7 Black Men Pardoned 70 Years After Executions

'Martinsville Seven' were convicted of raping a white woman in Virginia
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Aug 31, 2021 10:40 AM CDT
'Martinsville Seven' Pardoned 70 Years Later
In this 1951 file photo, as temperatures drop below freezing, demonstrators march in front of the White House in an effort to persuade President Harry Truman to halt the execution of seven Black men sentenced to death in Virginia on charges of raping a white woman.   (AP Photo/Henry Burroughs, File)

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam granted posthumous pardons Tuesday to seven Black men who were executed in 1951 for the rape of a white woman, a case that attracted pleas for mercy from around the world and in recent years has been denounced as an example of racial disparity in the use of the death penalty, per the AP. Northam announced the pardons after meeting with about a dozen descendants of the men and their advocates. Cries and sobs could be heard from some of the descendants after Northam's announcement. The “Martinsville Seven," as the men became known, were all convicted of raping 32-year-old Ruby Stroud Floyd, a white woman who had gone to a predominantly black neighborhood in Martinsville, Virginia, on Jan. 8, 1949, to collect money for clothes she had sold.

Four of the men were executed in Virginia's electric chair on Feb. 2, 1951, and the remaining three a few days later. All were tried by all-white juries. At the time, rape was a capital offense, but Northam said the death penalty for rape was almost entirely applied to Black people. The seven men, most in their late teens or early 20s, were: Walter Grayson, Frank Hairston Jr., Howard Lee Hairston, James Luther Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton, Booker Millner, and John Clabon Taylor. “These men were executed because they were Black and that’s not right,” Northam said. The pardons do not address the guilt of the men, but a news release says they “were tried without adequate due process and received a racially-biased death sentence not similarly applied to white defendants.”

(More Virginia stories.)

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