UNION, S.C. (11/4/94) -- The silence from a disbelieving crowd who just had learned a Union County mother was charged with murdering her two children was broken when a black man began shouting sentiments of many of the black citizens in this small town.

"Speak up black people. Don't be afraid," shouted Gilliam Edwards as police rushed to usher him away from the scene of the arrest announcement by Union County Sheriff Howard Wells.

"They have accused us of murdering these children," Edwards said. "They've done everything they could to us."

Gilliam, like many Union citizens, was outraged that Susan Smith told police a black man carjacked her and abducted her two boys, Michael Smith, 3, and 14-month-old Alexander Smith.

Susan Smith is white.

"It was hard to be black this week in Union," Hester Booker said. "The whites acted so different. They wouldn't speak, they'd look at you and then reach over and lock their doors. And all because that lady lied."

"I just feel so hurt by all this," said Larry Stevens, a black man who said he wanted to believe Mrs. Smith.

"It seems like anytime something negative happens, white people just want to blame black people for it."

Hundreds of people, many black, gathered outside the courthouse about 6 p.m. anticipating an announcement after a State Law Enforcement Division official told the news media a major development was at hand.

The night of Oct. 25, Mrs. Smith described a black man as her children's abductor and helped a police artist come up with a mugshot of the alleged attacker.

The drawing was distributed nationwide by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Adam Walsh Foundation.

Stevens and other blacks say the mugshot resembled a black man in Union who police questioned at length the night of the reported abduction.

"When we all saw that, we knew exactly who she was describing," Stevens said. "It's just a man who walks around everywhere in Union. And (Mrs. Smith) had to see him a thousand times around here. That makes it even worse, because they could have arrested him."

Most people agree, Mrs. Smith singled out a black man out for the disappearance of her children because she thought it would take attention away from her.

"She knew she could get further with this if she said a black man did it," said Rudolph Lindsey Jr.

"They were around here questioning all the black men around here. She made fools out of all the police for eight days."
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