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 a...