168: The Trials of Hattie Lee Barnes

In April 1951, a young black woman was closing up a roadhouse tavern and getting ready to sleep there for the night. Hattie Lee Barnes worked as a maid at Lee’s Place and in recent weeks had started sleeping there as caretaker, to watch over the bar after hours. She had a gun to protect herself and the tavern. When she heard a window opening near her bed, she fired the gun at the figure in the window, and her life became a waking nightmare for the next few years. Bullied, intimidated, almost shot to death and wrongly imprisoned, Hattie Lee still testified in an odyssey of trials for the state of Mississippi.

Hosted and produced by Erica Kelley
Researched and Written by Erica Kelley
In Collaboration with Trent Brown
Original Graphic Art by Coley Horner
Original Music by Rob Harrison of Gamma Radio
Edited & Mixed by Next Day Podcast & Erica Kelley

To order Trent Brown’s Book: Roadhouse Justice: Hattie Lee Barnes and the Killing of a White Man in 1950s Mississippi: https://lsupress.org/books/detail/roadhouse-justice/
and: https://a.co/d/dkMLq69

Sources: https://www.southernfriedtruecrime.com/the-trials-of-hattie-lee-barnes

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