Martinsville Seven

The Martinsville Seven were a group of seven African-American men from Martinsville, Virginia who were convicted and executed for raping a white woman in 1949. At the time of their arrest soon after the events, all but one was between the ages of 20 and 23. They were quickly tried in six separate trials (two agreed to be tried together) and each was sentenced to death. All were executed in two days in early February 1951. It was the largest mass execution for rape that had been reported, nor had there been lynchings of so many men at once for rape. Under Virginia law, only black men were executed for rape convictions. According to historian Eric W. Rise, this case "demonstrated the power of the southern legal system to enforce codes of racial behavior."

The NAACP defended the men in court on appeals in an attempt to ensure fair trials, set precedent on due process, and gain a reduction in sentences. The case attracted national newspaper coverage. The Civil Rights Congress attempted to raise awareness and conduct a public campaign on behalf of clemency for the men. The NAACP appealed their convictions and sentences to the state and federal appeals courts, and to the United States Supreme Court, noting 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. The appellate courts upheld the convictions and sentences, and the US Supreme Court refused to hear the cases. Newly elected Governor John S. Battle refused to commute the men's sentences, saying he was horrified by the rapes.

Events

The rapes were alleged to take place on Saturday, January 8, 1949. Late that afternoon 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 was known to have distributed Jehovah's Witnesses materials in the neighborhood. She was warned by residents not to stay too long. 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 several black men, the police quickly arrested Frank Hairston, Jr. and Booker Millner. They were followed by the arrest of four more suspects during the 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 was in his 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 event, including Joe Hampton, although not all took part in sexual intercourse. 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 the police had questioned the men who had been drinking for some time, and without allowing them to consult with lawyers or their families.

The officials acted to protect the men by separating them and taking them to other jails outside Henry County. They held a preliminary hearing about a month later, and the grand jury two months after that. All the men were indicted by the grand jury, which included both black and white members. According to Eric W. Rise, actions by the authorities showed they had raised the professional level of their conduct and procedures in the period since World War II. Their quick arrest of the subjects assured the community that stability was being preserved.

The Seven

(listed in order of arrest)

• Frank Hairston Jr., age 20, confessed to rape
• Booker T. Millner, age 22, said he was present, but did not take part

Based on their confessions, the police arrested:

• Howard Lee Hairston, age 20, denied having sex with Floyd. He and his older brother (below) were not related to Frank Hairston, Jr.
• James Luther Hairston, age 22
• John Claybon Taylor, age 23
• Francis DeSales Grayson, age 38, denied having sex with Floyd

The last was arrested January 10:

• Joe Henry Hampton, age 21

Trial

The judge appointed seven attorneys for the seven defendants; they ranged widely in experience and 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. According to historian Eric W. Rise, racism was less explicit in the trial of the Martinsville Seven than in cases known as "legal lynchings" in the South, in which innocent men were convicted (e.g., the Scottsboro Boys, Willie McGee), and the Groveland Boys.

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 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.

Judge Kennon Whittle told the attorneys: "this case must and will be tried in such a way as not to disturb the kindly feeling now, locally, existing between the races. It must be tried as though both parties were members of the same race." The prosecution did not explicitly discuss race; it argued the case based on the "preservation of community stability, not the protection of southern womanly virtues," as had formerly been common.

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.

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 had gone to an area considered unsafe for white women, ignored warnings of black residents of staying too long there, and not been attentive to her surroundings or the men she passed. A relative of the Hairstons has said that their family tradition always said that Floyd had been having an affair with one of the defendants, but this was not explored at trial.

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.

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. Since Virginia started using an electric chair in 1908, all 45 of the men sentenced to death for rape had been black men convicted of raping white women. From 1908 to 1951, only Texas, North Carolina and Georgia executed more black men for rape than did Virginia. An editorial in New York's Amsterdam News read,

"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."

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.

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 defense team for the NAACP in Virginia, as his firm had considerable experience with civil rights cases. The NAACP did not want the CRC to participate in the litigation directly, as the organizations had different approaches to defense of the suspects. 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. 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." Their concern was ensuring a fair trial.

One of the convicted men's parents contacted the CRC directly and asked one of its lawyers to defend their son DeSales Grayson. The CRC focused on producing pamphlets and publicity for outside campaigns to raise awareness about the case, including internationally, and hoped to put pressure on government officials. The CRC began to organize mass actions in Richmond.

In their appeals, Martin and the NAACP discussed the unfairness of the venue, the pressure on later juries to arrive at the same sentence as the earlier ones, and the historical racial disparities in application of death penalty sentences in the state. They noted the assaults of Floyd had no evidence of homicidal intent. The Court of Appeals upheld the rulings on March 13, 1950, with Chief Justice Edward W. Hudgins writing: "one can hardly conceive of a more atrocious, a more beastly crime". Together representatives, both black and white, of the CRC and NAACP, as well as other citizens, met with Battle in June 1950 to appeal for a pardon or clemency for the defendants in the case. They argued for lesser sentences, but Battle resisted their pleas.

The NAACP thought that involvement by the CRC in appeals could endanger the defendants because of its communist affiliation. In this period of the second Red Scare, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee began a campaign of raising alarms about purported communist influence in government and society. The US Supreme Court refused to hear a further appeal.

After exhausting the appeals process, with the US Supreme Court declining to hear the case, the NAACP and CRC began to appeal to executive offices. Newly elected Virginia Governor John S. Battle refused their request for clemency. In advance of a large planned CRC demonstration in the state capital, Governor Battle doubled the capital guard and alerted the state militia. On January 30, 1951, 400 protesters arrived in Richmond, appealing to Battle on the issue of racial disparity in sentencing. Governor Battle listened to their claims but was unwilling to bend on the issue of the Seven, saying: "The prisoners have not been convicted because they are Negroes and should not be released because they are Negroes." He was appalled at the nature of the crime.

The CRC also had organized an international campaign, and Governor Battle was swamped by letters from overseas asking him to commute the sentences of the men. He resented being under so much pressure. One telegram from Moscow was signed by "workers in science, literature, the arts," including composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev. Another, from China, called the sentence a "barbaric" example of American "fascist hooliganism". The men were executed in early February.

Execution

All of the appeals by the NAACP failed. The Seven were executed at Virginia State Penitentiary in early February 1951. The first four were killed at 15-minute intervals on February 2. The remainder were killed on February 5, 1951. The day before the youngest of the seven was killed, he said, "God knows I didn’t touch that woman and I’ll see ya’ll on the other side."

See also

• Capital punishment in Virginia