1951-1955
Day 31
1951: The Martinsville Seven Electrocuted For Rape Crime
Today’s story is about the inequalities of the justice system. Pay attention to today's story because it is going to come up a lot in the next week.
In Virginia, 7 black men were arrested for raping a white woman. The evidence does seem to conclude that 2 of the men were involved in the rape, though even that has some doubt because even though they signed confessions, they were apparently drunk, had no legal representation, and were “coerced” into signing the confession. I will include the full story in the comments, but right now I want to focus on their punishment. The two who confessed were the only 2 the woman could identify, yet all 7 were arrested.
Regardless of their guilt or not, all seven were quickly found guilty by (of course) an all white, all male jury, and all seven were sentenced to death.
When have you ever heard of a white man being sentenced to death for rape, not murder, of a black woman? If your answer is “never” you would be right. A white man has never been sentenced to death for the rape of a black woman.
And yet, all seven of these men were.
This was not the first time, nor was it the last. At least 455 black men have been executed for rape.
Many blacks feel that the death penalty is currently used as a new form of lynching, and when I see stats like this, it is hard for me to disagree.
This is emblematic of a justice system that is inherently racist, and is sadly racist still today. Historically, blacks are given much longer and much more severe punishments than whites who commit the same crime. In Aurora, a city right next to me, blacks are given 10% longer sentences than whites who commit the same crime, and are far more likely to be arrested for a crime (such as jaywalking) than their white counterparts.
We will talk much more about this disparity later, but I wanted to point out the unfairness of this and where we get the roots of today’s continued disparities. Obviously, rape is NEVER ok and I absolutely NEVER condone it. But I do have to ask myself: Why is it worthy of the death penalty when a black man does it, and not when a white man does it?
Sources/Comments:
-The Martinsville Seven were a group of young black men executed in 1951 after being convicted of raping a white woman. Their trials and the electrocutions became a cause célèbre similar to the Scottsboro Case of the 1930s.
On the evening of January 8, 1949, Ruby Stroud Floyd accused 13 black men of raping her while she passed through a poor African American neighborhood in Martinsville, Virginia.
The police first arrested Frank Hairston, Jr. and Booker T. Millner, and soon picked up James Luther Hairston, Howard Lee Hairston, John Clabon Taylor, Francis DeSales Grayson, then James Henry Hampton as additional suspects. The young men with spotty employment records but no real criminal history soon became known as the Martinsville Seven. Most of the men were between 18 and 20 years old and worked as laborers in small-scale furniture factories and warehouses. At age 37, World War II veteran Francis DeSales Grayson was the oldest of the defendants.
Floyd identified Grayson and Hampton as her rapists but struggled to identify the others because the attack happened at night. After being questioned by local police officers, the defendants initially confessed to committing or witnessing the crime. By the spring of 1949, all seven men were charged with rape.
Judge Kennon C. Whittle of the Martinsville Circuit Court granted requests to hold individual trials. The prosecution vetoed all potential black jurors so that all-white and all-male juries heard the cases.
During the eleven-day trials, juries heard testimonies from both sides, including medical evidence of Floyd’s physical injuries and accounts from black witnesses whom Floyd appealed to for help after the assault. Defense lawyers argued that Floyd had consented to sexual intercourse by failing to forcibly resist the men and that the initial confessions were forced by the local sheriff. All six juries convicted the young men of rape and recommended the death penalty.
NAACP officials focused national attention to the case, hoping to delay or overturn the death penalty judgment. NAACP lawyers argued on appeal that Virginia’s legal code was hardly race-neutral since whites convicted of rape “seldom if ever” received the death penalty.
Virginia’s court system repeatedly rejected the NAACP’s arguments and the US Supreme Court rejected the case twice without review. By early 1951, legal strategies to save the Martinsville Seven were exhausted and the NAACP, joined by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC), turned towards a public relations campaign aimed at commuting the men’s death sentences. While the NAACP focused on racial equality as part of Cold War American democratic visions, CRC mobilized left-based organizations and newspapers from around the world to pressure state and national officials to intervene.
Despite the letter-writing campaigns, editorials, and local vigils, newly-installed Virginia Governor John S. Battle refused clemency. Four of the Martinsville Seven were electrocuted on February 2, 1951. The remaining three were electrocuted on February 5.
Day 32
1952: The Groveland Four, The Bombing of Teacher Activists, and the KKK
So much to unpack today!!! Buckle up!
In 1949, four young Black men (Groveland Four) were accused of raping a white girl in Lake County near Orlando — at that time a Klan stronghold. Later evidence indicates that the 17-year-old girl had been beaten by her husband, and that they concocted a phony rape story to conceal the beating from her parents who had threatened to shoot him if he brutalized her again.
Charles Greenlee (age 16), and war veterans Sam Shepherd and Walter Irvin, were arrested for the supposed rape. Sam and Walter had proudly served in WWII and proudly wore their uniforms around town, and the whites resented them for that.
The fourth man, Ernest Thomas managed to flee, but was gunned down by a Sheriff’s posse a few days later. He was shot over 400 times.
The three other men were beaten to coerce confessions, but Irvin refused to confess. They were convicted at trial by an all-white jury. Greenlee was sentenced to life because he was only 16 at the time of the alleged crime; the other two were sentenced to death (see yesterday’s post about the unfairness of the death penalty for rape. In this instance, though, there is zero doubt they were innocent).
In 1951, the United States Supreme Court ordered a retrial after hearing appeals by Shepherd and Irvin, led by Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. It ruled they had not received a fair trial because no evidence had been presented, because of excessive adverse publicity, and because blacks had been excluded from the jury.
In 1949, Harry T. Moore, the executive director of the Florida NAACP, organized a campaign against the wrongful conviction of the three African Americans. Two years later, the case of two defendants reached the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal, with Thurgood Marshall as their defense counsel. The court overturned the convictions and remanded the case to the lower court for a new trial. In November 1951, Sheriff Willis V. McCall of Lake County, Florida was moving Irvin and Shepherd to a different prison. He pulled over to the side of the road and shot Irvin and Shepherd while they were in his custody and handcuffed together, killing Shepherd and seriously wounding Irvin.
Shepherd died on the spot; Irvin survived his wounds and later told FBI investigators that the sheriff had shot them in cold blood and that his deputy, Yates, had also shot him in an attempt to kill him. Harry T. Moore (mentioned above) called for the governor to suspend McCall. On Christmas night 1951, a bomb went off below Moore's house, fatally wounding both him and his wife; he died that night and his wife followed nine days later.
At the second trial, Irvin was represented by Thurgood Marshall, special counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Irvin was convicted again by an all-white jury and sentenced to death. In 1955, his sentence was commuted to life by recently elected governor LeRoy Collins. In 1968 he was paroled, but died the next year in Lake County, purportedly from natural causes.
In 1952, the FBI launched an investigation into the bombing/murder of Harry and Harriette Moore. Both Harry and Harriette were school teachers, but Harry had been blacklisted from teaching for his activism. Eventually he became head of the NAACP in Florida, and was thus involved with trying to help the Groveland Four- and because of that was the target of the car bomb that killed he and his wife, and left his two young children orphans.
The investigation pointed toward three Klan members, one of whom committed suicide the day after an FBI interview. The investigation slowed down Klan activity, but led to no arrests. Eventually, years after the murders, 4 klansman were said to have been involved, but they had already died and therefore never prosecuted. After three investigations, the most recent review having been closed in August 2006, the case is closed but remains unsolved.
Sources/Comments:
The first picture is of the Groveland Four, the second of Harry and Harriette Moore and their sweet daughters who were orphaned as a result of the bombing.
Day 33
1953: The Baton Rouge, Louisiana Bus Boycott
I had never heard of this as I had only ever heard of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Turns out, changing the world isn’t a one time protest- instead, it’s lots of similar protests held over and over again over many years.
Back in 1950, the independent Black-owned buses that had served Baton Rouge's Black community were outlawed. Henceforth, everyone had to ride the segregated buses run by the official bus company. Blacks — mostly poor — comprise 80% of the bus riders.
Though they pay full fare, they have to sit or stand at the rear of the bus while the front reserved for whites remain empty.
In January of 1953, bus fares are raised 50% (from 10 to 15 cents). In early February, Black community leader Reverend T.J. Jemison of Mount Zion Baptist Church complains to the City Council about Blacks having to stand in the overcrowded rear section while "white" seats are empty. The Council adopts Ordinance 222 which changes segregated seating so that Blacks fill up the seats from the rear forward and whites fill the bus from front to back on a first-come, first-served basis. Under this plan, if a bus is filled with Blacks they can occupy the front seats, but they cannot sit on a seat next to a white, or sit in any seat that is in front of a white.
The bus drivers — all white, of course — deeply resent this minor easing of rigid segregation and they see it as a limitation on their power and authority over Blacks. They refuse to enforce Ordinance 222. In June, two drivers are suspended for not complying with the new rule. The bus drivers go on strike. Four days after the strike begins, the Louisiana Attorney General overturns Ordinance 222 on grounds that it violates the state's rigid segregation laws. The drivers declare victory and return to work.
In response, Reverend Jemison and Black businessmen like Raymond Scott form the United Defense League (UDL). On June 18, the UDL calls on Blacks to boycott the city buses in protest. The boycott is effective, almost no Blacks ride the buses. Many use the free ride system coordinated through the churches, and others walk to work.
Mass meetings are held at McKinley High School to rally community support for the boycott and collect gas money and expenses for the free-ride cars and drivers. By June 22, the meetings have grown so large that they have to be held at Memorial Stadium.
After negotiations between Black leaders and the City Council a compromise Ordinance 251 is adopted on June 24. The first-come first-serve seating of Blacks from the rear forward and whites from front to back is retained, as is the prohibition against Blacks and whites sitting next to each other or any Black sitting in front of a white. But to comply with the state's segregation laws, the two front sideways seats are absolutely reserved for whites, and the wide rear seat at the back of the bus is reserved for Blacks. Reverend Jemison accepts the compromise and the boycott is ended.
While the Baton Rouge bus boycott does not end segregation as such, it represents a significant victory of Black community action against segregation in the deep south. And it helps inspire the Montgomery Bus Boycott two years later. When the Montgomery Boycott begins, the initial demands are for amending segregation in a fashion similar to Baton Rouge's Ordinance 251, though they soon change the goal to ending all forms of bus segregation. And early in the Montgomery struggle, Dr King contacts and consults with Reverend Jemison regarding the free-ride system which is then adapted for Montgomery's conditions.
Sources/Comments:
Fighting for the right to sit on a bus could prove deadly, as happened to Private Booker Spicely, a WWII soldier:
Spicely was born in Blackstone, Virginia, to Lazarus and Alberta Spicely. He attended two years of high school and was a cook before volunteering for the United States Army on December 31, 1943 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He did not work for the Tuskegee Institute like most stories say. It was his brother Robert who was actually a former business manager there. His serial number was 33809308, and he was trained as a cook in the Army.
In 1944, Private Spicely was stationed at Camp Butner, North Carolina. While on a pass into the nearby city of Durham on July 8, 1944, he boarded a bus with a black woman he was talking to at the bus stop, and according to her sworn statement, they sat in the second to last seat and not in the front as reported. The driver told them all to move to the last seat for some white soldiers who boarded, as public transportation was segregated in North Carolina. The woman did, but Spicely refused, initially asking the other soldiers why he had to move since he was not aware of the laws in North Carolina. There was conflicting testimony exactly what PVT Spicely said but one of the white soldiers mentioned that he said "I thought I was fighting this war for democracy". The bus driver then said "shut up or get off".
During the ride, PVT Spicely continued arguing with the bus driver until he departed the bus. When he did, the driver followed him off the bus and shot Spicely twice when the soldier turned around. His cause of death is listed as homicide ("shot by bus driver"), with sudden death occurring due to a "pistol shot wound through heart" with a secondary cause of "pistol shot through liver".[1]
The driver, Herman Lee Council, was tried for the second-degree murder of Spicely; he was acquitted by the all-white jury on the grounds of self-defense. Chief Counsel for the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall, was involved in prosecuting the case.
According to some sources, due to Spicely's murder, a riot ensued in the tobacco warehouse district of Durham, resulting in the destruction (via arson) of several of the white-owned tobacco warehouses. However, contemporary newspaper accounts make no mention of a connection between Spicely's death and the warehouse district fire.
The War Department conducted an investigation of Spicely’s death titled Subject: Racial Incident, Shooting of Negro Soldier, Durham, N.C. on 8 July 1944 at about 1940, dated July 12, 1944. His cause of death, which occurred during World War II, is listed as DNB, or “Died, Non-Battle.”
Spicely's body was returned to his home in Blackstone, Virginia, for burial. Herman Lee Council died in a nursing home in 1982. Click HERE.
Click HERE for more info on the Baton Rouge Bus Boycott.
Day 34
1954: “Massive Resistance Southern Manifesto” To Stop Desegregation of Schools
After the Supreme Court ruled school segregation unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown cases, it ordered that schools be desegregated with “all deliberate speed.” But many white Americans, especially in the South, responded angrily to the Court’s rulings. They did not want public schools to be desegregated. Soon, "Massive Resistance,” a campaign to block desegregation at the local, state, and national level, was underway.
To this end, a group of 101 southern congressmen issued a “Southern Manifesto” accusing the Supreme Court of a “clear abuse of judicial power,” and vowing to use “all lawful means to bring about a reversal” of the Court’s decision in Brown. White Citizens' Councils opposed to desegregation organized in towns across the South. Composed of white businessmen, civic leaders, and ordinary citizens, the Citizens’ Councils led local and statewide efforts against public school desegregation.
White parents started “segregation academies”- private schools made in order to avoid accepting black students, as private schools were exempt from Brown. Most of these had/have the name “Christian” or “church” in the school’s name. These white nationalist schools are still in operation today (mostly held at white churches) and ⅓ of Mississippi Senators graduated from these schools- thus making any true reform in the areas of discrimination incredibly difficult. They espouse racist ideals even today, and many state lawmakers in Mississippi send their kids to these schools today. (not to be outdone, we have school segregation in the north, too, we just call it different names- we will talk more about that later)
In late summer 1956, crowds of angry whites prevented the desegregation of public schools in Texas, Tennessee, and elsewhere. And, since the Supreme Court’s ruling applied to public but not to private schools, some counties simply closed public schools altogether.
Massive Resistance spread beyond opposition to school desegregation to encompass a broad agenda in defense of the race prejudiced traditions in the South. Some southern states outlawed the NAACP. In 1956, Georgia incorporated the Confederate battle flag into its state flag, and within a few years South Carolina and Alabama began flying the Confederate battle flag over their state capitol buildings. Even President Eisenhower did not personally support the Court’s ruling in Brown, saying privately, “I don’t believe you can change the hearts of men with laws.”
In 1957- 3 years after Brown (did you know it took that long???)- On 3 September, the first day of school, a small group of African American high school students, accompanied by an escort of ministers, were turned away from Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas by a large crowd of white citizens and armed troops from the Arkansas National Guard.
Among the African American students soon to be known as the Little Rock Nine was Elizabeth Eckford. She recounted her efforts that morning: “I walked up to the guard who had let the white students in.... When I tried to squeeze past him, he raised his bayonet and then the other guards closed in and they raised their bayonets. They glared at me with a mean look and I was very frightened and didn’t know what to do. I turned around and the crowd came toward me . . . . I tried to see a friendly face somewhere in the crowd—someone who maybe would help. I looked into the face of an old woman and it seemed a kind face, but when I looked at her again, she spat on me.”
Sources/Comments:
Look at the hate in that woman's face behind her.
Day 35
1955: The Brutal Murder of 14 Year Old Emmett Till Because He “Whistled” At A White Woman
This one, like so many others, just hurts. And makes me wonder, “Why did I not know this story?” Apparently,many black children are told this story by their parents growing up but white parents certainly don’t tell this story- and we should!
Emmett Till was 14 years old. He grew up in Chicago, but he went to visit his uncle in Mississippi for the summer. While there, he made some friends, went into town, stopped at a store and apparently “whistled” at a woman. Nobody except the woman and Emmett know what really happened, but on her death bed, the woman said she made it up.
After the incident, the woman’s husband and brother in law kidnapped Emmett from his uncle’s house at midnight. They took him away and beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved from the river.
Till's body was returned to Chicago where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket. "The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention not only on U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy".
Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his open casket, and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the U.S. critical of the state. Although local newspapers and law enforcement officials initially decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they responded to national criticism by defending Mississippians, temporarily giving support to the killers.
In September 1955, an all-white jury found Bryant and Milam not guilty of Till's kidnapping and murder. Protected against double jeopardy, the two men publicly admitted in a 1956 interview with Look magazine that they had killed Till.
The only good thing about this story is that the murderers were shunned from their community, their wives left, and they died in poverty (they 100% blamed Emmett Till for this and insisted they were the victims their entire lives). So at least there was some kind of justice.
Please get and read THIS book. It is a short and important read.
When I read these stories, and I have read hundreds of these stories, I can not believe the unfairness and inhumanity of this world. My heart is so broken. There is no excuse for any of this. However, I am also touched by the presence of God in lifting up the suffering. His mom, upon learning that Emmett was missing, but before his body was found, said, “Thank God for a divine being. I can truthfully say that from the day I knew Emmett was missing, that divine presence moved in and it told me, ‘I will lead you; I will guide you. Just obey.’ Every time I got to a crisis, I got that message.”
No mother should ever endure what Emmett’s mom did. Ever. But, I do have faith that in the end God will make these wrongs right. But, it still hurts- a lot.
-"John Lewis wrote a farewell letter to young people, intended to be published on the day of his funeral.
“Emmett Till was my George Floyd,” the late congressman wrote in a piece that appears in today’s New York Times. “He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars. … When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.”
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