‘RIGHTING WRONGS’
Va. gov pardons 7 Black men executed for rape in 1951
A group of Black men known as the “Martinsville Seven” were posthumously pardoned Tuesday, 70 years after their 1951 execution for the alleged rape of a white woman.
Gov. Ralph Northam granted the pardon on the grounds that they “were tried without adequate due process and received a racially biased death sentence not similarly applied to white defendants,” his office said in a statement.
The case had attracted pleas for mercy from around the world and been denounced in recent years as an example of racial disparity in the use of the death penalty. 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.
“This is about righting wrongs,” Northam said in a statement.
“These men were executed because they were Black, and that’s not right,” he told The Associated Press. “Their punishment did not fit the crime. They should not have been executed.”
The men had been convicted of raping Ruby Stroud Floyd, 32, a white woman who had gone to a predominantly Black neighborhood in Martinsville, Va., on Jan. 8, 1949, to collect a $6 debt for clothes she had sold.
Floyd had been returning from her errand, accompanied by 11-year-old Charlie Martin, who was also Black, when four men who they had asked for directions on their way over allegedly attacked her after flicking a quarter to Charlie so he’d disappear.
They dragged her into the woods and took turns raping her for 90 minutes, with others joining in, according to accounts at the time. At 7:30 she stumbled into a shop, most of her clothing torn to shreds and her legs and arms scraped raw and her hair matted with twigs and pine needles, saying she had been raped at least 13 times.
The seven suspects were rounded up, and all confessed, mostly blaming booze. But Northam acknowledged that some had been impaired when arrested, some had been unable to read the confessions they signed, and none had been interrogated with an attorney present.
Moreover, all-white juries — 72 jurors in all, among the seven — determined their fate in just eight days. It was the largest group of people executed for a single-victim crime in the state’s history.
Four of the men got the chair on Feb. 2, 1951, with the other three electrocuted three days later. The seven were Frank Hairston Jr., 18; Booker T. Millner, 19; Francis DeSales Grayson, 37; Howard Lee Hairston, 18; James Luther Hairston, 20; Joe Henry Hampton, 19, and John Clabon Taylor, 21, all of Martinsville, the governor’s office said.
Northam noted that before abolishing the death penalty earlier this year, Virginia’s executions had outstripped those of any other state. Virginia used the chair from 1908 to 1951, and all 45 people executed for rape were Black, Northam’s office said. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that imposing the death penalty for rape was cruel and unusual punishment.
“We all deserve a criminal justice system that is fair, equal, and gets it right — no matter who you are or what you look like,” Northam said in his statement. “I’m grateful
to the advocates and families of the Martinsville Seven for their dedication and perseverance. While we can’t change the past, I hope today’s action brings them some small measure of peace.”
James Walter Grayson, Francis Grayson’s son, was just 4 when his father kissed him goodbye before being taken away by police for that final time, he said.
“Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord,” he said, sobbing, after the meeting with Northam, as two other descendants of the men embraced him. “It means so much to me. I remember the very day the police came to the door. He kissed us and they took him away.”