New Podcast: ​‘Martinsville 7’ Advocates Seek Posthumous Pardon for 7 Black Men Executed by Virginia After All-White Jury Convicted Them of Raping a White Woman

In February 1951, Virginia exe­cut­ed sev­en Black men on charges they had raped a white woman two years ear­li­er. The ​“Martinsville 7” — Francis DeSales Grayson, Frank Hairston Jr., Howard Hairston, James Luther Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton, Booker T. Millner, and John Clabon Taylor — were inter­ro­gat­ed by police with­out the appoint­ment of legal coun­sel and, under threats that they would be released to a lynch mob, con­fessed to involve­ment in the rape. After a suc­ces­sion of per­func­to­ry tri­als before all-white, all-male juries, each was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. Their sen­tences were car­ried out in the largest mass exe­cu­tion for rape in the his­to­ry of the United States. 

Seventy years lat­er, fam­i­ly mem­bers of the men and legal advo­cates are spear­head­ing an effort to posthu­mous­ly par­don the men and redress a mis­car­riage of jus­tice. In the January 21, 2021 episode of the Discussions With DPIC pod­cast, Rudolph McCollum and Liz Ryan join DPIC Managing Director Anne Holsinger for a con­ver­sa­tion about those efforts. McCollum, a for­mer may­or of Richmond, is the nephew of two of the men who were exe­cut­ed. Ryan is the pres­i­dent and CEO of the Youth First Initiative, which advo­cates for com­mu­ni­ty-based alter­na­tives to youth incar­cer­a­tion. They dis­cuss what hap­pened to the Martinsville 7, what a posthu­mous par­don could mean for the state and fam­i­ly mem­bers of the exe­cut­ed men, and how the case fits into the his­to­ry of racial injus­tice in Virginia and cur­rent efforts to repeal the Commonwealth’s death penalty. 

McCollum and Ryan are part of a group of advo­cates that have asked Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to posthu­mous­ly par­don the Martinsville 7. ​“This was a mis­car­riage of jus­tice,” Ryan said. ​“These men were nev­er afford­ed due process. And it’s very like­ly that there was a rush to judg­ment” begin­ning at the time of arrest. Ryan points to deep prob­lems with the inves­tiga­tive and legal process in the case. There were ​“a lot of issues,” she said. ​“They were inter­ro­gat­ed with­out the pres­ence of attor­neys. Their fam­i­lies believe that their con­fes­sions were forced. [It’s] like­ly many of them were false con­fes­sions, because they were told to ​‘con­fess to this’ or meet the mob outside.” 

Holsinger placed the treat­ment of the men in his­tor­i­cal con­text. She not­ed that “[f]rom 1900 until the U.S. Supreme Court pro­hib­it­ed the death penal­ty in 1977 for crimes in which no one was killed, Virginia exe­cut­ed 73 Black men or boys on charges of rape, attempt­ed rape, or rob­bery. In that same time peri­od, it didn’t exe­cute a sin­gle white per­son for those crimes. And it has nev­er in the his­to­ry of the Commonwealth exe­cut­ed any white man for rap­ing a Black woman or girl.” 

McCollum explained that south­ern states have his­tor­i­cal­ly used the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem to intim­i­date and con­trol the Black com­mu­ni­ty. ​“The pur­pose of lynch­ings, and I believe the pur­pose of even state action such as this, were to send a mes­sage to the Black com­mu­ni­ty,” he said. ​“And it is just part of a whole soci­ety sys­tem that was put in place to lim­it peo­ple. This was just one more action to send a mes­sage that if you cross the line, we are going to ensure that you — not just you, who actu­al­ly may have been involved in an ille­gal activ­i­ty — but the entire com­mu­ni­ty, rec­og­nizes that there are lim­its that we will set in place. They’re set in place for a pur­pose. If you cross them, there will be consequences.” 

Ryan called the death penal­ty in America a ​“legal lynch­ing.” ​“And the fact that it’s imposed most harsh­ly on peo­ple of col­or — par­tic­u­lar­ly Black men — just tells you that it’s that it’s unfair and should be abol­ished,” she said. ​“We should not allow this to happen.” 

The posthu­mous par­don request comes at a time in which Northam has spon­sored a death-penal­ty repeal bill in the state. McCollum said that this coa­les­cence ​“speaks to me as some divine inter­ven­tion, of how there can be some oppor­tu­ni­ty for these issues to be closed at the same time and make way for a new day.” 

The let­ter to Governor Northam request­ing the par­dons states: ​“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.’” 

“My reli­gion teach­es me that there is no redemp­tion with­out repen­tance,” McCollum told Holsinger. ​“And so, if we tru­ly want to move for­ward as a soci­ety, we need to rec­og­nize that when wrongs are com­mit­ted that they need to be cor­rect­ed. But they can’t be cor­rect­ed, unless there’s an admis­sion … that there was a wrong which occurred. Once we do that, then we can tru­ly be free as a soci­ety. We can move towards redemp­tion from that and make way for a bet­ter world in which we can all live together.” 

Ryan echoed McCollum’s sen­ti­ment. A posthu­mous par­don, she said, ​“can’t bring the men back. It can’t redress all the griev­ances over the last 70 years. But it’s one step. It’s one acknowl­edge­ment of a wrong. It’s a very important acknowledgement.”