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{{Short description|Black men executed for rape but eventually pardoned}}
The '''Martinsville Seven''' were a group of seven [[African Americans|African-American]] men from [[Martinsville, Virginia]], who were
The [[Civil Rights Congress]] defended the men originally, and later conducted two marches and other attempts to raise awareness and conduct a public campaign on behalf of their agenda. This was objected to by the [[NAACP]], who feared further backlash because of the CRC's [[Communist]] affiliations. [[Martin A. Martin]] and other NAACP attorneys defended the men on appeals, attempting to ensure fair trials, set [[due process]] precedents, and gain clemency or sentence reductions. The case attracted national newspaper coverage. The NAACP appeals also noted that since Virginia started use of the electric chair, only black men had been executed for rape in the state for what was a non-lethal crime. Though Governor [[William M. Tuck|William Tuck]] initially agreed to a stay during appellate litigation, by late July 1950, newly elected Governor [[John S. Battle]] refused to commute the men's sentences, saying he was horrified by the rapes. The appellate courts upheld the convictions and sentences, and the US Supreme Court twice refused to hear the cases. In 1977 the Supreme Court referred to those arguments with respect to rulings in other cases. According to historian Eric W. Rise, this case "demonstrated the power of the southern legal system to enforce codes of racial behavior."<ref name=RiseJSH>{{cite journal |first=Eric W. |last=Rise |title=Race, Rape, and Radicalism: The Case of the Martinsville Seven, 1949–1951 |journal=[[Journal of Southern History]] |volume=58 |issue=3 |year=1992 |pages=461–490 |doi=10.2307/2210164 |jstor=2210164 }}</ref>
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The rapes occurred on Saturday, January 8, 1949, after Ruby Stroud Floyd, a 32-year-old white woman, entered a black neighborhood in [[Martinsville, Virginia]], to collect money for clothing she had sold. She had previously distributed [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] materials in the neighborhood. Residents warned her not to stay too long, noting the time as late afternoon. She passed four men at the railroad tracks and continued into the neighborhood, where she was later assaulted by some of those four and other men. At 7:30 p.m., after dark, she went to Mary Wade's house for shelter, showing signs of an assault. The Wades called an ambulance for her.
Based on her account, in which she claimed to have been raped by 13 black men,<ref>{{cite news |last=Franklin |first=Jonathan |date=2021-08-31 |title=These 7 Black Men Were Executed For An Alleged Rape. Now, They Have Been Pardoned |url=https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1032859243/virginia-history-pardons-execution-civil-rights-martinsville-seven |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210901044345/https://www.npr.org/2021/08/31/1032859243/virginia-history-pardons-execution-civil-rights-martinsville-seven |archive-date=2021-09-01 |access-date=2021-09-01}}</ref> the police quickly arrested Frank Hairston Jr. and Booker Millner. Four more suspects were arrested that night, based in part on the first two men's confessions. By the next morning, all the men in custody had signed confessions. The last to be arrested, Joe Hampton, was taken into custody on January 10. All but one man were in their early 20s. After being held by police overnight, the first six all signed confessions, implicating themselves and each other. All admitted to being present at the crime, including Joe Hampton, although not all took part in rape. Only one of the accused had a prior criminal record, and most of the men were employed. When the NAACP appealed their convictions, its defense team noted that when
The officials separated the men. To protect them from mob violence, they took them to other jails outside [[Henry County, Virginia|Henry County]]. The preliminary hearing occurred about a month later, and the [[grand jury]] two months after that. A grand jury (which included both black and white members) indicted all the men. Their quick arrest assured the community that stability was being preserved.<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/martinsvilleseve00rise/martinsvilleseve00rise_djvu.txt Eric Walter Rise, ''THE MARTINSVILLE SEVEN AND SOUTHERN JUSTICE: RACE, CRIME, AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN VIRGINIA, 1949-1951''], 1992 PhD dissertation, pp. full text available at Internet Archive</ref> Authorities showed increased professional conduct and procedures since the controversial arrest and execution of [[Odell Waller]] during World War II (he was initially represented at trial by the Trotskyite [[Revolutionary Workers League (Oehlerite)|Revolutionary Workers League]] and ultimately executed).<ref>{{cite book |first=Eric W. |last=Rise
==The Seven==
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* James Luther Hairston, age 22
* John Claybon Taylor, age 23
* Francis DeSales Grayson, age 38 and of Richmond, Virginia, denied having sex with Floyd; only defendant without local ties. It has been stated by several residents of Martinsville, Virginia that Grayson and Floyd were in a sexual relationship.
The last was arrested January 10:
* Joe Henry Hampton, age 21
==Trial==
The judge appointed seven attorneys for the seven defendants. Since they ranged widely in experience, he asked the more experienced ones to aid the newer attorneys. Efforts by the defense team to change the trial's venue from the Martinsville Circuit Court—on the grounds that sensationalist press about the events made a fair trial impossible—were unsuccessful. There was considerable community sentiment against the men. Racism was less explicit in the trial than in cases known as "legal lynchings" in the South, in which innocent men were convicted (e.g., the [[Scottsboro Boys]], [[Willie McGee (convict)|Willie McGee]]
Previous actions by civil rights attorneys had resulted in changes in the Virginia process, improving their procedures. For example, although most African Americans in Virginia had been [[Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era|disenfranchised]] since the early 20th century and were thus disqualified from serving on juries, the grand jury had included black members. In addition, each of the jury pools for the six separate trials contained some African Americans. But, none was selected for any of the seven juries, as the prosecutors rejected all of them on various grounds. The juries were all white and all male.<ref name=RiseJSH/>
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The trials were held back to back, each with a separate jury of twelve white men. The prosecution, led by Irvin W. Cubine, introduced evidence showing that non-consensual sex took place. Some of the defendants acknowledged having sexual intercourse with Floyd, but said that it was consensual, or that she did not resist or say no, either considered necessary as a condition to prove rape. Virginia law authorized capital punishment for accessories, parties to the act of rape who did not take part in the act. On the stand, each of the defendants at least partially rejected his confession. In some cases, they said that the police had written the confessions, that the formal account varied from a handwritten version, and that they had not fully read the police version when signing and did not recognize that their own accounts had been changed.<ref name=RiseJSH/>
Rise says that the white community disdained Ruby Floyd for her missionary work with the [[Jehovah's Witnesses]] and for her willingness to enter the black part of Martinsville. The prosecution pointed out that Floyd had
No trial lasted more than a day, and the longest jury deliberation lasted less than two hours. The shortest was little more than half an hour. Although the defense attorneys pointed out mitigating circumstances, the juries quickly convicted each defendant and sentenced them to execution in the electric chair. The judge presiding was [[Kennon C. Whittle]].<ref name=Green/>
==Protests and appeals==
Virginia had historically convicted and executed numerous black men accused of raping white women; for most of its history, only blacks were sentenced to death for rape.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Christman|first=Roger|date=2021|title=Seeking Justice For The Martinsville Seven|url=https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2021/02/10/the-martinsville-seven/
<blockquote>When we consider the fact that in the entire history of the Old Dominion state, no white man has ever received capital punishment for rape, then of necessity we must conclude that the death penalty for seven men for a singular crime was neither righteous, nor compassionate, nor wise.<ref>{{cite web |author=Mark Gado |title=The Martinsville Seven |url=
The case of the Martinsville Seven was taken up by outside groups, including the [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) and the [[Civil Rights Congress]] (CRC). [[Martin A. Martin]] of the Richmond law firm Hill, Martin and Robinson, was the lead attorney for the appellate defense team for the NAACP in Virginia, as his firm had considerable experience with civil rights cases.<ref name=RiseJSH/> The NAACP did not want the CRC to participate in the litigation directly. Martin and the NAACP also agreed to represent the men in an appeal for the Seven with the [[Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals]]. They applied the bulk of the funds raised to the defense of clients.<ref>Gilbert King, ''Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America,'' New York: HarperCollins, 2012, p. 154</ref> The NAACP's interest was in establishing legal precedent "for the benefit of due process and equal protection in general and the Negroes' rights in particular."<ref name=RiseJSH/> Their concern was ensuring a fair trial.<ref name=RiseJSH/>
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In 1977, in its ruling in ''[[Coker v. Georgia]]'', the US Supreme Court ruled that "it is repugnant to an enlightened society for the state to kill a person for a crime that does not result in death," declining to extend the death penalty to a person guilty of raping an adult woman.
In the [[United Kingdom]], the London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress, then led by leading Black British civil rights leader [[Billy Strachan]], condemned the US government for their actions towards the Martinsville Seven.<ref name=":22">{{Cite book |last=Horsley |first=David |title=Billy Strachan 1921-1988 RAF Officer, Communist, Civil Rights Pioneer, Legal Administrator, Internationalist and Above All Caribbean Man |publisher=Caribbean Labour Solidarity |year=2019 |location=London |pages=17 |language=en |issn=2055-7035}}</ref>
==Execution==
All of the appeals by the NAACP failed. The
== Pardon request ==
In December 2020,
=== Pardon ===
On August 31, 2021,
==See also==
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[[Category:20th-century executions by Virginia]]
[[Category:20th-century executions of American people]]
[[Category:Gang rape in
[[Category:Quantified groups of defendants]]
[[Category:Civil Rights Congress]]
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[[Category:Crimes in Virginia]]
[[Category:Rapes in the United States]]
[[Category:20th-century African-American people]]
[[Category:African-American history of Virginia]]
[[Category:Recipients of American gubernatorial pardons]]
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