Lest We Forget: "The Kissing Case"

Lest We Forget: "The Kissing Case"

On October 28, 1958, two little Black boys, 7-year-old James Hanover Thompson, and 9-year-old David “Fuzzy” Simpson, were among a group of children in Monroe, North Carolina, none more than 10, none younger than 6, were playing as young children do without much patterns or apparent direction. Most of the children were white.

"We were playing with some friends over in the white neighborhood, chasing spiders and wrestling and stuff like that," James says.

"One of the little kids suggested that one of the little white girls give us a kiss on the jaw," he says. "The little girl gave me a peck on the cheek, and then she kissed David on the cheek. So, we didn't think nothing of it. We were just little kids." After the girl told her mother, her father, and neighbors armed themselves with shotguns and went looking for the boys and their parents with the intent to kill them.

That evening, police arrested Thompson and Simpson on charges of molestation. They arrived almost at the same time as six carloads of police — nearly the entire police force of Monroe. Fortunately, no one was at home. Later that afternoon, a squad car spotted the two boys pulling a little red wagon filled with pop bottles. The police jumped from the car, guns drawn, snatched the boys, handcuffed them, and threw them into the car. One of the cops slapped Hanover, the first of many beatings he would endure.

The young boys were detained for six days without access to their parents or legal counsel. They were handcuffed and beaten in a lower-level cell of the police station. A few days later, a juvenile court judge found them guilty and sentenced them to indefinite terms in reform school. The boys, still denied legal counsel, were told they might get out when they were 21 years old. The local Ku Klux Klan, which had a headquarters in Monroe, burned crosses in front of the families' houses, and some people shot at the houses. Their lives were overturned. Commenting on it in 2011, Brenda Lee Graham, Thompson's sister, said that he was never the same after these events.