Seventy years ago they were sentenced to death for the rape of a white woman and ended their days in the electric chair: Seven African-Americans from Virginia received the posthumous pardon of Governor Ralph Northam in a public mea culpa for a resounding example of ” racial disparity “on the use of capital punishment.
The case of the ‘Martinsville Seven’, as they were called at the time, attracted requests for clemency and protests from citizens and institutions around the world at the time of the trial. In Virginia codes, rape was still a crime punishable by capital punishment (the Supreme Court in 1977 called it a “disproportionate and excessive punishment” for this type of crime), but ended up in the electric chair, Northam said. they were almost exclusively black: “Francis DeSales Grayson, Frank Hairston Jr, Howard Lee Hairston, James Luther Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton, Booker Millner and John Clabon Taylor were put to death for the color of their skin and it’s not fair. The punishment was not commensurate with the crime. It wasn’t supposed to happen. ‘
Seventy years ago, as was often the case then, the seven African Americans were judged by an all-white jury. The governor’s pardon did not address the question of the guilt of the condemned, he only acknowledged that justice had been partial to the seven men. Northam announced the decision after meeting with descendants of convicts and activists for fairer criminal justice. Applause and tears of emotion welcomed the governor’s announcement.
The seven men, some still teenagers and others in their early twenties, had been convicted of the rape of Ruby Stroud Floyd, a 32-year-old woman who in January 1949 went to a black-majority neighborhood in Martinsville to be paid for. clothes he had sold. The woman said she was raped by 13 men and recognized Grayson and Hampton, but had trouble identifying the other rapists. Northam said some of the seven convicted were either unable to understand and unwilling at the time of the arrest or unable to read the confessions they had signed. None of them had had lawyers to assist them with their interrogations. “I was four years old. I remember when the police came knocking on our door, ”James Walter Grayson, the son of one of the seven, said in tears:“ Dad gave us a kiss before they took him away. Now I want peace ».