Page 8 - Florida Sentinel 3-8-19

Local Film Revisits Near Lynching Of Tampa Man
BY IRIS B. HOLTON Sentinel City Editor
Nearly 60 years ago, in May 1960, eight-year-old Yvonne Holmes was raped and murdered in Blakely, Georgia. Police arrested a 24- year-old Tampa man and charged him with the crime.
The man, James Fair, Jr., was arrested, tried, con- victed, and sentenced to die in the electric chair in a pe- riod of 3 days. There is no mug shot of Fair, no finger- print record, and no tran- scripts from a trial. Yet, he remained in prison for 26 months charged with a crime he did not commit.
On Thursday, March 21st, at 6:30 p.m., filmmaker Clennon L. King will share a 65-minute documentary entitled “Fair Game: Surviv- ing A 1960 Georgia Lynch- ing.” It will be shown at Eckerd College’s Dan & Mary Miller Auditorium, 4200 54th Avenue, South, St. Pe- tersburg, FL 33711.
The event is free and open to the public. However ad- vance registration is re- quested by contacting www.solutions. spcollege.edu/.
No other individual was
The late James Fair, Jr., with his sister, Audrey Fair.
ever arrested in connection with the murder. King has met with the current Georgia governor and requested that he reopen the investigation.
Fair was born April 26, 1936 in Tampa. He attended St. Peter Claver Catholic School until the age of 10 when his family relocated to Bayonne, New Jersey.
After graduating high school, Fair served in the U. S. Navy. He was 24-years-old when he accompanied a friend to Blakely, Georgia on a road trip.
The murder had just oc- curred when they arrived and police arrested Fair and made him the fall guy, King said.
James Fair, Jr., with his mother, Alice Fair.
CLENNON KING FILMMAKER
into his own family’s sug- gested role in that lynching that took place in Early County,” King said.
King said, “My hope is audiences come away with a clear connection between Jim Crow lynching then and the wholesale murder of Black people now.”
Fair’s sisters appear in the film and will be in atten- dance at the showing. There will also be a discussion and question and answer period after the showing.
The documentary is co- sponsored by the Institute for Strategic Policy Solutions at St. Petersburg College, Eckerd College, and Legacy- 56, Inc.
After his arrest, Fair’s mother, Mrs. Alice Fair launched her own campaign to free her son who had been wrongly convicted. Fair was represented by legendary Civil Rights Attorney C. B. King. At the time, Vernon Jordan was a young law clerk assigned to the case.
Fair remained in jail until the charges were dropped. King is familiar with the case because his father repre- sented Fair.
He compares the ordeal to the 24 other lynchings that took place in Early County, Georgia between 1881 and 1941. “Although he was not physically lynched because it was a little Black girl, he was
mentally destroyed. His sis- ters said he was never the same. He went through tor- ture during those 26 months. He came close to being elec- trocuted 3 times,” King said. Fair died November 26, 2005, at the age of 69. King collaborated with his sisters, Ms. Audrey Fair Porte, of Kissimmee, and Ms. Diane Fair Odom, of Middleburg, to make the film.
King said he met with the mother of the victim who still lives in the city, but she did- n’t want to talk about her daughter’s death. He also features former Blakely Po- lice Chief Charles Middle- ton, “who offers an unvarnished and candid look
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