I had no idea who Laverne Edwards
was.
“Mrs. Edwards was a nurse,” said Mrs.
Frances Edwards, Larry’s mom.
Laverne
Edwards was a nurse at Tipton Country Hospital, where Grandfather Joe died.
“She
just started on and Mrs. Hill accused her of killing Mr. Hill.”
“Do
you know what happened?” I asked.
The
television blared a game show in the background. Eveline edged forward in her
seat. Mr. Edwards collapsed in his overstuffed tried to follow the conversation
and not completely succeeding.
“No,
I don’t,” she said.
“Is
Mrs. Edwards related?”
“No,
they’s the other Edwards. She was married to John Edwards, but he passed.”
After
I left, I dropped by Tim Sloane’s house and shared what I found out. He was
knee deep himself in researching his family’s background. His father had been
the priest at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Covington and Director of St.
Paul’s Parochial School, an African American boarding school, founded in the
late 19th century, in Malone. He died suddenly when Tim was a young
boy. Now, in his early seventies, Tim seemed to be trying to grasp onto a past
thin and whispy as smoke.
“Laverne
Edwards was married to John Edwards who was brother to Mac Edwards,” began Tim.
“You should talk to William, her son.” He pointed to the list he made for me
with a column for whites and one for blacks. “He’s an accountant for the city,
but before you do, call David Gwyne, if there’s anyone in Covington who knows
what happened, David’s the person to talk to. David is the Tipton County
historian, and he’s helped me on my research.” I would learn later that David
is also the manager of the town cemetery.
As
I dialed David’s phone number, I felt like I was perhaps getting closer to an
answer. If an answer could be found, it would be from the lips of Laverne
Edwards.
I picked up David, who doesn’t
drive, at his mother’s nursing home in Covington. We drove down to a restaurant
in Brighton on Highway 51 where we talked for about an hour over dinner. Then,
David started giving me a tour of Covington. I’ll write about much of our
conversations of the next six weeks in other posts. This evening, however,
David directed me to the Covington Cemetery.
“I think I know where Jessie Nelson
is buried, but I’m not sure because his grave isn’t marked. There’s a space
next to his mother’s grave and it would make sense that this is where he was.”
He
reached into his briefcase and pulled out a wooden branch with its bark
removed. It was a smooth piece of wood shaped in a Y. It was a divining rod. He
led me to the other side of the graveyard.
“This
is his mother’s grave. I looked it up earlier today to make sure I could find
it.”
I
could barely read the name Nelson on the stone.
David
held his diving rod with both hands and waved it over the empty space next to
the marked grave. I could see the rod point downward.
“See
here. The earth here is displaced,” explained David, “so the rod dips. If it
was solid, it wouldn’t.”
“Is
he here?”
“Yes,
this most likely where Jessie Nelson was buried.”
Over
the course of the evening, David told me the story of Laverne Edwards.
“Mrs.
Edwards was the first and only African American nurse to be hired at Covington
Hospital (now Baptist-Memorial Hospital—Tipton) when the hospital opened in
1964. And when she began, she wasn’t allowed to use the restroom that white
nurses used, eat in the cafeteria, or use the white nurses’ break room. She had
to go to the bathroom with the janitors and eat her lunch with them in the
basement.”
I
wasn’t surprised by this story. Covington wasn’t at all on the cutting edge
integration. In fact, it fought changed tooth and nail. David would tell me
that there was a KKK office on the town square next to the Covington Police
Station when Robert Lee Smith was murdered by Jessie Nelson.
“Well,
it didn't sit right with her so she complained to the hospital director. His
response was to fire her.” Clearly, he didn’t want any uppity black woman on
his staff.
David
explained that Laverne Edwards was married to John Edwards who was one of the
founders of the local chapter of the NAACP. John Edwards brother was Mac
Edwards, the president of the chapter. The chapter met secretly in the basement
of the Canaan Baptist Church because if the Klan found out, the church and
their homes would have been burned down. It wasn’t uncommon for black churches
to be burned in Tipton, or anywhere around the South at that time.
With
her husband’s support, Laverne Edwards sued the hospital for violating civil
rights. After winding four years through the courts, she won in Federal court.
The hospital was forced to give her job back. Obviously, it was the talk of
Covington. Everyone had an opinion about it, and these opinions mostly fell
along racial lines.
Just
after Laverne Edwards returned to the hospital, Grandfather Joe entered the
hospital on March 18th, 1969, two months almost to the day after
Robert Lee Smith was murdered by Jessie Nelson. Grandfather Joe was 69 years
old and sick with pneumonia. He had been ill all through the trial, but had
refused to see a doctor until the trial ended. By then, he was so sick that he
was on death’s doorstep. Not only did he have pneumonia, but he also had cirrhosis
of the liver, Type 2 Diabetes, and emphysema. To say he was not well would be
an understatement. Between his decades smoking and drinking, his immune system
was clearly compromised. In layman’s terms, he had abused his body in about
every way possible without already being dead.
It
was just before Grandfather Joe’s arrival that Mrs. Edwards returned to work.
As anyone can imagine, with Laverne Edwards return it was incredibly tense at the
hospital. They were under a court order to allow her to have all the rights and
privileges of her white co-workers.
This
was as far as David could take me. I need to speak with Laverne Edwards. According
to Frances Edwards, she was the person who was accused of murdering Grandfather
Joe. This meant I needed to reach out to her son William.
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