Biography
One of the Martinsville Seven — seven Black Virginia men arrested January 1949 for the alleged gang rape of Ruby Stroud Floyd, a white Jehovah's Witness, in Martinsville. In six separate one-day trials before Judge Kennon C. Whittle and all-white juries (the prosecution struck every Black potential juror), all seven were convicted within hours and sentenced to death. The Civil Rights Congress and NAACP mounted dueling defense campaigns; Eleanor Roosevelt and figures across the world appealed for clemency. Four were electrocuted at the Virginia State Penitentiary on February 2, 1951 and the remaining three on February 5, 1951 — the largest mass execution for a single non-capital-murder crime in U.S. history. Posthumously pardoned by Governor Ralph Northam, August 31, 2021.