Ohio’s First Black Woman Lawyer Daisy Perkins
Daisy Perkins was Ohio’s first Black woman lawyer, a trailblazer who defied expectations and carved out a career in criminal defense at a time when both her race and gender made that nearly impossible. But her story is not one of simple triumph—it’s one of controversy, resilience, and ultimately, downfall.
In this week’s episode, I sat down with Jesse Bethea, a freelance features writer at Columbus Underground and the author of Daisy’s Way: The Wild and Tragic Career of Ohio’s First Black Woman Lawyer, a four-part series that unpacks Perkins’ complex legacy. We explored her rise to prominence, her high-profile legal battles, and the perjury conviction that ended her career.
From courtroom drama and political ambition to police misconduct and systemic bias, we discussed the forces that shaped Perkins’ fate and what her story reveals about justice—then and now. Whether you see her as a legal maverick, a victim of discrimination, or a cautionary tale, Daisy Perkins’ story is one that demands to be told.
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Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: Daisy Perkins was Ohio's first Black woman lawyer, a trailblazer who defied expectations and carved out a career in criminal defense at a time when both her race and gender made it nearly impossible. But her story is not one of simple triumph. It's one of controversy, resilience, and, ultimately, downfall. In this week's episode, I sat down with Jesse Bethea, a freelance features writer at Columbus Underground and author of "Daisy's Way: The Wild and Tragic Career of Ohio's First Black Woman Lawyer." It's a four-part series that unpacks Perkins's complex legacy. We explore her rise to prominence, her high-profile legal battles, and the perjury conviction that ended her career. From courtroom drama and political ambition to police misconduct and systemic bias, we discuss the forces that shaped Perkins's fate and what her story reveals about justice then and now. Whether you see her as a legal maverick, a victim of discrimination, or a cautionary tale, Daisy Perkins's story is one that demands to be told. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Jesse Bethea, a freelance features reporter for Columbus Underground. Jesse, how are you? I'm great, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's good to have you back. Longtime or medium-term listeners of the podcast will recall we talked to you a couple of times about the story about the North Market graveyard. First of all, any updates on that? None that I can share. Okay, fair, fair. We're talking today on the occasion of a four-part series that's currently trickling out on Columbus Underground about — well, Daisy Perkins, who is — So Daisy Perkins was the first Black female attorney in the state of Ohio. And she practiced law in the 1920s here in Columbus. And she was a criminal defense attorney for about a decade, until she was, essentially — I would say — railroaded out of her legal career by the local legal establishment. Sent to prison.
Okay. How did you — first of all, how did you come across this story? This started a few years ago for my day job. I work for the Ohio Channel, and we were, at that time, looking for historical Ohioans that we could do short videos about for Black History Month. Specifically, Black Ohioans who were involved in important legal decisions or important moments in the state's judicial history. So not civics in general — literally, no, no, very specifically, you know, it had to do with the law. And so it was pointed out to us that, you know, this was the first Black female attorney. I didn't know anything about her, you know, her sort of ignominious end. But in researching it — and I have to give credit to the librarians at the Supreme Court of Ohio Law Library, they dug up a lot of material for me to make this video — I did a lot of research, found a lot of interesting information that I hadn't seen reported elsewhere. Did you end up doing the video? I did, but it was ultimately — I felt too short. You know, just the format — I didn't have as much space as I wanted to talk about all the details of what happened. So I started, basically, three-ish years ago, writing this series. And just sort of trying to get it — because it's actually a bit of a complicated narrative to explain, and so I was trying to condense it and get it concise, but also have all the facts, as I understand them, to bring this story to light.
So it's fair to say, basically, you did a smaller version of this project, yes, and then you brought it to Walker and Columbus Underground, and were like, "I want to do this," right? It's not a secret that you are doing it on the occasion of Black History Month, either. No. I mean, I would have done it anyway, right? But I got to a point where I was like, this feels ready to go. And it happens to be, you know, Black History Month. So I said, well, this makes a lot of sense to put it out. Let's do a little bit on — you talked about the Supreme Court library. Talk about the research and the work that you did to sort of put this together. Well, I focused a lot of my attention, similar to what I did with the graveyard series, on going through the archives of the Columbus Dispatch and, to a lesser extent, the Ohio State News — even though that was not really an operation in the 1920s, but other newspapers were. And so all of the Dispatch archives are, you know, in the Columbus library. And the Columbus library also has, on their third floor, in their genealogy section, this very interesting section where it's literally just big cabinets full of manila folders with different topics.
Okay, like clippings that have been tagged as, "This article is around this topic." So as I was in the process of doing that, I was like, "Well, I wonder if they have anything about Daisy Perkins." And one of those manila folders is labeled "Daisy Perkins," with a bunch of clipped articles that I had never seen before, not even in their online archives. And so I was able to get that information. And I would say the more vital thing that I received was from the librarians at the Supreme Court. They gave me the full appeal that Daisy Perkins filed with the state Supreme Court and the U.S. — And so let's jump to what happened, right? Like, what happened? So she practiced, you said, I think for 10 years, about — Yeah, between 1920 and — yeah, I think she was admitted to the bar in 1919, and she was disbarred in 1928.
Okay. And there was one specific case. What's the gentleman's name — it was Leon Knight. Leon Knight murdered his mother-in-law, yes, and she got him off for it. She didn't get him off. He did go to the Ohio State Penitentiary. He definitely did it. Okay, let me be clear about that. What she managed to do was convince the jury that he might have acted in self-defense. Because of that, the jury recommended mercy. The jury recommended that he not be executed. So that was what she — she didn't save him from going to prison, but she saved him from going to the electric chair. Okay. And then some folks probably were not happy with that. Specifically — The county prosecutor at that time.
And so the county prosecutor ended up charging her with soliciting perjury. Yes. Who was the star witness she had? The witness was a man named Abraham Small. This was also a Black man who lived on the east side, and he was friends with Leon Knight. Small testified that before the shooting, Leon Knight's brother and brothers-in-law came to him and asked to borrow a gun, for the specific purpose of killing Leon Knight. So that introduced the idea that, oh, this was — This — Leon Knight had found out about this. It is possible to believe that he believed there was a risk to his life, right? Even if there was another gun there besides Leon Knight's, that means there might have been a shootout and there was collateral damage, and he's still responsible, but he did not go there with the intent of murdering his mother-in-law.
Okay. Did he have — sorry — did he have a motive for murdering his mother-in-law? It seems that he did not get along with his wife's family very much. His wife's name was Roxy Knight, and then his mother-in-law was named Mary Hill. And she had a number of sons as well, and they were all in this one apartment on the east side. And there was some sort of altercation between Leon, his brothers-in-law, and then his mother-in-law was also there at the same time, and — She was killed. And she was killed. Okay. And so the Franklin County prosecutor at the time — the case ends, he gets mercy — and then what is the process that they sort of went through to get against her? Like, what — So the crux of the prosecutor's argument is that when Abraham Small testified at the grand jury, he didn't say anything about these brothers asking to borrow a gun. So that testimony appeared only after the fact.
And for those that aren't aware, the grand jury is basically what you go to before you bring charges, in order to basically get, quote-unquote, "permission" to bring charges, right? But the interesting thing is that the brothers — the sons of the woman who was murdered — they told the grand jury they did go and ask to borrow a gun from Abraham Small. So the prosecutor then contends, okay, so Daisy Perkins got this testimony from the Hill brothers that they gave to the grand jury, and then she went and showed it to Abraham Small so that he could say the same thing on the stand later, which would be illegal — soliciting perjury, exactly right. But the only evidence that he had that she did that is Abraham Small claiming that. But he was prosecuting Abraham Small for perjury. Sorry, just repeating it back. The brothers said to the grand jury, "We went and got a gun against this guy because we really didn't like him. We went and got it from this guy, Mr. Small." And then the prosecutor is basically saying, "Well, Mr. Small never told us about this, hence, that is perjury." Yes. That's — I mean, it's not perjury. It's just a new — it's just a fact, though. This is also coming at the same time as — even when the Knight trial is underway, the prosecution is trying to prevent Small from testifying. Even to the point that after he does testify, they have detectives basically follow him out of the courthouse and assault him and then arrest him for perjury. And the only reason they think that he has committed perjury is because he said something different at the trial than he said at the grand jury hearing —
Even though that information was already stated in the grand jury. Exactly. And witnesses change their testimony all the time. It doesn't necessarily mean, right, that they've been bribed. And so the prosecutor then, because — apparently one pound of flesh is not enough — they then want to go after the attorney, the defense attorney, as well. What's the argument that they make, that she solicited perjury? Well, they get testimony from Small, who, again, they are in the process of prosecuting. So this is a carrot-and-a-stick situation. Small, if you tell me that Daisy Perkins bribed you to change your testimony, we'll go light on you. Exactly. And they did. He was never convicted of perjury. She was convicted of asking him to perjure himself. He was never convicted of perjury.
So she tries to defend herself. She says, "This is ridiculous. Here's where this information came from." And as far as I can tell — and, again, there's a limited historical record here — I assume you don't have direct transcripts of the case. I have transcripts of the Knight trial, but not her own trial, not her own testimony, I've got to say. So I don't know what sort of physical evidence — but based on the briefs filed by John Chester, the prosecutor at that time, he never says, like, "Oh, and we have this document that proves that she did this." All they seem to have is the testimony of a person they were trying anyway.
So, end of the day — I think we all sort of know where this is going. She gets prosecuted. Yes. She does get convicted. Yes. It's not super important to the story, but she actually doesn't turn herself in. She goes on the run. Is there an interesting part of that, or is it just she went on the run? She was on the run for about a month. And it's kind of funny, because in the newspaper archives, every now and then there's an article that'll pop up that's like, "Daisy Perkins resurfaces in Cleveland" and files, like, a legal brief or something. Oh, so she was still doing it. She was still sending off — she was still sending petitions of appeal, huh, like, as she was traveling around the state not being arrested. And so finally, she's located at her sister's house in North Baltimore, and they arrest her there and bring her back to Columbus, and she is sentenced to go to Marysville, the women's reformatory there. And, I imagine, disbarred. She's disbarred at that time, yes. And, as you sort of talk through in the piece, she sort of lives an unmiraculous life after that. Yeah, so she goes to prison. She is offered parole a few years in, and actually refuses it. I don't have — there's not an explicit reason why she refuses. I suspect it's because you have to admit wrongdoing, and you have to supplicate yourself. Yeah, she was adamant that she did nothing wrong. So she serves the rest of her term until she's finally paroled again in 1937. She does seem to take that parole, and she lives the rest of her life in Columbus. She never practices law, but she seems to have been a very active member of St. Paul AME Church on the east side. A lot of their bulletins that have shown up in my research feature her as, like, on a bunch of different committees and whatnot through the 1940s. And then she died in 1963.
Okay. And is the motivation for her prosecution — is it entirely surrounding this one case, or is it "this person's a thorn in our side"? Is there racism, sexism as part of it? I mean, I don't think you can discount that there must have been some racial and misogynistic motivation. Having said that, you know, I also just don't discount that lawyers often make a lot of mistakes, and sometimes repeatedly. So I do try to leave space in the article, and in my own mind, that she definitely could have made mistakes. Everything I just described about soliciting perjury or bribing witnesses — it's very possible she did all that. But the fact is, her prosecution would not hold water in modern times. For one thing, she was a political opponent of the prosecutor himself. She ran against him for county prosecutor the year before she was tried. So there were all kinds of reasons why he had a conflict of interest. I mean, he had just tried the Knight trial — they had just been opponents in that. And he was pissed off that he didn't get what he wanted, right? So I don't think there's any way that in a modern situation he would have been allowed to personally conduct this prosecution against her. I think we would understand now that a special prosecutor or somebody would have been appointed by the court to see it through, if there was legitimate evidence.
Well, and even if these conflicts didn't exist, this is not the kind of case that you try. Like, the argument being that lawyers are going to make a good-faith effort to get within the bounds of the law and within the bounds of the court process, but they're going to make their best-faith effort to get their client the best deal they can. Sure. That's what she was trying to do. She may have made a mistake, and that's the space we're sort of leaving for that. But even if that mistake had happened, it should be acknowledged, she would not have been prosecuted in this way. I mean — it's always bad to make these grand generalizations, okay — but can you imagine a white male attorney in the 1920s doing something shady like that, if she really did it, and going to jail for 10 years? I can't imagine a Black female attorney these days having that happen to them, right? So, a product of the time, I think, is sort of what we're — if not directly saying, at least inferring. Talk about her general — like, what was her life before that? She seems to have been a very driven woman. I mean, obviously. But she was sort of an attorney trying to be a politician. She ran for office, you know, every conceivable local office in Columbus throughout the 1920s. She ran for school board, I believe, she ran for city council, she ran for county prosecutor more than once, under party affiliation and as an independent. The one thing I note in the article is that there are a couple of instances where she seems to annoy even the Black male legal establishment, but they have a habit of coming to her defense eventually.
She ruffles some feathers. It doesn't matter whose feathers they are. Got it. So overwhelmingly they're men's feathers. But there are Black attorneys, or Black male attorneys, who don't seem to like what she's doing, but one of them ends up defending her, you know, as she's appealing this conviction. So clearly, I think there was an understanding that, like, she might be difficult — For us to work with, but she isn't wrong. Yeah, exactly. What else should we know about Daisy Perkins? I mean, that's a good question, because there's a lot of things I want to know about Daisy Perkins still, I think.
To be clear, most of the records that you have are, one, whether she ran for these things, the church bulletins, and then the court records. Yes. So the sort of, like, how do we navigate historically — again, a little under 100 years ago — like, what was this person like, and how did they live their life? I personally want to know more about her life after prison and what she devoted herself to. It seems that she devoted a lot of her time to church work. She never married, never had children. She seems to have had a lot of friends and relatives. But I do wonder, because she lived a long life. She outlived her rival, John Chester. And she was also older than him to begin with. So she saw the world change around her in a lot of interesting ways. And I do wish I knew more about how she felt about all that. Because I'm sure — I guess I imagine, right, she was frankly wronged. And I imagine there were times when she must have seen changes in the city, changes in the country, and thought, "You know, it's really frustrating that I was left behind because of this, frankly, injustice." And yet, based on the documents surrounding her life, she rose up, right, and unfortunately was then torn down. Yes. Yeah. I think that too — I mean, the articles before her trial, it does seem that she became a bit of a local celebrity at times, but maybe not in, like, a generous way. I imagine that the newspapers sort of treated her as a novelty. And we have them today, right? Yeah, right. And so it was, this —
Person is always speaking up, this person is always, like, getting just enough signatures to get on the ballot. That too. But I think — It was also a bit of, like, "Look at this Black woman practicing law, isn't that fun, isn't that interesting?" And so I think that was the news hook. Because — I mean, media was very different back then. They covered all kinds of things that we wouldn't really think of as news now. But yes, it's hard for me to imagine that they were covering the exploits of every attorney in the city. I think there was a bit of a novelty to it. But at the end of the day, they want readers, right? Right. I got the sense from reading them that there was some entertainment value to covering her career. And that too — I mean, maybe it wasn't her preferred way of getting notoriety, I doubt that it was, but it did give her notoriety. And that too, I imagine, turned a lot of people against her.
So basically, what you're saying is, all press is good press. It's getting her notoriety to the point that, you know, she's probably getting hired more. Sure. Well, that's her billing rate. Yes. And there is a — they note in all of these articles when she's defending a Black person. And that's the majority of the time. So I imagine that it was understood by the Black population of Columbus at that time, like, "We need lawyers who look like us, who are going to defend us." But at the same time, that wasn't — Exclusive, though. I mean, not every Black person on trial was defended by — Right, no. But she was also defending — she appears to be defending a lot of women, especially in situations where they need divorces. And she at least at one point was defending an Eastern European immigrant in some sort of Prohibition trial. And that too is noted by the Dispatch in their articles, of, like — they sort of quote him, the defendant, but they make a point of using, like, the accent, you know, to say, like, "Oh, this person is —"
They wrote the quote phonetically. Oh, yes. That's not racist, right? Oh, you didn't know what he was saying, but you can spell it out. So you can see a little bit of, like, the media at that time may have treated it as, like, there's entertainment value. Like, "Wow, Black lady is defending a funny European man." Yeah. But at the end of the day, I think when you parse together the individual things that she did, she was guided by the goal of doing good, sure, right? Even if — I mean, this guy murdered his mother-in-law, that's not okay — but if it's to get the guy off death row, and, like — but we don't know what her opinion about death row even is, right? We don't know if that's the motive. No. I mean, and she defended him throughout the case. Yes, when there — it wasn't just sentencing? No, it was throughout the case. But, you know, defense attorneys don't have to have motives. Their only motives are to do what's best for their clients. And I think that's what she wanted. I think she recognized, "I'm not going to prove this guy didn't kill his mother-in-law, because he definitely did, but what I can do is keep him from going to the electric chair." And based on the evidence that I'm aware of, she managed to do that. Did the press surrounding this guy not going to death row warrant — was it a big splash, like, "Franklin County prosecutor fails case"? No, I wouldn't say that. I mean, it's personal. And if I'm doing a little bit of pop psychology on people who've been dead 100 years — John J. Chester, I mean, that was a prominent family and still is in Columbus. His son went on to be a rather famous attorney, representing somebody involved in Watergate, I think it was. And his father, the prosecutor John Chester's father, John Chester the first, was also a prominent attorney, and all the way back, you know, into the 1800s. So I think this person, who was very young — John Chester the second — I think he had a lot of pressure to sort of live up to a family reputation. And he ended up, later, being involved in a very prominent prosecution of — I forget his first name, but the Snook case, the famous OSU professor who murdered his mistress. He was the prosecutor on that as well, and that sort of made his name. But then later, in the '30s, he ended up getting tangled up in some corruption scandals after he was no longer the county prosecutor. His replacement actually did a wide-ranging investigation of public corruption, and both him and his detective, who was involved in slapping Abraham Small around — they both got tied into this. They were collecting money from gambling dens and giving it to the county Republican Party, and they weren't supposed to be doing that. No. And then a few years after that, they both, for some reason, got into a giant drunken fight on High Street, and 100 people watched it, and it was a big enough fight, and so violent, that it ended up in the Dispatch. So things got a little rocky for him after this situation. But I do think I can imagine that there was some reputational protection going on, of, like, even though he won this case, I think they were just having been bested a little bit —
Yeah, led him — by not getting the death sentence that he wanted. At the end of the day, what do you hope people sort of take away from the story of Daisy Perkins? I mean, I believe at one point there was discussion of a pardon. I haven't really been able to find a lot of details on that, and I'm not advocating that — you know, I wouldn't advocate that she be pardoned. But I would like people to take another look at this and to recognize this as sort of something that happened that probably shouldn't have happened. And so, at the end — let me translate it, sure — at the end of the day, this is the first Black woman who's an attorney in the entire state of Ohio, right? And look what you did to her. Exactly. And I think the simplest question is to be like, okay, well, we know the first of all kinds of stuff. You know, we know the first person to walk on the moon. We know the first Black man on the Supreme Court. We know the first woman on the Supreme Court, or on the Ohio —
And the first Black woman in the state of Ohio who was an attorney has an asterisk next to her name. And in the article, I think I said, you know, if it had ended any other way, we would have named a library after her or something. I mean, Columbus loves to celebrate its heroes like that. But we can't celebrate this hero because of this thing. But the thing looks pretty shady. So maybe not a pardon, but a library. But a library. I mean — I don't think I need her to receive anything except for a little bit more attention.
Well, and also maybe a bit more of an acknowledgement that the Columbus Way — and I'm using a capital W there — that the Columbus Way is hers, and is not always as clean. It's not always Jerrie Mock. It's not always, like, "Look at this female pilot that did this great thing" — I'm not discrediting Jerrie Mock at all. However, that, like, people come to pioneering places, and sometimes it doesn't always work out. And frankly, sometimes those things not working out aren't their fucking fault. So — Jesse, thanks for your time. I hope, as always, I was coherent. Absolutely, you were, you were. Thank you again. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of The Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite historian. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.
Transcript4,795 words
Tim Fulton Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week: Daisy Perkins was Ohio's first Black woman lawyer, a trailblazer who defied expectations and carved out a career in criminal defense at a time when both her race and gender made it nearly impossible. But her story is not one of simple triumph. It's one of controversy, resilience, and, ultimately, downfall. In this week's episode, I sat down with Jesse Bethea, a freelance features writer at Columbus Underground and author of "Daisy's Way: The Wild and Tragic Career of Ohio's First Black Woman Lawyer." It's a four-part series that unpacks Perkins's complex legacy. We explore her rise to prominence, her high-profile legal battles, and the perjury conviction that ended her career. From courtroom drama and political ambition to police misconduct and systemic bias, we discuss the forces that shaped Perkins's fate and what her story reveals about justice then and now. Whether you see her as a legal maverick, a victim of discrimination, or a cautionary tale, Daisy Perkins's story is one that demands to be told. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Jesse Bethea, a freelance features reporter for Columbus Underground. Jesse, how are you? I'm great, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's good to have you back. Longtime or medium-term listeners of the podcast will recall we talked to you a couple of times about the story about the North Market graveyard. First of all, any updates on that?
Jesse Bethea None that I can share.
Tim Fulton Okay, fair, fair. We're talking today on the occasion of a four-part series that's currently trickling out on Columbus Underground about — well, Daisy Perkins, who is —
Jesse Bethea So Daisy Perkins was the first Black female attorney in the state of Ohio. And she practiced law in the 1920s here in Columbus. And she was a criminal defense attorney for about a decade, until she was, essentially — I would say — railroaded out of her legal career by the local legal establishment. Sent to prison.
Tim Fulton Okay. How did you — first of all, how did you come across this story?
Jesse Bethea This started a few years ago for my day job. I work for the Ohio Channel, and we were, at that time, looking for historical Ohioans that we could do short videos about for Black History Month. Specifically, Black Ohioans who were involved in important legal decisions or important moments in the state's judicial history. So not civics in general — literally, no, no, very specifically, you know, it had to do with the law. And so it was pointed out to us that, you know, this was the first Black female attorney. I didn't know anything about her, you know, her sort of ignominious end. But in researching it — and I have to give credit to the librarians at the Supreme Court of Ohio Law Library, they dug up a lot of material for me to make this video — I did a lot of research, found a lot of interesting information that I hadn't seen reported elsewhere.
Tim Fulton Did you end up doing the video?
Jesse Bethea I did, but it was ultimately — I felt too short. You know, just the format — I didn't have as much space as I wanted to talk about all the details of what happened. So I started, basically, three-ish years ago, writing this series. And just sort of trying to get it — because it's actually a bit of a complicated narrative to explain, and so I was trying to condense it and get it concise, but also have all the facts, as I understand them, to bring this story to light.
Tim Fulton So it's fair to say, basically, you did a smaller version of this project, yes, and then you brought it to Walker and Columbus Underground, and were like, "I want to do this," right? It's not a secret that you are doing it on the occasion of Black History Month, either.
Jesse Bethea No. I mean, I would have done it anyway, right? But I got to a point where I was like, this feels ready to go. And it happens to be, you know, Black History Month. So I said, well, this makes a lot of sense to put it out.
Tim Fulton Let's do a little bit on — you talked about the Supreme Court library. Talk about the research and the work that you did to sort of put this together.
Jesse Bethea Well, I focused a lot of my attention, similar to what I did with the graveyard series, on going through the archives of the Columbus Dispatch and, to a lesser extent, the Ohio State News — even though that was not really an operation in the 1920s, but other newspapers were. And so all of the Dispatch archives are, you know, in the Columbus library. And the Columbus library also has, on their third floor, in their genealogy section, this very interesting section where it's literally just big cabinets full of manila folders with different topics.
Tim Fulton Okay, like clippings that have been tagged as, "This article is around this topic."
Jesse Bethea So as I was in the process of doing that, I was like, "Well, I wonder if they have anything about Daisy Perkins." And one of those manila folders is labeled "Daisy Perkins," with a bunch of clipped articles that I had never seen before, not even in their online archives. And so I was able to get that information. And I would say the more vital thing that I received was from the librarians at the Supreme Court. They gave me the full appeal that Daisy Perkins filed with the state Supreme Court and the U.S. —
Tim Fulton And so let's jump to what happened, right? Like, what happened? So she practiced, you said, I think for 10 years, about —
Jesse Bethea Yeah, between 1920 and — yeah, I think she was admitted to the bar in 1919, and she was disbarred in 1928.
Tim Fulton Okay. And there was one specific case. What's the gentleman's name — it was Leon Knight. Leon Knight murdered his mother-in-law, yes, and she got him off for it.
Jesse Bethea She didn't get him off. He did go to the Ohio State Penitentiary. He definitely did it. Okay, let me be clear about that. What she managed to do was convince the jury that he might have acted in self-defense. Because of that, the jury recommended mercy. The jury recommended that he not be executed. So that was what she — she didn't save him from going to prison, but she saved him from going to the electric chair.
Tim Fulton Okay. And then some folks probably were not happy with that. Specifically —
Jesse Bethea The county prosecutor at that time.
Tim Fulton And so the county prosecutor ended up charging her with soliciting perjury. Yes. Who was the star witness she had?
Jesse Bethea The witness was a man named Abraham Small. This was also a Black man who lived on the east side, and he was friends with Leon Knight. Small testified that before the shooting, Leon Knight's brother and brothers-in-law came to him and asked to borrow a gun, for the specific purpose of killing Leon Knight. So that introduced the idea that, oh, this was —
Tim Fulton This — Leon Knight had found out about this. It is possible to believe that he believed there was a risk to his life, right?
Jesse Bethea Even if there was another gun there besides Leon Knight's, that means there might have been a shootout and there was collateral damage, and he's still responsible, but he did not go there with the intent of murdering his mother-in-law.
Tim Fulton Okay. Did he have — sorry — did he have a motive for murdering his mother-in-law?
Jesse Bethea It seems that he did not get along with his wife's family very much. His wife's name was Roxy Knight, and then his mother-in-law was named Mary Hill. And she had a number of sons as well, and they were all in this one apartment on the east side. And there was some sort of altercation between Leon, his brothers-in-law, and then his mother-in-law was also there at the same time, and —
Tim Fulton She was killed. And she was killed. Okay. And so the Franklin County prosecutor at the time — the case ends, he gets mercy — and then what is the process that they sort of went through to get against her? Like, what —
Jesse Bethea So the crux of the prosecutor's argument is that when Abraham Small testified at the grand jury, he didn't say anything about these brothers asking to borrow a gun. So that testimony appeared only after the fact.
Tim Fulton And for those that aren't aware, the grand jury is basically what you go to before you bring charges, in order to basically get, quote-unquote, "permission" to bring charges, right?
Jesse Bethea But the interesting thing is that the brothers — the sons of the woman who was murdered — they told the grand jury they did go and ask to borrow a gun from Abraham Small. So the prosecutor then contends, okay, so Daisy Perkins got this testimony from the Hill brothers that they gave to the grand jury, and then she went and showed it to Abraham Small so that he could say the same thing on the stand later, which would be illegal — soliciting perjury, exactly right. But the only evidence that he had that she did that is Abraham Small claiming that. But he was prosecuting Abraham Small for perjury.
Tim Fulton Sorry, just repeating it back. The brothers said to the grand jury, "We went and got a gun against this guy because we really didn't like him. We went and got it from this guy, Mr. Small." And then the prosecutor is basically saying, "Well, Mr. Small never told us about this, hence, that is perjury." Yes. That's — I mean, it's not perjury. It's just a new — it's just a fact, though.
Jesse Bethea This is also coming at the same time as — even when the Knight trial is underway, the prosecution is trying to prevent Small from testifying. Even to the point that after he does testify, they have detectives basically follow him out of the courthouse and assault him and then arrest him for perjury. And the only reason they think that he has committed perjury is because he said something different at the trial than he said at the grand jury hearing —
Tim Fulton Even though that information was already stated in the grand jury.
Jesse Bethea Exactly. And witnesses change their testimony all the time. It doesn't necessarily mean, right, that they've been bribed.
Tim Fulton And so the prosecutor then, because — apparently one pound of flesh is not enough — they then want to go after the attorney, the defense attorney, as well. What's the argument that they make, that she solicited perjury?
Jesse Bethea Well, they get testimony from Small, who, again, they are in the process of prosecuting. So this is a carrot-and-a-stick situation. Small, if you tell me that Daisy Perkins bribed you to change your testimony, we'll go light on you. Exactly. And they did. He was never convicted of perjury. She was convicted of asking him to perjure himself. He was never convicted of perjury.
Tim Fulton So she tries to defend herself. She says, "This is ridiculous. Here's where this information came from."
Jesse Bethea And as far as I can tell — and, again, there's a limited historical record here —
Tim Fulton I assume you don't have direct transcripts of the case.
Jesse Bethea I have transcripts of the Knight trial, but not her own trial, not her own testimony, I've got to say. So I don't know what sort of physical evidence — but based on the briefs filed by John Chester, the prosecutor at that time, he never says, like, "Oh, and we have this document that proves that she did this." All they seem to have is the testimony of a person they were trying anyway.
Tim Fulton So, end of the day — I think we all sort of know where this is going. She gets prosecuted. Yes. She does get convicted. Yes. It's not super important to the story, but she actually doesn't turn herself in. She goes on the run. Is there an interesting part of that, or is it just she went on the run?
Jesse Bethea She was on the run for about a month. And it's kind of funny, because in the newspaper archives, every now and then there's an article that'll pop up that's like, "Daisy Perkins resurfaces in Cleveland" and files, like, a legal brief or something. Oh, so she was still doing it. She was still sending off — she was still sending petitions of appeal, huh, like, as she was traveling around the state not being arrested. And so finally, she's located at her sister's house in North Baltimore, and they arrest her there and bring her back to Columbus, and she is sentenced to go to Marysville, the women's reformatory there.
Tim Fulton And, I imagine, disbarred. She's disbarred at that time, yes. And, as you sort of talk through in the piece, she sort of lives an unmiraculous life after that.
Jesse Bethea Yeah, so she goes to prison. She is offered parole a few years in, and actually refuses it. I don't have — there's not an explicit reason why she refuses. I suspect it's because you have to admit wrongdoing, and you have to supplicate yourself. Yeah, she was adamant that she did nothing wrong. So she serves the rest of her term until she's finally paroled again in 1937. She does seem to take that parole, and she lives the rest of her life in Columbus. She never practices law, but she seems to have been a very active member of St. Paul AME Church on the east side. A lot of their bulletins that have shown up in my research feature her as, like, on a bunch of different committees and whatnot through the 1940s. And then she died in 1963.
Tim Fulton Okay. And is the motivation for her prosecution — is it entirely surrounding this one case, or is it "this person's a thorn in our side"? Is there racism, sexism as part of it?
Jesse Bethea I mean, I don't think you can discount that there must have been some racial and misogynistic motivation. Having said that, you know, I also just don't discount that lawyers often make a lot of mistakes, and sometimes repeatedly. So I do try to leave space in the article, and in my own mind, that she definitely could have made mistakes. Everything I just described about soliciting perjury or bribing witnesses — it's very possible she did all that. But the fact is, her prosecution would not hold water in modern times. For one thing, she was a political opponent of the prosecutor himself. She ran against him for county prosecutor the year before she was tried. So there were all kinds of reasons why he had a conflict of interest. I mean, he had just tried the Knight trial — they had just been opponents in that.
Tim Fulton And he was pissed off that he didn't get what he wanted, right?
Jesse Bethea So I don't think there's any way that in a modern situation he would have been allowed to personally conduct this prosecution against her. I think we would understand now that a special prosecutor or somebody would have been appointed by the court to see it through, if there was legitimate evidence.
Tim Fulton Well, and even if these conflicts didn't exist, this is not the kind of case that you try. Like, the argument being that lawyers are going to make a good-faith effort to get within the bounds of the law and within the bounds of the court process, but they're going to make their best-faith effort to get their client the best deal they can. Sure. That's what she was trying to do. She may have made a mistake, and that's the space we're sort of leaving for that. But even if that mistake had happened, it should be acknowledged, she would not have been prosecuted in this way.
Jesse Bethea I mean — it's always bad to make these grand generalizations, okay — but can you imagine a white male attorney in the 1920s doing something shady like that, if she really did it, and going to jail for 10 years?
Tim Fulton I can't imagine a Black female attorney these days having that happen to them, right? So, a product of the time, I think, is sort of what we're — if not directly saying, at least inferring. Talk about her general — like, what was her life before that?
Jesse Bethea She seems to have been a very driven woman. I mean, obviously. But she was sort of an attorney trying to be a politician. She ran for office, you know, every conceivable local office in Columbus throughout the 1920s. She ran for school board, I believe, she ran for city council, she ran for county prosecutor more than once, under party affiliation and as an independent. The one thing I note in the article is that there are a couple of instances where she seems to annoy even the Black male legal establishment, but they have a habit of coming to her defense eventually.
Tim Fulton She ruffles some feathers. It doesn't matter whose feathers they are. Got it.
Jesse Bethea So overwhelmingly they're men's feathers. But there are Black attorneys, or Black male attorneys, who don't seem to like what she's doing, but one of them ends up defending her, you know, as she's appealing this conviction. So clearly, I think there was an understanding that, like, she might be difficult —
Tim Fulton For us to work with, but she isn't wrong. Yeah, exactly. What else should we know about Daisy Perkins?
Jesse Bethea I mean, that's a good question, because there's a lot of things I want to know about Daisy Perkins still, I think.
Tim Fulton To be clear, most of the records that you have are, one, whether she ran for these things, the church bulletins, and then the court records. Yes. So the sort of, like, how do we navigate historically — again, a little under 100 years ago — like, what was this person like, and how did they live their life?
Jesse Bethea I personally want to know more about her life after prison and what she devoted herself to. It seems that she devoted a lot of her time to church work. She never married, never had children. She seems to have had a lot of friends and relatives. But I do wonder, because she lived a long life. She outlived her rival, John Chester. And she was also older than him to begin with. So she saw the world change around her in a lot of interesting ways. And I do wish I knew more about how she felt about all that. Because I'm sure — I guess I imagine, right, she was frankly wronged. And I imagine there were times when she must have seen changes in the city, changes in the country, and thought, "You know, it's really frustrating that I was left behind because of this, frankly, injustice."
Tim Fulton And yet, based on the documents surrounding her life, she rose up, right, and unfortunately was then torn down.
Jesse Bethea Yes. Yeah. I think that too — I mean, the articles before her trial, it does seem that she became a bit of a local celebrity at times, but maybe not in, like, a generous way. I imagine that the newspapers sort of treated her as a novelty. And we have them today, right? Yeah, right. And so it was, this —
Tim Fulton Person is always speaking up, this person is always, like, getting just enough signatures to get on the ballot. That too. But I think —
Jesse Bethea It was also a bit of, like, "Look at this Black woman practicing law, isn't that fun, isn't that interesting?" And so I think that was the news hook. Because — I mean, media was very different back then. They covered all kinds of things that we wouldn't really think of as news now. But yes, it's hard for me to imagine that they were covering the exploits of every attorney in the city. I think there was a bit of a novelty to it.
Tim Fulton But at the end of the day, they want readers, right?
Jesse Bethea Right. I got the sense from reading them that there was some entertainment value to covering her career. And that too — I mean, maybe it wasn't her preferred way of getting notoriety, I doubt that it was, but it did give her notoriety. And that too, I imagine, turned a lot of people against her.
Tim Fulton So basically, what you're saying is, all press is good press. It's getting her notoriety to the point that, you know, she's probably getting hired more. Sure. Well, that's her billing rate.
Jesse Bethea Yes. And there is a — they note in all of these articles when she's defending a Black person. And that's the majority of the time. So I imagine that it was understood by the Black population of Columbus at that time, like, "We need lawyers who look like us, who are going to defend us." But at the same time, that wasn't —
Tim Fulton Exclusive, though. I mean, not every Black person on trial was defended by —
Jesse Bethea Right, no. But she was also defending — she appears to be defending a lot of women, especially in situations where they need divorces. And she at least at one point was defending an Eastern European immigrant in some sort of Prohibition trial. And that too is noted by the Dispatch in their articles, of, like — they sort of quote him, the defendant, but they make a point of using, like, the accent, you know, to say, like, "Oh, this person is —"
Tim Fulton They wrote the quote phonetically. Oh, yes. That's not racist, right? Oh, you didn't know what he was saying, but you can spell it out.
Jesse Bethea So you can see a little bit of, like, the media at that time may have treated it as, like, there's entertainment value. Like, "Wow, Black lady is defending a funny European man."
Tim Fulton Yeah. But at the end of the day, I think when you parse together the individual things that she did, she was guided by the goal of doing good, sure, right? Even if — I mean, this guy murdered his mother-in-law, that's not okay — but if it's to get the guy off death row, and, like — but we don't know what her opinion about death row even is, right? We don't know if that's the motive.
Jesse Bethea No. I mean, and she defended him throughout the case. Yes, when there — it wasn't just sentencing? No, it was throughout the case. But, you know, defense attorneys don't have to have motives. Their only motives are to do what's best for their clients. And I think that's what she wanted. I think she recognized, "I'm not going to prove this guy didn't kill his mother-in-law, because he definitely did, but what I can do is keep him from going to the electric chair." And based on the evidence that I'm aware of, she managed to do that. Did the press surrounding this guy not going to death row warrant — was it a big splash, like, "Franklin County prosecutor fails case"? No, I wouldn't say that. I mean, it's personal. And if I'm doing a little bit of pop psychology on people who've been dead 100 years — John J. Chester, I mean, that was a prominent family and still is in Columbus. His son went on to be a rather famous attorney, representing somebody involved in Watergate, I think it was. And his father, the prosecutor John Chester's father, John Chester the first, was also a prominent attorney, and all the way back, you know, into the 1800s. So I think this person, who was very young — John Chester the second — I think he had a lot of pressure to sort of live up to a family reputation. And he ended up, later, being involved in a very prominent prosecution of — I forget his first name, but the Snook case, the famous OSU professor who murdered his mistress. He was the prosecutor on that as well, and that sort of made his name. But then later, in the '30s, he ended up getting tangled up in some corruption scandals after he was no longer the county prosecutor. His replacement actually did a wide-ranging investigation of public corruption, and both him and his detective, who was involved in slapping Abraham Small around — they both got tied into this. They were collecting money from gambling dens and giving it to the county Republican Party, and they weren't supposed to be doing that. No. And then a few years after that, they both, for some reason, got into a giant drunken fight on High Street, and 100 people watched it, and it was a big enough fight, and so violent, that it ended up in the Dispatch. So things got a little rocky for him after this situation. But I do think I can imagine that there was some reputational protection going on, of, like, even though he won this case, I think they were just having been bested a little bit —
Tim Fulton Yeah, led him — by not getting the death sentence that he wanted. At the end of the day, what do you hope people sort of take away from the story of Daisy Perkins?
Jesse Bethea I mean, I believe at one point there was discussion of a pardon. I haven't really been able to find a lot of details on that, and I'm not advocating that — you know, I wouldn't advocate that she be pardoned. But I would like people to take another look at this and to recognize this as sort of something that happened that probably shouldn't have happened.
Tim Fulton And so, at the end — let me translate it, sure — at the end of the day, this is the first Black woman who's an attorney in the entire state of Ohio, right? And look what you did to her.
Jesse Bethea Exactly. And I think the simplest question is to be like, okay, well, we know the first of all kinds of stuff. You know, we know the first person to walk on the moon. We know the first Black man on the Supreme Court. We know the first woman on the Supreme Court, or on the Ohio —
Tim Fulton And the first Black woman in the state of Ohio who was an attorney has an asterisk next to her name.
Jesse Bethea And in the article, I think I said, you know, if it had ended any other way, we would have named a library after her or something. I mean, Columbus loves to celebrate its heroes like that. But we can't celebrate this hero because of this thing. But the thing looks pretty shady.
Tim Fulton So maybe not a pardon, but a library.
Jesse Bethea But a library. I mean — I don't think I need her to receive anything except for a little bit more attention.
Tim Fulton Well, and also maybe a bit more of an acknowledgement that the Columbus Way — and I'm using a capital W there — that the Columbus Way is hers, and is not always as clean. It's not always Jerrie Mock. It's not always, like, "Look at this female pilot that did this great thing" — I'm not discrediting Jerrie Mock at all. However, that, like, people come to pioneering places, and sometimes it doesn't always work out. And frankly, sometimes those things not working out aren't their fucking fault. So —
Jesse Bethea Jesse, thanks for your time. I hope, as always, I was coherent. Absolutely, you were, you were. Thank you again. Thank you.
Tim Fulton Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, and share this episode of The Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite historian. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.