Biography
Wilmington native, age 19 at conviction. 29-year sentence. Died c. 1990, pardoned posthumously 2012. William “Joe” Wright Jr. was one of the Black student participants in Wilmington’s 1971 school boycott and activism during the city’s tense desegregation period. Wright became one of the Wilmington Ten, a group whose prosecution became one of the best-known civil-rights-era legal controversies in North Carolina.
Wright was charged with the group in relation to the February 1971 firebombing of Mike’s Grocery and a conspiracy allegation involving assaults on emergency responders. A jury convicted the Wilmington Ten on October 17, 1972; Wright received a 29‑year sentence. The convictions were overturned by the Fourth Circuit in 1980, and decades later the state issued pardons of innocence to the Wilmington Ten in 2012.
One of the Wilmington Ten, convicted on trumped-up firebombing/conspiracy charges from the 1971 Wilmington, NC unrest. The Black Panther Vol. 18 no.2 (1978). Convictions overturned 1980; group pardoned 2012. [Source: The Black Panther (Black Panther Party newspaper), v18 no.2; digitized at marxists.org — https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/index.htm]
