The Martinsville Seven: Justice Deferred, Justice Denied

Feb. 5, 1951, Outside the prison in Richmond Virginia it was bitterly cold on the second night of executions of the seven Martinsville Negros convicted of the rape of Ruby Stroud Floyd in January of 1949. These final three executions were the largest mass execution by the state for rape in United States history.

Ruby Stroud Floyd was a 32-year-old White woman who was in the Negro section of Martinsville collecting for some clothes she had sold. Around 7:30 in the evening she was assaulted by at least four men that she may or may not have passed earlier in the evening. In her account, 13 men had repeatedly raped her and from the descriptions, she provided the police quickly arrested Frank Hairston Jr. and Booker Millner. Another four were arrested in the early morning hours based on the confessions of the first two men.

However independent investigation and civil rights activists found that the police had used violence and further threats to coerce the confessions. They made arrests of all seven suspects within two days of the report. Only one of the men had a prior criminal conviction and all were employed.

While the police did take precautions and jailed the men separately and in other counties to avoid mob violence it is also known the men were not permitted at the time of the arrest to call for an attorney or contact their families.

A preliminary hearing was one month after the arrests and a grand jury convened a month after that. Within two hours the grand jury came back with indictments on all seven men.

The court assigned seven different public defenders but denied all motions to move the trial as the defense felt there was no opportunity for a fair trial in Martinsville given the publicity of the case.

In a very systematic, almost manufactory manner each of the cases was tried and the all-White juries found the men guilty and recommended the death penalty. No jury took longer than two hours to convict the men. The defense attorneys warned the men and their families not to mention how the confessions were obtained.

At this point both the NCAAP and Civil Rights Congress was involved in the case and trying various legal measures to stop or at least delay the executions; they were trying to get new trials for the men.

Martin A. Martin, the first African American lawyer to serve in the Department of Justice and other NAACP attorneys defended the men on appeals, attempting to ensure fair trials, set due process precedents, and gain clemency or sentence reductions. 

Much of the defense was built around the fact the men recanted their confessions, and how they were not allowed to consult with lawyers or their families. Martin and the defense secured a limited stay of the execution date from Governor William M. Tuck and a writ of error from the Virginia Supreme Court. This stay did not last long however as a new governor John S. Battle refused to commute the men's sentences, saying he was horrified by the rapes. Additional litigation in the U.S. District Court and Court of Appeals proved futile. The defendants were all executed on February 2 and 5, 1951.

In December of 2020, the Martinsville 7 Project petitioned then-Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to pardon the Martinsville Seven posthumously and issue an apology. He did so. “They did not receive due process,” the Democratic governor said. “Their punishment did not fit the crime.”

 

The Martinsville 7

Francis DeSales Grayson

Frank Hairston Jr.

Howard Hairston

James Luther Hairston

Joe Henry Hampton

Booker T. Millner

John Clabon Taylor

 

 

Sources:

https://martinsville7.org/

https://aaregistry.org/story/the-martinsville-seven-a-story/

 https://www.virginiamercury.com/2021/09/07/a-virginia-the-martinsville-seven-could-not-have-imagined/