Despite the racial barriers they faced, Susan and Oliver decided to fight back and appealed the lower court’s decision to the Mississippi supreme court. It is testimony to this body’s honesty and diligence, and to the unusually liberal moment in Mississippi during Reconstruction in October 1873, that the state supreme court overturned the lower court’s decision. It ruled that Ann and Levin Dickerson had lived in a state of de facto marriage after the Civil War, and therefore their mixed-race children were Levin’s legal heirs. As a result, Susan and Oliver received their inheritance, and Peter Dickerson, his daughter, and his son-in-law had to give up the plantation.
There is thus a resemblance between William Dickerson’s attempt to take Lewis and India’s property and the attempt that his father, Peter, and members of his family made to take Susan and Oliver’s. Moreover, because William was eighteen years old in 1873, he must have known every last detail of the shameful story, even if there is no evidence that he had been directly involved himself.
Everyone else in Coahoma County would have known about it as well, because the state supreme court’s decision legitimizing a white-black marriage and recognizing mixed-race children as legal heirs was so shocking that it reverberated throughout Mississippi. One newspaper in Jackson, the state capital, angrily condemned the decision because it equated “the sanctity of the marriage tie” to “the beastly degradation of concubinage” and because it let “copulation thrive.”
There can be no doubt that everyone in the large Dickerson clan who was still alive in 1886, when William made his move against the Thomases, remembered the 1873 decision. Indeed, it is possible that when William first rode out with the threatening “letters” intending to scare off the successful black man, he had the earlier reversal in mind and was hoping for a form of revenge. What he could not have anticipated, however, is the way his plan would backfire and how this would lead to uncanny reminders of the family fiasco in 1873.
The case Lewis brought against William Dickerson was complex and dragged on in the Coahoma County Chancery Court for nearly three years (before undergoing a spectacular twist that would give it new life for another five). It is unclear how the Thomases lived in the interim, without the farm that had been their livelihood. Perhaps this is the time when they ran a boardinghouse in Clarksdale, as Frederick recalled later. Both sides in the suit asked for and received extensions to gather additional evidence and testimony; there were additional delays.
When the court finally handed down the decision on April 19, 1889, it could not have been a bigger shock, especially for William Dickerson. Lewis and India Thomas won on all counts. Not only did the court order Dickerson to return the property to them, but a recalculation of the accounts between them showed that he owed the Thomases a sum nearly identical to what he had claimed they owed him in 1886. The court also summarized Dickerson’s behavior in a way that was even more insulting than the verdict itself. He had made “misrepresentations” to the Thomases, had betrayed their naive trust in him, and had cheated them when he did not deliver the promised wagon, mules, and money. Incensed, Dickerson swore that he would appeal to the Mississippi supreme court.
Although the Coahoma court’s decision was a resounding confirmation of the Thomases’ claims, other powerful forces were at play around their case as well. One would not necessarily have expected truth and justice alone to triumph in a case in the Delta that pitted a black couple against a rich and well-established white planter. It is possible that personal relations between Lewis and influential whites in Coahoma County could have played a role in how the court viewed him and even in the trial’s outcome, especially if William Dickerson had enemies. And he did.
Coahoma County was a contentious place in the 1880s and there were many causes that divided whites. One of the major issues for some was the location of the county courthouse. It had been in Friars Point since the 1860s, but in the 1880s a faction formed that wanted it moved to the growing town of Clarksdale. A leader of this group, and a son-in-law of Clarksdale’s founder, was none other than Jack Cutrer, one of the Thomases’ lawyers. By contrast, Daniel Scott, William Dickerson’s lawyer, was a well-known proponent of keeping the courthouse in Friars Point. The two factions went so far as to disrupt each other’s meetings, to arm themselves with clubs and guns, and to threaten each other with bodily harm. Their conflict became so notorious that news of it was reported as far away as Boston in 1887. At stake were not only the seat of local power and the trickle-down effect this would have on local business and development. Even more important was where railroads would be built through the Delta to link Memphis and points north with Vicksburg and ultimately New Orleans. Peter Dickerson owned a plantation ten miles north of Clarksdale but only three from Friars Point. He succeeded in having a train station built on his property in 1889 and named it after his son William. Perhaps this kind of bold and lucrative initiative put the Dickersons at odds with Cutrer and his Clarksdale allies and influenced the Cutrer brothers’ decision to take on the Thomases’ case. Local political and electoral rivalries may have played a similar role as well.
A year after the Coahoma court had delivered its verdict, the supreme court of Mississippi considered William Dickerson’s appeal during its April 1890 term. In their official “Opinion,” the justices complained that they found the hundreds of pages of testimony and documents they had to review overwhelming and unclear. As a result, the ruling they handed down was mixed and confusing.
On the one hand, the justices affirmed the lower court’s decision to cancel Lewis’s transfer of his land to Dickerson in 1886. This would seem to have been a confirmation of Lewis’s victory. But on the other hand, the justices undermined the entire evidentiary basis of the lower court’s decision and thus of Lewis’s victory by ordering that his accounts with Dickerson be recalculated. They also ridiculed the Thomases’ other claims against Dickerson, the lower court’s procedures, and the portrait that his lawyers had painted of Lewis as a simple and uneducated black man. The only real criticism of Dickerson was that on occasion he charged the Thomases too much interest. Nevertheless, it is clear that the justices did not find the Thomases’ case against Dickerson to be entirely without merit (or, perhaps, the influence of local Coahoma politics a matter of complete indifference).
The two sides in the lawsuit must have found the supreme court’s decision confusing as well. Lewis and his lawyers naturally focused on the part that appeared to favor them. Thus, on June 7, 1890, Lewis asked the local court to issue him a “writ of assistance” so he could get his property back, a request to which the court agreed. At the same time, the court ordered that all accounts between him and Dickerson be reexamined to determine once and for all who owed what to whom.