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justice for black and white alike.
Euel Lee did not live in vain."^
In the same editorial space, the Afro refuted the idea that the justice system
had acquitted itself honorably in dealing with Lee's case. In turning down Lee's
final appeal, liberal judge Morris Soper had celebrated the fact that Lee's case
showed "that no one in this country is so poor and friendless that he cannot have
the benefit of the best counsel and admission to every court in the land." The Afro
rejected Soper's thinking by reminding him who was really responsible for what
little justice Lee got:
Neither the money nor the friends which kept Euel Lee alive for two years
was the willing gift of America. To the ILD, an international organization
which is looked upon as an ajjen body within our gates is due the credit for
the saving of America's face.
The ILD had, however, come under considerable pressure for its efforts in
the Euel Lee case. Anti-communist hysteria was on the rise, and two hundred
nervous police were deployed around the penitentiary the night of Lee's execution
to repel an expected onslaught of violent Communist demonstrators (an onslaught
that never came because no demonstration had been called). Ralph Matthews of
the Afro described a "bushy-haired and wild-eyed" Bernard Ades who, just prior to
Lee's execution, "looked years older, and the buoyant air that had marked his
conduct throughout the two trials at Towson was displaced by an expression of
absolute dejection." Ades keenly felt the loss of Lee, a man he said he had grown
close to during the two years he defended him. In addition, Ades himself had
already been suspended from practicing law in the federal courts because of alleged
misconduct as Lee's attorney. The ILD was under mounting attack. Both local
officials and white residents on the Eastern Shore (joined this time by a few
conservative Black figures) were blaming Ades and the ILD for the lynching of
Armwood, as they had for the lynching of Williams two years before. Their
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