Black men executed for 1949 rape given pardons
Fairness, not innocence or guilt, drives governor
RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam granted posthumous pardons Tuesday to seven Black men who were executed in 1951 for the rape of a white woman, in 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.
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 convicted of raping Ruby Stroud Floyd, 32, a white woman who went 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. Three days later, the remaining three were also electrocuted. Each was tried by all-white juries.
At the time, rape was a capital offense. But Northam said Tuesday that the death penalty for rape was applied almost exclusively to Black people.
The pardons do not address the guilt or innocence of the men, but Northam said the pardons are an acknowledgment that they did not receive due process and received a “racially biased death sentence not similarly applied to white defendants.”
“These men were executed because
they were Black, and that’s not right,” Northam said. “Their punishment did not fit the crime. They should not have been executed.”
All seven men were convicted and sentenced to death within eight days. Northam said some of the defendants were impaired at the time of their arrests or unable to read confessions they signed. He said none of the men had attorneys present during interrogations.
James Walter Grayson, the son of Francis Desales Grayson, one of the seven, sobbed when Northam told the family members he would grant the pardons after meeting with them Tuesday. “Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord,” Grayson said.
“I remember the very day the police came to the door,” Grayson said. “He kissed us and they took him away.”
In December, advocates and descendants of the men asked Northam to issue posthumous pardons. Their petition does not argue that the men were innocent, but says their trials were unfair and the punishment was extreme and unjust.
“The Martinsville Seven were not given adequate due process ‘simply for being black,’ they were sentenced to death for a crime that a white person would not have been executed for ‘simply for being black,’ and they were killed, by the Commonwealth, ‘simply for being black,’ ” the advocates wrote in the letter to Northam.
The seven men were: Grayson, Frank Hairston Jr., Howard Lee Hairston, James Luther Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton, Booker Millner and John Clabon Taylor.