Editor’s note: The following article is part two of a four-part series about Athens native Dora Jones and the trial of Alfred and Elizabeth Ingalls in San Diego, California. The Ingalls were an affluent white couple accused of mistreating Jones, who worked for them. The article was originally published in the March 15 edition of the San Diego Reader and was written by Robert Fikes Jr., a librarian at San Diego University.

There had been no blacks in the jury pool so there were no blacks seated on the jury when lead prosecuting U.S. Attorney Ernest A. Tolin (later himself a federal judge for the Southern District of California) asserted in his opening statement that Dora’s affair with Elizabeth’s first husband had intensified Dora’s misery.

Even before the divorce Elizabeth had ceased paying Dora for her work. Tolin said Elizabeth, who was the dominant spouse in her marriages, maintained control over Dora, who occasionally protested her condition or tried to run away, by repeatedly threatening to inform the police of Dora’s illegal abortion; by declaring her insane and threatening to have her sent to a mental institution; by isolating her from potential friends and relatives; and, employing psychological blackmail with frequent reminders of her past “sin” of adultery.

“You owe me your life now because you have ruined mine,” Tolin quoted Elizabeth.

The proud socialite had mostly succeeded in distorting Dora’s self-image. As Tolin explained, Elizabeth tried to convince her she was “dull-witted,” and that she did not possess the ability to “go out into the world and make her way … that the only way she could expiate her original sin was by staying with her as a common maid for the rest of her life.”

Subsequent testimony by a psychiatrist and by Dr. Ivan M. McCullom, head of the psychology department at San Diego State College, contradicted the idea that Dora was helpless and “dim-witted,” that she in fact had scored a respectable 105 on the IQ test he administered.

When the court session concluded Tolin met with reporters and recounted humiliating and unusual tasks Dora was required to perform for the Ingalls. He informed the gathering that Elizabeth had all of Dora’s teeth extracted and not fitted with dentures. She also made sure Dora’s hair was always cut short, presumably to lessen her femininity and attractiveness to men.

Declining to make an opening statement in court, veteran defense counsel Clifford K. Fitzgerald, a former Army captain and director of the San Diego Bar Association, labeled the prosecution’s claims as so much rubbish and revealed he had tried to work out a deal with prosecuting attorneys to allow Elizabeth to exchange correspondence with Dora (he would later introduce as evidence a letter written by Dora showing some affection for Elizabeth).

On the fourth day of trial, prosecution witness William Toomey, a policeman from Lynn, Massachusetts, testified that in 1936 Elizabeth had voiced to him her suspicion that Dora was “losing her mind” and plotting to kill her with poison. This reinforced her ongoing narrative that Dora could be or should be declared insane, something also useful in intimidating and controlling Dora.

Apparently the first week of trial had taken a toll on Elizabeth’s composure. Mary Mathes Simpson, a friend of Helen since childhood, who had testified she had watched Dora doing menial work “while poorly clothed,” was reported to have been accosted during recess in a federal building corridor by Elizabeth, a tall, stoutly built matron, who slammed her against a wall, cursed at her, and called her a “dirty, dirty skunk.”

On July 1, at the start of the second week of trial, a serious disturbance broke out when an unexpected crowd of about 400 people assembled to claim just 80 seats in the courtroom. The crowd was comprised mostly of African-Americans who were keenly aware of Dora’s plight, felt they shared her pain, and wanted to see justice done.

Though fewer than San Francisco and far smaller than that of Los Angeles, the black population of San Diego, thanks to wartime and post-war economic expansion, more than tripled in the decade of the 1940s, from 4,143 inhabitants in 1940 to 14,904 by 1950, or 2 percent of the total population of the city in 1940 to 4.5 percent in 1950.

The presiding federal judge of the U.S. Court of the Southern District of California, Jacob Weinberger (namesake of the Weinberger Elementary School, the Jacob Weinberger United States Courthouse on F Street downtown, and a president of the United Jewish Fund of San Diego) declined to take the bench until order was restored in the noisy, congested hallway.

Two women in the crowd fainted, two men got into a fist fight, and those who could not be seated began chanting loudly, “let us in, let us in, let us in.” It was feared the situation might degenerate into a riot.

Responding to a call from the judge for emergency assistance, the two assigned U.S. marshals were reinforced with city policemen who locked arms to prevent entry into the courtroom and warned the crowd troublemakers would be arrested.

The trial of Dora’s alleged enslavers had of course captured headlines in black newspapers coast to coast, including the venerable Pittsburgh Courier and Baltimore Afro-American.

Rising to the occasion and vowing to spare no expense, the Los Angeles Sentinel, the largest black newspaper in the West, sent its editor and publisher, Leon H. Washington Jr., and special reporter Clinton M. Arnold to San Diego to cover the trial firsthand and file numerous in-depth stories from a black point of view.

They not only interviewed the Ingalls, attorneys, and key witnesses, but also gauged the opinions of local African-Americans, among them Dr. Edward A. Bailey, a physician and former president of the San Diego branch of the NAACP, who expressed optimism that justice would be done.

“I served under Judge Weinberger on the grand jury when he was in superior court and I know he is fair. I also feel that the U.S. attorney is a good man and will handle this case right,” said Bailey.

While in San Diego, Washington and Arnold roomed at the Douglas Hotel, the city’s premier black-owned business enterprise, then located downtown at the corner of Second Avenue and Market Street, with its renowned Creole Palace nightclub patronized by blacks and whites.

The hallway distraction over with, the main witnesses that day, Sgt. William G. Hoyt of the Berkeley Police Department, took the stand and said that on October 11, 1946, at the Berkeley Police Station he heard Elizabeth threaten to have Dora either jailed or committed to a mental institution if she refused to travel to Coronado and continue working for she and Alfred.

He further stated that Elizabeth said she had quit paying Dora and that she had only kept her in the Ingalls’ home because she believed the housemaid “might tell the outside world” about the affair with her first husband.

On Tuesday, July 2, the Ingalls’ daughter Helen was called to testify. As she approached the stand Elizabeth began to weep. The rift between mother and daughter was sadly obvious when Helen said Elizabeth routinely assaulted Dora, striking her, scratching her face, pushing her down stairs, and verbally demeaning her. There was one instance she said when she grabbed her mother’s arm to stop a beating.

As her mother continued to cry and wipe away tears, Helen, who continued to face toward her mother, recalled being accused of being a “Judas” by the woman who bore her. She further testified to once seeing Alfred, her father, standing over Dora beating her with his fists.

The atmosphere in the courtroom was tense but Helen’s resolve was unshaken as she recollected: “I remember from my earliest childhood, my mother telling me that Dora Jones was a criminal and had been paroled to my mother. I never was told what the crime was.”

It was also brought out in court that sometime between the federal grand jury indictment in March and the start of the trial in June the Ingalls traveled back to Berkeley to try and persuade Helen to lie about their treatment of Dora, but she steadfastly refused even though they hinted at suicide if she did not agree to go along with their scheme.

Next on the stand was Dora’s older sister, Myrtle N. Turrentine, from Athens, Alabama, who remembered the only time Dora, minus teeth, was allowed to visit home (in 1924) and had confided she had “done wrong.”

Brother Arthur W. Jones from St. Louis, Missouri, told the court when he showed up at the Ingalls’ home in Lynn, Massachusetts, to see Dora he was met at the door by Elizabeth who barred his entry and rudely turned him away.

He reported the matter to the police but when they telephoned the residence to check on Dora’s welfare, the prosecution alleged, Elizabeth coerced Dora to speak to them and pretend everything was fine, and to say that Arthur had best return home.

See part three of this story in Saturday’s edition of The News Courier.

— Fikes was born and raised in Birmingham and graduated from Tuskegee University in 1970. He acquired graduate degrees in history and library science at the University of Minnesota, and retired this past January as a research librarian at San Diego State University.