“My great-grandmama was Hattie Mae Greene,” he said. “She was eighty-one. She raised me after my mama got sick. She taught me to read with the Bible and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, because she said you need both to understand the world.”
He looked across the courtroom at Voss.
“I wrote a letter about her when I was seventeen. I sent it to the governor, and nobody answered. I sent it to the GBI, and nobody answered. I sent it to the newspaper, and nobody answered. Then my great-aunt’s friend, Miss Lorraine, said she knew somebody in Atlanta who might know where to send it.” He swallowed hard. “I didn’t think anybody would ever read it.”
He folded the paper back up.
“Somebody read it,” he said. “That’s all I wanted to say. Somebody finally read it.”
The criminal verdict addressed only part of the harm; stolen land remained.
