SAM DICKERSON
For many years after the war, Sam Dickerson, a former slave of the Horlbeck family, ranted around the courts of the lower counties of South Carolina in the practice of the legal profession, which he had acquired in a jack-leg sort of way soon after his emancipation. Tall, black, pompous, and as voluble as an overshot water-wheel, he cut his grotesque antics in higher and lower courts to the intense amusement of blacks as well as of whites. He habitually carried with him a bag of tawdry and greasy law books, which he hauled out and spread upon tables, wherever the space was available, to impress jurors and court-room spectators with his importance. With monkey-like imitativeness he copied the court-room gestures and mannerisms of prominent lawyers of the white race, and he had memorized certain passages from the statutes and the law blanks, which he spouted whenever opportunity offered. Upon one occasion Dickerson was defending in a magistrate’s court a negro accused of larceny. The word written on the indictment pleased him and he mouthed and slobbered over it as one mouths the pit of a clingstone peach. “Dis man bin chaa’ge’, yo’ onnuh, wid laa’ceny! He bin chaa’ge’ wid laa’ceny! W’at am laa’ceny, yo’ onnuh?”
“Do you know what it is to steal?” retorted the court.
“Of co’se uh does, yo’ onnuh. Laa’ceny is t’ief, en’ t’ief is steal, en’ uh man w’ich steal is uh man w’ich enter anodduh man’ house een de dead ub night en’ did mos’ feloniously steal, tek, carry away en’ appropriate to he own use de whole or uh paa’t dereof uh de juntlemun’ proputty. But de chaa’ge, yo’ onnuh, am laa’ceny!”
Dickerson was so well known about the magistrates’ courts of the City of Charleston that many prominent white citizens were attracted to the trials when it was known that this simian-like advocate was going to participate in the proceedings, and it was quite the thing to take Northern visitors or the captains of vessels in port, to the court room to see the black perform, and sometimes the magistrate, or the opposing counsel, would be given a hint to stir him up for the entertainment of the visitors.
In a trial before a Charleston magistrate, the black lawyer once sought to have a bad case continued because of “the absence of a material witness,” that threadbare plea so frequently urged in our courts. The magistrate, inclined to bait him, insisted that the material witness be produced in court forthwith.
“Yo’ onnuh, I hope you will not insis’ upun de material witness bein’ produce’ een dis co’t.”
The court demanded his reason.
“Yo’ onnuh, de material witness am a female en’ she cannot cunweenyuntly be produce’ een dis co’t.”
“Why can’t a female witness be produced in court? What is the matter with the witness?”