When a lower court ruled against them on a technicality, Claud Johnson–Robert Johnson's common-law son–and his relatives appealed the decision.
In reviewing their request to reopen the case, Leflore County Circuit Judge Ashley Hines ran across the assertion that there was an 'eyewitness to Claud's conception.'
That being somewhat out of the ordinary, Judge Hines thought it might be an interesting case to hear.
In 2001, Hines ruled that Claud Johnson (b. December 16, 1931) was the son of Vergie Jane Cain (ne: Smith) and Robert Johnson, and Johnson's most direct and sole surviving heir, entitling Claud Johnson to the royalties accrued in his father's estate–a father he only saw once being held off at the edge of the yard by a protective grandfather.
In Hazlehurst, Mississippi on May 12, 1992, that eyewitness, Mrs. Eula Mae Williams–a childhood and lifelong friend of Vergie Jane Smith–was deposed in support of Claud Johnson's claim.
Ms. Eula Mae Williams (who was a Williams then, and married a Williams) and Vergie Jane Smith [at the time, later after marriage, Vergie Jane Cain] were girlfriends and courting couples: Ms. Williams with the man who was to become her husband; Vergie Jane with a local blues musician, R.L. (aka Robert) Johnson.
These are excerpts from the official court record of Mrs. Williams' deposition for the Chancery Court of Leflore County, Mississippi, in the matter of the disposition of the estate of Robert L. Johnson (musician, deceased).
Following his ill-fated marriage (at 17) to 15-year-old Virginia Travis (she and their infant both died in childbirth), Johnson left the Delta for Hazlehurst–the town of his birth–to look for his biological father, a sharecropper named Noah Johnson. He did reportedly find him, but his father had no apparent interest in connecting with his son.
In early 1931, when he was around nineteen, Johnson met Vergie Jane Smith. As couples, Eula Mae Williams and her beau; Vergie Jane and Johnson would go out in the woods (or to Vergie Jane's aunt's house when her aunt wasn't home) to 'do what women and men do.'
As a result of these trysts, Vergie Jane became pregnant and this foursome was together when she told Johnson the news. Johnson admitted he knew "it was his" and was ready to do whatever Vergie Jane wanted, leaving the door open to their marriage.
But Vergie Jane's mother and father came roaring south to Hazlehurst to collect her and take her home in Crystal Springs, Miss., where Johnson was absolutely unwelcome.
After Vergie Jane was carried off, Robert married an older woman in the community who had a couple of kids of her own, Calletta Craft, known as Callie. Even after his marriage to Callie, Johnson went to see Vergie Jane and his son at their family home but was held off by her father and not allowed in the yard.
We pick up the threads of this youthful and complicated life sixty-one years later, in Eula Mae Williams' 1992 deposition with three lawyers, one of whom was civil rights activist Victor McTeer.
Victor McTeer
I met Victor McTeer at Common Ground on the Hill, a summer arts program on the grounds of William McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College) around 2010. McTeer was one of the first black graduates at the college. He was recruited for the football team and was big enough to make folks think twice about racial taunting. He integrated the college in Carroll County–a county that, as recently as 2020, still had an active Klan coven.
McTeer graduated in 1969, spent that summer working in Mississippi returned to go to law school. Graduating, he announced to his parents that he was going to practice law in Mississippi. Fearing for his life, they begged him not to go. But he went, had a successful, if sometimes harrowing career, and his daughter eventually became the first female, and the first black mayor of Greenville, Mississippi.
In 2010, McTeer described Mrs. Williams as a white-haired, erect, jet-black eighty-year-old woman who was clear in her recollections and straightforward in her demeanor.
I hope you'll enjoy the bits I've lifted from the deposition. They are extraordinary, entirely normal, and deeply human.
The Deposition
Q: Now, Mrs. Williams, what kinds of activities would you and these other young people, Mr. Williams, Mr. Johnson, And Miss (Vergie Jane) Smith, participate in?
A: Well, see, he was a musician. He played music and we would all, you know, go to little parties, slip around to little parties. I just have to tell the truth about it. We slipped around little parties and things.
Q: Why did you have to slip around?
A: Because our parents would whip us. They would tell us not to go and we would have to slip off and go.
Q: I want you to tell us what you recall about his being a musician.
A: Well, he played a guitar, and he played a French harp [Ed-harmonica], and he played a jew's harp. He kept those with him all the time.
Q: And R.L. Johnson would play his guitar? Did you like it?
A: Yes, we all loved it.
Q: Now, do you know how Vergie Jane Smith and Robert Johnson got acquainted with each other?
A: Well, he came in a young man, just we don't know where he come from. All we know, we just saw this young man. And we commenced to trying to find out who he was and all, and he told us his name...and he had this little old guitar and he would play it. And we would just all be around him, and from that, we, you know, learned who he was, who he said he was.
And he told us who his...the people...was that he learned to pick this guitar, and that's where he stayed most of the time. (R.L. stayed and learned to play from Ike Zinnerman and his brother in Hazlehurst).
Q: I want you to describe...what kinds of occasions you saw Robert Johnson and Vergie Jane Smith together.
A: Well, just like young boys and girls go out together. We would all go out together...my husband and I (with R.L. and Vergie Jane). We would run together all the time. Do things we had no business.
Q: Such as what?
A: Well, that's her coming up pregnant.
Q: Would you be specific with me, please, ma'am, and tell me what y'all were doing?
A: Well, well, they call it having sex now. We didn't know that name then.
Q: And did you ever have any personal knowledge of whether Vergie Jane Smith and R.L. Johnson had sex together?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And how did you get such knowledge?
A: Because we were all together.
Q: Had you ever been with R.L. Johnson and Vergie Jane Smith at a time when they had sexual relations with each other.
A: Right. Well, I just know we would be slipping off from home and go off down in the woods.
Asked about Vergie Jane's pregnancy, Mrs. Williams remembered Vergie Jane said:
"I missed a month and I know my momma gonna kill me. I'm pregnant. And I don't know what I'm gone do now, because it's gone tell on us."
Asked what Robert Johnson said in response to the news, she said:
"He didn't say anything, but just said, "Well, what you gone do?"
"She says, "I don't know. I'm afraid."
"He said, "It's mine. I know it. Whatever you want to do, that's what we'll do. I'll do whatever you want to do."
"He said he would marry her if she would marry him."
Q: Now, ma'am, you have testified about various things that happened back before Claud Johnson was born. I want to ask you on what, if any, occasion did you ever see R. L. Johnson and Vergie Jane Smith having sexual relations with each other? Can you tell us when and where that was?
A: Well, it was at night, and it was out in the bushes. In Martinsville.
Q: And what positions were they in?
A: They were laying on the ground over here, and my husband and I was on the ground over there. One on top of the other.
Q: And who was on top?
A: R.L. was on top of her.
Q: And how many times did this take place?
A: Oh, several. Several.
Q: More than three or four?
A: That's right.
Q: Five?
A: Well, I wouldn't say.
Q: And you just watched them make love?
A: Well, we all were doing the same thing.
Q: Now, just tell me how this would work. I want to understand exactly how it would happen.
A: Well, we would go to parties, then sometimes we would just be out together. Just like boys and girls be out and we would have sex...just you know, girls and boys be out together walking and talking. Because that's all we could do back then.
Q: Let's talk about the first time it happened.
A: The first time it happened...he had been playing at one of these little jook house things. Little Jook joints. First time we ever saw him, he had a guitar swinging on his neck.
Pressed by McTeer on the details of their sexual encounters, Mrs. Williams recalled:
"We was standing up out there in the woods."
Q: And did you at any point in time remove your clothing?
A: Well, had to.
Q: You were sitting there watching someone else do this?
A: I done told you.
Q: Well, let me share something with you, because I'm really curious about this. Maybe I have a more limited experience. But you're saying to me that you were watching them make love?
A: Mm-hm.
Q: While you were making love?
A: Mm-hm.
Q: You don't think that's at all odd?
A: Say What?
Q: Have you ever done that before or since?
A: Yes.
Q: Watch other people make love?
A: Yes, I have done it before. Yes, I've done it after I married. yes.
Q: You watched other people make love?
A: Yes.
Q: Other than Mr. Johnson and Vergie Cain?
A: Right.
Q: Really?
A: You haven't?
Q: No, really haven't.
At this point in his story at Common Ground, Victor McTeer told me Mrs. Williams said, "Well, I feel sorry for ya!" And we both laughed. McTeer said, "I was really young."
Later in the deposition, being questioned by a different lawyer, Mrs. Williams recalled the first time they noticed Robert Johnson:
"I told you when he come in, just a strange boy. Just like you would be at home, and somebody come up. The folks around, you know them. But when a stranger come up, you know that's a stranger. Well, now, that's the way. He just came up.
"He lived with these Zinnermans. We knowed he lived, we asked him, and he said he lived with–let me see what the Zinnerman man was named–[Ed. Ike]..."
"When we first saw him, he had his guitar swinging on his neck. And he had those harps and things. The first time we ever saw him. That's the way we learned him. He just came up like that, and he would play his music, and just all of us began to hang around.
"We all talked about his music. We sit and we would say, "Oh, he popular." And from then, you know, after he was around awhile, then different ones began to get him to play at these little places where they sold them little hot dogs and things.
"We would want to go hear him. All us girls talked about we wanted to go, and we couldn't go. And when we did go, we would have to slip. And then hurry, stay there a few minutes, and see and hear what we wanted to hear, you know, looking, and then get back home before mama would be done missed us. Because we, we know what would be coming next.
"When we first met him, he told us his name was R.L. Johnson. That all we ever knowed was R.L. Johnson.
"The first time we met Robert, we were sitting on the porch at my house, at my grandmama's house. And he came up across the field up through the woods. And we was all looking wondering who it was. Now, that's the first time we met him. He came up to our house. And we talked to him."
Q: Was there a little bit of competition among the girls to see who could get to know him well?
A: "Well, all the girls liked him. All the girls. Most of the time we would be around him, he would be playing music, and it was a gang around him at all times.
"You know how young men do. They'll talk to the other one to talk to you. You know what I mean?
"[And Vergie Jane] would talk to me about her uncle. Say, he like you. Well, that's the way we got together. And her talking about it like that. That's the way we got together. And when we would be at these places, she would say, "I like R.L. pretty good." Say, "Yeah, I'd like to talk to him."
"Well, my husband, her uncle, talked to him. And that's the way we got to swapping ideas and being together. You know what I'm trying to say?"
Extraordinary, Normal, & Extremely Human
Helping Robert Johnson down off his pedestal as an iconic Delta Blues musician–a cipher–we can begin to develop an appreciation for this polite, mostly quiet, nearly shy (off-stage) young man, who offered to be a willing partner to a frightened young girl who was going to have his child.
Go listen to When You Gotta Good Friend, Love In Vain, or Come On In My Kitchen, and get back to me.
They may sound a little different to you now.
Thanks for being here,
Scott Ainslie
https://Patreon.com/ScottAinslie
https://ScottAinslie.Substack.com
https://CattailMusic.com