Gideon's Trumpet by Anthony Lewis

me.…
    Sincerely,
    Abe Fortas
    On November 13th there arrived in Fortas’s office a twenty-two-page letter from Gideon, once again printed in pencil on the lined prison forms. It read, in its entirety, as follows.
    Mr. Abe Fortas, Esquire
    1229 Nineteenth St. N.W.
    Washington, D.C.
    Dear Sir:
    In answer to your letter of October 31. I will try to give you a detailed biographical description of my life. You will understand that due to my limited education andalso to the utter folly and hopelessness [of] parts of my life, it will be doubtful if I can put it down on paper with any reasonable comprehension. I will not be proud of this biography, it will be no cause of pride; nor will it be the absolute truth. I can not remember or desire to remember that well. You have emphasize that this is not at all necessary, that you only want it for background. I believe that the state will attempt to use my personal record in their arguments to the Supreme Court and for that reason you can be prepared. Also being only a human being I will try though I know I can not, to justify myself through this outline.
    I was born August 30th, 1910 in Hannibal Missouri. My parents where Charles Roscoe Gideon and Virginia Gregory Gideon. My father died a few days after I was three years old. Mother remarried when I was five years old. My stepfather’s name was Marion Frances Anderson he died in 1955. Mother is still living. From this union I have a halve sister Mrs. Roy E. Ogden forty-five years old R.F.D. #1, Hannibal Mo. A halve brother Sgt. Russell Lee Anderson, U.S.A.F. Mother resides at 2121 Chestnut Street Hannibal Mo. My brother is thirty-two years of age.
    My early membery is of my mother’s marriage and my step-father. My step-father was a good man all though he was uneducated and worked the largest part of his life in shoe factory. also my mother. We where a family of factory workers class. But allways own their own home, which my mother had first bought with my father’s insurance. I went to the public school at Hannibal, Mo. I never had any trouble and made my grades up to the eight grade.
    My step-father never could accept me or I could not accept him. My mother was very strict and my life as a child was of the strict discipline. My parents lived by thebest moral customs and where members of the Calavary Baptist church Hannibal Mo. which I join when I was about thirteen years of age. My mother still to this day has done nothing that could be class as wrong. Also my sister and brother are of the best kind of character.
    I suppose, I am what is called individualist a person who will not conform. Anyway my parents where always quarreling and I would be the scapegoat of those quarrels. My life was miserable. I was never allow to do the things of a ordinory boy.
    At the age of fourteen year, I ran away from home, I accepted the life of a hobo and tramp in preference to my home. In a month or so I made it to California. At this time I begin to learn the facts of life. How good people can be and how bad they can be I wandered around over the west for all most a year and came back to Missouri. When to my mother’s brother and started living with him until my mother found out where I was at and she came and got me. Had me place in the jail at Hannibal which I excaped from the next day and went back to the country to hide out at this time it was extremely cold weather and a short time later I burglarist a country store for some clothes which I was caught the next day by the store owner with all the clothes on. I was tried in juvnile court in Ralls County Missouri. My mother ask the court to send me to the reformatory which they did for a term of three years. Off all the prisons I have been in that was the worst I still have scar on my body from the whippings I recieved there anyway I was paroled after a year. I was then sixteen years old. Paroles did not mean much in those days. I went to work in the shoe factory at two dollars a day. But was