Martinsville Seven

A-81

Here in 1949, six all-white, all-male juries convicted seven black men of the rape of a white woman. All seven men were sentenced to death. On appeal, NAACP attorneys submitted the first petition to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that capital punishment had been disproportionately applied against African Americans in violation of the 14th Amendment. Despite international attention and petitions for clemency, the Commonwealth of Virginia executed the men in Feb. 1951, the most executions for a rape in U.S. history. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled that execution for rape was cruel and unusual punishment. Gov. Ralph Northam issued posthumous pardons to the Martinsville Seven on 31 Aug. 2021.

Department of Historic Resources, 2021

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Eric W. Rise, The Martinsville Seven: Race, Rape, and Capital Punishment (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995. Eric W. Rise, “Race, Rape, and Radicalism: The Case of the Martinsville Seven, 1949-1951,” Journal of Southern History, vol. 58, no. 3 (Aug. 1992): 461-490. Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality (Oxford University Press, 2004). “Seeking Justice for the Martinsville Seven”: https://uncommonwealth.virginiamemory.com/blog/2021/02/10/the-martinsville-seven/ https://martinsville7.org/the-martinsville-7 Norfolk Journal and Guide, 25 Nov. 1950. Washington Post, 31 Aug. 2021.