frightening a teenaged white girl is too vague to be valid.

"The facts in evidence in the case at bar are insufficient to make out a case of assault," the unanimous decision said. "It cannot be said that a pedestrian may be assaulted by a look, however frightening, from a person riding in an automobile some distance away."

Ingram, 44-year-old father of nine, was given a six-months suspended sentence and placed on five years probation for simple assault at this third trial at Yanceyville, N.C., last November.

The Supreme Court ruled today the trial judge should have allowed a defense motion for nonsuit dismissal of the case.

In 1951 Ingram was sentenced to two years on the roads in Recorder's Court at Yanceyville on the assault charge although the defense proved Ingram did not approach nearer than 60 feet of the plaintiff [actually the accuser].

Linton Daily Citizen (Linton, Indiana), 25 February 1953, Wednesday, Page 8.