Martin Luther King III: Virginia’s Death Penalty Repeal Shows ​‘What is Possible When We Confront This Country’s Racist Past’

The his­to­ry of racial oppres­sion and lynch­ing in the U.S. South has, civ­il rights advo­cate Martin Luther King III writes, ​“too fre­quent­ly … gone untold and unad­dressed.” But, he says in an April 17, 2021 op-ed in USA Today, Virginia​’s repeal of the death penal­ty ​“shows us what is pos­si­ble when we con­front this country’s racist past, and acknowl­edge how racism per­me­ates this country’s prac­tices and laws.”

King (pic­tured), the eldest son of civ­il rights icons Coretta Scott King and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has long cham­pi­oned death-penal­ty abo­li­tion. ​“As a Black man, born and raised in the South, this issue is deeply per­son­al to me,” he says. King’s father and grand­moth­er were mur­dered in polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed racial hate crimes. 

“Both of these were heinous crimes,” King writes, ​“but despite our immea­sur­able grief, our faith and the racist roots of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment led my fam­i­ly to reject the death penal­ty. You see, the death penal­ty was nev­er intend­ed to be used to give Black fam­i­lies like mine so-called jus­tice or to show that soci­ety val­ues Black life. Getting the death penal­ty in response to wrongs com­mit­ted against my loved ones would not bring them back; it would have only tied their lega­cy to a deeply racist system.”

King says that “[f]or far too long, pol­i­cy­mak­ers have shied away from open and hon­est dis­cus­sions about cap­i­tal punishment’s deep con­nec­tion to lynch­ing, Jim Crow laws and racial oppres­sion.” Citing Richmond Times-Dispatch cov­er­age of the Death Penalty Information Center’s September 2020 report, Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty, King notes that ​“Virginia’s his­to­ry of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in the death penal­ty is exten­sive,” stretch­ing back into the 17^th century. 

A DPIC analy­sis of Virginia’s death-penal­ty prac­tices has doc­u­ment­ed that 298 of the 377 indi­vid­u­als exe­cut­ed by the com­mon­wealth in the 20^th cen­tu­ry — near­ly 80% — were defen­dants of col­or. All 73 indi­vid­u­als exe­cut­ed last cen­tu­ry for crimes that did not result in death — rape, rob­bery, or attempt­ed rape — were Black. 

“Lawmakers claimed they need­ed the death penal­ty to pla­cate white mobs who want­ed to con­tin­ue using lynch­ings to main­tain racial con­trol,” King writes. He notes that his­tor­i­cal­ly ​“a defen­dant was more like­ly to face the death penal­ty if the vic­tim was white than if the vic­tim was Black” and race, he says, ​“con­tin­ues to influ­ence who is con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to die.” 

Calling Virginia ​“the for­mer home of the Confederacy,” King pre­dict­ed that “[i]f we shine a light on any of the oth­er Southern states that were known for high rates of lynch­ings, we are like­ly to find plen­ty of sim­i­lar­i­ties. Lawmakers in these states,” he said, ​“should also be pre­pared for their racist death penal­ty prac­tices to be exposed for all to see.”

“Ending cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Virginia is a deci­sive step toward the racial reck­on­ing that our coun­try des­per­ate­ly needs,” King con­cludes. ​“The rest of the South should follow suit.”