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138-687: The Civil Rights Congress defended the men originally, and later conducted two marches and other attempts to raise awareness and conduct a public campaign on behalf of their agenda. This was objected to by the NAACP , who feared further backlash because of the CRC's Communist affiliations. Martin A. Martin and other NAACP attorneys defended the men on appeals, attempting to ensure fair trials, set due process precedents, and gain clemency or sentence reductions. The case attracted national newspaper coverage. The NAACP appeals also noted that since Virginia started use of

276-700: A property requirement . The literacy test was administered by the voting registrar; in practice, they were white Democrats. Provisions in the constitution also included a grandfather clause , which provided a loophole to enable illiterate whites to register to vote. It said that "Any citizen who was a voter on January 1, 1867, or his son or grandson, or any person naturalized prior to January 1, 1898, if applying for registration before September 1, 1898, might vote, notwithstanding illiteracy or poverty." Separate registration lists were kept for whites and blacks, making it easy for white registrars to discriminate against blacks in literacy tests. The constitution of 1898 also required

414-496: A Republican president as few as three times in that interval. Kentucky did usually vote for the Democratic Party in presidential elections from 1877 to 1964, but was still a competitive state at both the state and federal levels. The Democratic Party in the state was heavily divided over free silver and the role of corporations in the middle 1890s, and lost the governorship for the first time in forty years in 1895. In

552-464: A century in former Confederate states, were complicated. For varying reasons African Americans remained enfranchised in the border states despite movements for disfranchisement during the 1900s. The percentages of African Americans of the populations of the Border States was generally significantly lower than the percentages in the former Confederate states from 1870 to 1960. Less than 10% of

690-425: A class that covered most adult men who could have fought in the war, the paramilitary groups worked for political aims: to turn Republicans out of office, disrupt their organizing, and use force to intimidate and terrorize freedmen to keep them away from the polls. Such groups have been described as "the military arm of the Democratic Party". They were instrumental in many Southern states in driving blacks away from

828-414: A criminal justice system that is fair, equal, and gets it right—no matter who you are or what you look like. While we can't change the past, I hope today's action brings them some small measure of peace." Civil Rights Congress The Civil Rights Congress ( CRC ) was a United States civil rights organization, formed in 1946 at a national conference for radicals and disbanded in 1956. It succeeded

966-505: A decade of disfranchisement, the white supremacy campaign had erased the image of the black middle class from the minds of white North Carolinians." In Virginia, Democrats sought disfranchisement in the late 19th century after a coalition of white and black Republicans with populist Democrats had come to power; the coalition had been formalized as the Readjuster Party . The Readjuster Party held control from 1881 to 1883, electing

1104-713: A discriminatory way. They succeeded in disenfranchising most of the black citizens, as well as many poor whites in the South, and voter rolls dropped dramatically in each state. The Republican Party was nearly eliminated in the region for decades, and the Southern Democrats established one-party control throughout the Southern United States. In 1912, the Republican Party was split when Theodore Roosevelt ran against William Howard Taft ,

1242-719: A federal crime. Despite white Southerners' complaints about Reconstruction, several Southern states kept most provisions of their Reconstruction constitutions for more than two decades, until late in the 19th century. In some states, the number of blacks elected to local offices reached a peak in the 1880s although Reconstruction had ended. They influenced the local level, where much of government took place, although they did not win many statewide or national seats. Subsequently, state legislatures passed restrictive laws or constitutions that made voter registration and election rules more complicated. As literacy tests and other restrictions could be applied subjectively, these changes sharply limited

1380-478: A free vote and a fair count, how are you going to beat 135,000 by 95,000? How are you going to do it? You had set us an impossible task. We did not disfranchise the negroes until 1895. Then we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We adopted

1518-606: A full count of the population, but they disfranchised several million black and white citizens. Southern white Democrats comprised the " Solid South ", a powerful voting bloc in Congress until the mid-20th century. Their representatives, re-elected repeatedly by one-party states, exercised the power of seniority, controlling numerous chairmanships of important committees in both houses. Their power allowed them to have control over rules, budgets and important patronage projects, among other issues, as well as to defeat bills to make lynching

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1656-573: A governor and controlling the legislature, which also elected a US Senator from the state. As in North Carolina, state Democrats were able to divide Readjuster supporters through appeals to White Supremacy. After regaining power, Democrats changed state laws and the constitution in 1902 to disenfranchise blacks. They ratified the new constitution in the legislature and did not submit it to the popular vote. Voting in Virginia fell by nearly half as

1794-586: A handwritten version, and that they had not fully read the police version when signing and did not recognize that their own accounts had been changed. Rise says that the white community disdained Ruby Floyd for her missionary work with the Jehovah's Witnesses and for her willingness to enter the black part of Martinsville. The prosecution pointed out that Floyd had gone to an area considered unsafe for white women, ignored warnings of black residents of staying too long there, and not been attentive to her surroundings or

1932-646: A hotel room. He later said he felt ashamed and suicidal for being a "stool pigeon". He testified that his pay varied from $ 25/week to $ 250/month, and that he routinely lied to FBI contacts. Pamphlets Disfranchisement after Reconstruction era Disfranchisement after the Reconstruction era in the United States, especially in the Southern United States , was based on a series of laws, new constitutions, and practices in

2070-587: A large and increasingly educated black community concentrated in Baltimore. This city had many free blacks before the Civil War and they had established both economic and political power. The state legislature passed a poll tax in 1904, but incurred vigorous opposition and repealed it in 1911. Despite support among conservative whites in the conservative Eastern Shore , referendums for bills to disenfranchise blacks failed three times in 1905, 1908, and 1910, with

2208-584: A large planned CRC demonstration in the state capital, Governor Battle doubled the capital guard and alerted the state militia. On January 30, 1951, 400 protesters arrived in Richmond, appealing to Battle on the issue of racial disparity in sentencing. Governor Battle listened to their claims but was unwilling to bend on the issue of the Seven, saying: "The prisoners have not been convicted because they are Negroes and should not be released because they are Negroes." He

2346-406: A month later, and the grand jury two months after that. A grand jury (which included both black and white members) indicted all the men. Their quick arrest assured the community that stability was being preserved. Authorities showed increased professional conduct and procedures since the controversial arrest and execution of Odell Waller during World War II (he was initially represented at trial by

2484-524: A naturalized US citizen in 1945, the government prosecuted him for perjury for having failed to acknowledge being a member of the Communist Party in his naturalization application. The conviction was overturned due to a statute of limitations in the law. The CRC campaigned for Rosa Lee Ingram and her two teenage sons (Wallace and Sammie Lee Ingram) against a death penalty murder charge in Georgia,

2622-528: A new constitution, which contained provisions for voter registration that required voters to pay poll taxes and pass a literacy test . The literacy test was subjectively applied by white administrators, and the two provisions effectively disenfranchised most blacks and many poor whites. The constitutional provisions survived a Supreme Court challenge in Williams v. Mississippi (1898). Other southern states quickly adopted new constitutions and what they called

2760-678: A new state legislative effort to disenfranchise blacks failed because of the strong organization of the Republican Party in pro-Union regions of the state. Republicans won Kentucky in the 1924 and 1928 presidential elections, the former of which was the only state that Warren G. Harding lost in the 1920 presidential election , but Coolidge won in the 1924 United States presidential election . Kentucky also elected some Republican governors during this period, such as William O'Connell Bradley (1895-1899), Augustus E. Willson (1907-1911), Edwin P. Morrow (1919-1923), Flem D. Sampson (1927-1931), and Simeon Willis (1943-1947). Maryland voted for

2898-704: A one-day trial in January 1948. The Ingrams had no access to lawyers before the trial. The Ingram appeal campaign was orchestrated by the Women's Committee for Equal Justice, a CRC subdivision led by the nationally known leader, Mary Church Terrell . As its predecessor, the ILD, had accomplished with the Scottsboro case , the CRC hoped to use the Ingram case to draw national and international attention to racial inequality in

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3036-457: A person to satisfy a longer residency requirement in the state, county, parish, and precinct before voting than did the constitution of 1879. This worked against the lower classes, who were more likely to move frequently for work, especially in agricultural areas where there were many migrant workers and sharecroppers. The effect of these changes on the population of black voters in Louisiana

3174-540: A result of the disfranchisement of blacks. The eighty years of white Democratic control ended only in the late 1960s after passage and enforcement of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the collapse of the Byrd Organization machine. Oklahoma was unique, as it only became a state in 1907 . During the American Civil War , most of what is now the U.S. state of Oklahoma was designated as

3312-524: A wider range of issues and a larger coalition. It became involved in the defense of Rosa Lee Ingram and her sons, and Willie McGee. In 1950, while the NAACP was working on appeals of the Martinsville Seven , who had all been convicted and sentenced to death in speedy trials, the parents of one defendant, DeSales Grayson, appealed separately to the CRC to defend their son. The NAACP contended that

3450-563: Is the largest execution for rape charges in the United States. The day before the youngest of the seven was executed, he said, "God knows I didn't touch that woman and I'll see y'all on the other side." In December 2020, the Martinsville 7 Project asked Virginia Governor Ralph Northam to pardon the Martinsville Seven posthumously and issue an apology. The Martinsville 7 Project, according to their website, seeks to highlight

3588-451: The 1896 presidential election , the state was exceedingly close, with McKinley becoming the first Republican presidential candidate to carry Kentucky, by a mere 277 votes, or 0.06352%. McKinley's victory was, by percentage margin, the seventh-closest popular results for presidential electors on record. In Kentucky, Lexington's city government had passed a poll tax in 1901, but it was declared invalid in state circuit courts. Six years later,

3726-672: The Carolinas in late 1871. United States marshals supervised state voter registrations and elections and could summon the help of military or naval forces if needed. These measures led to the demise of the first Klan by the early 1870s. New paramilitary groups quickly sprang up, as tens of thousands of veterans belonged to gun clubs and similar groups. A second wave of violence began, resulting in over 1,000 deaths, usually black or Republican. The Supreme Court ruled in 1876 in United States v. Cruikshank , arising from trials related to

3864-482: The Civil Rights Congress (CRC). Martin A. Martin of the Richmond law firm Hill, Martin and Robinson, was the lead attorney for the appellate defense team for the NAACP in Virginia, as his firm had considerable experience with civil rights cases. The NAACP did not want the CRC to participate in the litigation directly. Martin and the NAACP also agreed to represent the men in an appeal for the Seven with

4002-639: The Colfax Massacre , that protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Enforcement Acts were intended to support, did not apply to the actions of individuals, but only to the actions of state governments. They recommended that persons seek relief from state courts, which had not been supportive of freedmen's rights. The paramilitary organizations that arose in the mid to late 1870s were part of continuing insurgency in

4140-551: The Georgia poll tax in 1877. Other measures followed, particularly near the end of the century, after a Republican-Populist alliance caused the Democrats to temporarily lose some Congressional seats and control of some gubernatorial positions. To secure their power, the Democrats worked to exclude blacks (and most Republicans) from politics. The results could be seen across the South. After Reconstruction, Tennessee initially had

4278-669: The House Committee on Un-American Activities . Targeted by the U.S. government, the group was weakened in 1951, and it finally disbanded in 1956. The group was formed at a radical conference in Detroit held on April 27–28, 1946. Early goals included abolition of HUAC and protecting southern workers' right to unionize. In December 1947, the National Negro Congress merged into the group. International Labor Defense (ILD) national secretary William Patterson led

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4416-854: The Indian Territory . Most tribal leaders in Indian Territory aligned with the Confederacy. Oklahoma disenfranchised its black population, which comprised less than 10% of the state's population from 1910 to 1960. In Guinn v. United States (1915), the Supreme Court invalidated the Oklahoma Constitution 's "old soldier" and "grandfather clause" exemptions from literacy tests. In practice, these had disenfranchised blacks, as had occurred in numerous Southern states. This decision affected similar provisions in

4554-574: The International Labor Defense , the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties , and the National Negro Congress , serving as a defense organization. Beginning about 1948, it became involved in representing African Americans sentenced to death and other highly prominent cases, in part to highlight racial injustice in the United States. After Rosa Lee Ingram and her two teenage sons were sentenced in Georgia,

4692-621: The Knights of the White Camellia . Compared to the Klan, they were open societies, better organized, and devoted to the political goal of regaining control of the state legislatures and suppressing Republicans, including most blacks. They often solicited newspaper coverage for publicity to increase their threat. The scale of operations was such that in 1876, North Carolina had 20,000 men in rifle clubs. Made up of well-armed Confederate veterans,

4830-722: The Redeemers . In the South, the process of white Democrats regaining control of state governments has been called "the Redemption". African-American historians sometimes call the Compromise of 1877 "The Great Betrayal". Following continuing violence around elections as insurgents worked to suppress black voting, the Democratic-dominated Southern states passed legislation to create barriers to voter registrations by blacks and poor whites , starting with

4968-560: The Richmond Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide concluded the national and international crusades by the CRC hurt the defendants' chances for clemency. After exhausting the appeals process, with the US Supreme Court twice declining to hear the case, the NAACP and CRC began to appeal to executive offices. Newly elected Virginia Governor John S. Battle refused their request for clemency. In advance of

5106-608: The Taft-Hartley Act and offered assistance to the Congress of Industrial Organizations and to the American Federation of Labor . In Louisiana, a local chapter launched a major campaign to convict the white police officer who shot Roy Cyril Brooks. The Brooks case began a larger effort against police brutality and demands to hire more Black police officers in cities such as New Orleans. In January 1949,

5244-645: The United States Congress , where the Democratic Solid South enjoyed "about 25 extra seats in Congress for each decade between 1903 and 1953". Also, the Democratic dominance in the South meant that southern senators and representatives became entrenched in Congress. They favored seniority privileges in Congress, which became the standard by 1920, and Southerners controlled chairmanships of important committees , as well as

5382-670: The Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals . They applied the bulk of the funds raised to the defense of clients. The NAACP's interest was in establishing legal precedent "for the benefit of due process and equal protection in general and the Negroes' rights in particular." Their concern was ensuring a fair trial. One of the convicted men's parents contacted the CRC directly and asked one of its lawyers to defend their son DeSales Grayson. The CRC focused on producing pamphlets and publicity for outside campaigns to raise awareness about

5520-547: The freedmen 's exercise of political power. In 1867, black men voted for the first time. By the 1868 presidential election , Texas, Mississippi, and Virginia had still not been re-admitted to the Union. General Ulysses S. Grant was elected as president thanks in part to 700,000 black voters. In February 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified; it was designed to protect blacks' right to vote from infringement by

5658-485: The "Mississippi Plan". By 1908, all states of the former Confederacy had passed new constitutions or suffrage amendments, sometimes bypassing general elections to achieve this. Legislators created a variety of barriers, including longer residency requirements, rule variations, and literacy and understanding tests, which were subjectively applied against minorities, or were particularly hard for the poor to fulfill. Such constitutional provisions were unsuccessfully challenged at

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5796-451: The "Solid South" inhibited the national party from fulfilling center-left initiatives desired since the days of William Jennings Bryan . Woodrow Wilson , one of two Democrats elected to the presidency between Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt , was the first Southerner elected after 1856. He benefited from the disfranchisement of blacks and the crippling of the Republican Party in the South. Soon after taking office, Wilson directed

5934-399: The "preservation of community stability, not the protection of southern womanly virtues," as had formerly been common. The trials were held back to back, each with a separate jury of twelve white men. The prosecution, led by Irvin W. Cubine, introduced evidence showing that non-consensual sex took place. Some of the defendants acknowledged having sexual intercourse with Floyd, but said that it

6072-591: The CRC conducted a national appeals campaign on their behalf, their first for African Americans. The CRC coordinated nationally, with 60 chapters at its peak in 1950. These acted on local issues. Most were located on the East and West coasts, with only about 10 chapters in the states of the former Confederacy, five of them in Texas. The CRC used a two-pronged strategy of litigation and demonstrations, with extensive public communications, to call attention to racial injustice in

6210-588: The CRC withdrew from direct defense of Grayson in July 1950. But, the NAACP was unable to succeed with its appeals. All seven of the men were executed in February 1951. During the years of the Red Scare , due to its Communist Party affiliations, the CRC was classified as subversive and described as a communist front organization by US Attorney General Thomas Clark under President Harry S. Truman , as well as by

6348-589: The CRC worked mostly on publicity. It raised $ 45,125 for the Ingram Defense Fund and held annual Mother's Day rallies. On 21 September 1949, Terrell led a group to the United Nations to demand that officials address the Ingram case. Little progress was made in the case, but both the NAACP and the CRC continued to support Ingram during her imprisonment. Ingram and her sons were all released on parole in 1959, cited as "model prisoners." As in

6486-706: The Civil Rights Congress served as justification for FBI surveillance of Lena Horne and Paul Robeson . One agent later described breaking into the CRC's Chicago offices, saying "Anything that had the name 'committee' or 'congress' the FBI assumed had to be subversive." David Brown, secretary and then chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the CRC, served as an FBI informant from 1950 to 1954. He disappeared in January 1955 and tried to fake his own kidnapping. Soon after, he unsuccessfully attempted suicide in

6624-426: The Civil War, and some had accumulated property. Literacy was high among African Americans and, as Democrats crafted means to exclude them, suffrage campaigns helped reach blacks and teach them how to resist. In 1896, a biracial Republican coalition enabled the election of Lloyd Lowndes, Jr. as governor. During the 1900s Maryland was vigorously divided between supporters and opponents of disfranchisement, but it had

6762-518: The Confederate slave states from the Civil War. The border states, all slave states, also established laws requiring racial segregation between the 1880s and 1900s; however, disfranchisement of blacks was never attained to any significant degree. Most Border States did attempt such disfranchisement during the 1900s. The causes of the failure to disenfranchise blacks and poor whites in the Border States, as compared to their success for well over half

6900-468: The Democratic Party presidential candidate from 1868 to 1892, but the 1896 presidential election was a realignment in the state, similar to West Virginia. Maryland voted for the Republican Party presidential candidate from 1896 to 1928, except for Democrat Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916. In contrast to the former Confederate states, nearly half the African American population was free before

7038-474: The Democratic legislatures passed Jim Crow laws to assert white supremacy, establish racial segregation in public facilities, and treat blacks as second-class citizens. The landmark court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) held that "separate but equal" facilities, as on railroad cars, were constitutional. The new constitutions passed numerous Supreme Court challenges. In cases where a particular restriction

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7176-529: The Democrats adopted a constitutional suffrage amendment which lengthened the residence period required before registration and enacted both an educational qualification (to be assessed by a registrar, which meant that it could be subjectively applied) and prepayment of a poll tax . A grandfather clause exempted from the poll tax those entitled to vote on January 1, 1867. The legislature also passed Jim Crow laws establishing racial segregation in public facilities and transportation. The effect in North Carolina

7314-951: The Fifteenth Amendment), but were implemented in ways that selectively suppressed black voters apart from other voters. Beginning in the 1870s, white racists had used violence by domestic terrorism groups (such as the Ku Klux Klan ), as well as fraud, to suppress black voters. After regaining control of the state legislatures, Southern Democrats were alarmed by a late 19th-century alliance between Republicans and Populists that cost them some elections. After achieving control of state legislatures, white conservatives added to previous efforts and achieved widespread disfranchisement by law: from 1890 to 1908, Southern state legislatures passed new constitutions, constitutional amendments, and laws that made voter registration and voting more difficult, especially when administered by white staff in

7452-474: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. While their voter registration requirements applied to all citizens, in practice they disenfranchised most blacks. As in Alabama, they also "would remove [from voter registration rolls] the less educated, less organized, more impoverished whites as well – and that would ensure one-party Democratic rules through most of the 20th century in the South". The new provisions of

7590-407: The Ingram case, both the NAACP and the CRC rallied to the cause of the Martinsville Seven — seven black men all sentenced to death in Virginia in 1949 for the rape of a white woman. Only black men received the death sentence in Virginia in rape cases. Martin A. Martin, the chief lawyer hired by the NAACP from a major Richmond law firm, refused to work with the CRC because the government had classified

7728-571: The Jim Crow era. However, Oklahoma was still politically competitive at the federal level during the Jim Crow era. It voted for Warren G. Harding in 1920 and Herbert Hoover in 1928 . Oklahoma did not enact a poll tax found in the former Confederate states, and had a Republican presence in Northwestern Oklahoma with close ties to neighboring Kansas , a Republican stronghold. Oklahoma also elected three Republican senators in

7866-569: The Jim Crow era: John W. Harreld (1921-1927), William B. Pine (1925-1931), and Edward H. Moore (1943-1949). Starting in 1952 , well before the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Oklahoma has consistently voted Republican in presidential elections, except in Lyndon B. Johnson's 1964 landslide. Oklahoma is the only Southern state to have never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate after 1964. The five border states of Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, had legacies similar to

8004-713: The London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress, then led by leading Black British civil rights leader Billy Strachan , condemned the US government for their actions towards the Martinsville Seven. All of the appeals by the NAACP failed. The seven were executed at the Virginia State Penitentiary in early February 1951. The first four were executed at 15-minute intervals on February 2. The remaining three were executed on February 5, 1951. It

8142-670: The Martinsville Circuit Court—on the grounds that sensationalist press about the events made a fair trial impossible—were unsuccessful. There was considerable community sentiment against the men. Racism was less explicit in the trial than in cases known as "legal lynchings" in the South, in which innocent men were convicted (e.g., the Scottsboro Boys , Willie McGee , and the Groveland Boys ). Previous actions by civil rights attorneys had resulted in changes in

8280-404: The NAACP, the group sought to raise awareness outside the courtroom with demonstrations, propaganda, and high-profile events. As these campaigns gained popular awareness, the CRC received many letters from prisoners requesting legal assistance. The CRC opposed the 1940 Smith Act and 1950 McCarran Act , both of which expanded government powers to prosecute domestic dissent. It generally came to

8418-670: The Negro People ". This document collected diverse instances of violence and mistreatment against African Americans, and argued that the United States government was a party to genocide in its own country. After William Patterson presented the document to the United Nations assembly in Paris, his passport was revoked by the State Department. Paul Robeson and W. E. B. Du Bois were blocked from traveling, and went to

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8556-479: The North Carolina 1898 election and the following 1900 election. Simmons was elected as the state's US senator in 1900, holding office until 1931 through multiple re-elections by the state legislature and by popular vote after 1920. The Democrats used their power in the state legislature to disenfranchise minorities, primarily blacks, and ensure that Democratic Party and white power would not be threatened again. They passed laws restricting voter registration. In 1900

8694-420: The North to teach freedmen were sometimes attacked or intimidated as well. In 1870, the attempt of North Carolina's Republican Governor William W. Holden to suppress the Klan, known as the Kirk-Holden War , led to a backlash by whites, the election of a Democratic General Assembly in August 1870, and his impeachment and removal from office. The toll of Klan murders and attacks led Congress to pass laws to end

8832-400: The Republican party allowed them to gain control of Delaware's governorship throughout most of the twentieth century. The Republican Party ensured Black people could vote because of their general support for Republicans and thus undid restrictions on Black suffrage. For West Virginia , " reconstruction , in a sense, began in 1861". Unlike the other border states , West Virginia did not send

8970-478: The South after the Civil War, as armed veterans in the South resisted social changes, and worked to prevent black Americans and other Republicans from voting and running for office. Such groups included the White League , formed in Louisiana in 1874 from white militias , with chapters forming in other Southern states; the Red Shirts , formed in 1875 in Mississippi but also active in North Carolina and South Carolina; and other "White Liners," such as rifle clubs and

9108-582: The South that were deliberately used to prevent black citizens from registering to vote and voting. These measures were enacted by the former Confederate states at the turn of the 20th century. Efforts were also made in Maryland, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. Their actions were designed to thwart the objective of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution , ratified in 1870, which prohibited states from depriving voters of their voting rights based on race. The laws were frequently written in ways to be ostensibly non-racial on paper (and thus not violate

9246-511: The South. Political disfranchisement did not end until after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 , which authorized the federal government to monitor voter registration practices and elections where populations were historically underrepresented and to enforce constitutional voting rights. The challenge to voting rights has continued into the 21st century, as shown by numerous court cases in 2016 alone, though attempts to restrict voting rights for political advantage have not been confined to

9384-459: The Southern United States. The American Civil War ended in 1865, marking the start of the Reconstruction era in the eleven former Confederate states. Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts , starting in 1867, establishing military districts to oversee the affairs of these states pending reconstruction. During the Reconstruction era, blacks constituted absolute majorities of the populations in Mississippi and South Carolina , were equal to

9522-399: The Supreme Court in Giles v. Harris (1903). In practice, these provisions, including white primaries , created a maze that blocked most blacks and many poor whites from voting in Southern states until after the passage of federal civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. Voter registration and turnout dropped sharply across the South, as most blacks and many poor whites were excluded from

9660-416: The Trotskyite Revolutionary Workers League and ultimately executed). (listed in order of arrest) Based on their confessions, the police arrested: The last was arrested January 10: The judge appointed seven attorneys for the seven defendants. Since they ranged widely in experience, he asked the more experienced ones to aid the newer attorneys. Efforts by the defense team to change the trial's venue from

9798-440: The U.N. offices in New York. Soon after it was founded, the CRC became a target of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and the Internal Revenue Service . A 1947 report to HUAC charged: "Having adopted a line of militant skullduggery against the United States with the close of World War II, the Communist Party has set up the Civil Rights Congress for the purpose of protecting those of its members who run afoul of

9936-546: The U.N. with a petition titled " We Charge Genocide ," detailing the abuses of African Americans in the US, including continuing lynchings in the 1940s. The CRC was perceived as an alternative or competitor to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) because it worked on similar issues in representing African Americans in legal cases and suits. The CRC believed that it embraced

10074-464: The United States. A major tactic was publicizing cases, especially in the South, such as those of Rosa Lee Ingram and her two sons in Georgia, the Martinsville Seven in Virginia, and Willie McGee in Mississippi, in which Black people had been sentenced to death ; in the last two cases as a result of questionable rape charges. Given the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South at the turn of

10212-516: The United States. Pressure from the CRC and the NAACP led to a new hearing in March 1948. In this hearing, the judge denied requests for a new trial, but used his discretion to reduce the sentence from death to life in prison. The NAACP and CRC came into occasional conflict over the case because of differing goals and strategy. By the wishes of the Ingrams, the NAACP generally handled the legal side;

10350-409: The Virginia process, improving their procedures. For example, although most African Americans in Virginia had been disenfranchised since the early 20th century and were thus disqualified from serving on juries, the grand jury had included black members. In addition, each of the jury pools for the six separate trials contained some African Americans. But, none was selected for any of the seven juries, as

10488-489: The ability to elect two US Senators) and were successful in electing several US Representatives elected through electoral fusion . The fusion coalition made impressive gains in the 1896 election when their legislative majority expanded. Republican Daniel Lindsay Russell won the gubernatorial race in 1897, the first Republican governor of the state since the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The election also resulted in more than 1,000 elected or appointed black officials, including

10626-566: The appeals failed. The US Supreme Court refused to hear the Martinsville Seven case, and all the men were executed in February 1951. McGee was executed in May 1951. In this period, the CRC was defending Communist officials known as the Top Eleven against prosecution under the Smith Act. This drew attention to their communist affiliation and people worried that the CRC endangered the outcome of

10764-528: The appeals for that reason. It withdrew from representing one of the Martinsville Seven directly. The CRC took stances on many issues related to political freedom and the rights of African Americans. It supported anti-lynching laws, and condemned the use of the Confederate flag at many government and school facilities in the South. It opposed U.S. intervention in the Korean War . The CRC opposed

10902-450: The assaults of Floyd had no evidence of homicidal intent. The Court of Appeals upheld the rulings on March 13, 1950, with Chief Justice Edward W. Hudgins writing: "one can hardly conceive of a more atrocious, a more beastly crime". Together representatives, both black and white, of the CRC and NAACP, as well as other citizens, met with Battle in June 1950 to appeal for a pardon or clemency for

11040-579: The assistance of individuals targeted by HUAC, particularly the "Top Eleven" communist leaders tried in 1949 under the Smith Act. The CRC was also active in the defense of Harry Bridges , a union organizer and leader of the California chapter of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union . The government had long sought his deportation, and Congress passed the Smith Act to provide a means to accomplish this. After Bridges became

11178-543: The best-educated of these men continued to "fail" the literacy tests administered by white registrars. The historian J. Morgan Kousser noted, "Within the Democratic party, the chief impetus for restriction came from the black belt members," whom he identified as "always socioeconomically privileged." In addition to wanting to affirm white supremacy, the planter and business elite were concerned about voting by lower-class and uneducated whites. Kousser found, "They disfranchised these whites as willingly as they deprived blacks of

11316-405: The case, including internationally, and hoped to put pressure on government officials. The CRC began to organize mass actions in Richmond. In their appeals, Martin and the NAACP discussed the unfairness of the venue, the pressure on later juries to arrive at the same sentence as the earlier ones, and the historical racial disparities in application of death penalty sentences in the state. They noted

11454-472: The case, share their stories, collect and post records related to the case, and promote the pardon request. On August 31, 2021, Governor Ralph Northam posthumously pardoned all seven men. In a news release, Northam said the pardons were not about whether the men were guilty, but it was "recognition from the Commonwealth" that the men did not receive adequate due process. He further stated, "We all deserve

11592-573: The cases. In 1977 the Supreme Court referred to those arguments with respect to rulings in other cases. According to historian Eric W. Rise, this case "demonstrated the power of the southern legal system to enforce codes of racial behavior." The rapes occurred on Saturday, January 8, 1949, after Ruby Stroud Floyd, a 32-year-old white woman, entered a black neighborhood in Martinsville, Virginia , to collect money for clothing she had sold. She had previously distributed Jehovah's Witnesses materials in

11730-406: The century, all-white juries were standard, as only voters could serve. The CRC succeeded particularly in raising international awareness about these cases, which sometimes generated protests to the president and Congress. They also represented defendants in legal appeals to overturn convictions or gain lesser sentences. At that time in the South, when cases were tried by all-white juries, some of

11868-414: The constitutions of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia election rules. Oklahoma and other states quickly reacted by passing laws that created other rules for voter registration that worked against blacks and minorities. Oklahoma did not have a Republican governor until Henry Bellmon was elected in 1962 , though Republicans were still able to draw over 40% of the vote statewide during

12006-533: The crime, including Joe Hampton, although not all took part in rape. Only one of the accused had a prior criminal record, and most of the men were employed. When the NAACP appealed their convictions, its defense team noted that when the police had questioned the men, they had been drinking for some time, and they were not allowed to consult lawyers or their families. The officials separated the men. To protect them from mob violence, they took them to other jails outside Henry County . The preliminary hearing occurred about

12144-584: The defendants in the case. They argued for lesser sentences, but Battle resisted their pleas. The NAACP thought that involvement by the CRC in appeals could endanger the defendants both because of their inflammatory tactics and its communist affiliation. In this period of the second Red Scare , Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee had raised alarms about purported communist influence in government and society. Both African American newspapers,

12282-463: The defense team believed that gaining a life sentence instead of capital punishment was akin to acquittal, where social pressure was high for juries to find blacks guilty. The CRC also defended political dissidents, including Communists. The group conducted high-profile protests in Washington, D.C., and at the United Nations . It brought world attention to racism in the United States by presenting

12420-527: The educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina to-day as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them the worse off he got. As to his “rights”—I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of

12558-464: The election in 1897 of George Henry White to Congress, as a member of the House of Representatives. At the 1898 election, the Democrats ran on White Supremacy and disfranchisement in a bitter race-baiting campaign led by Furnifold McLendel Simmons and Josephus Daniels , editor and publisher of The Raleigh News & Observer . The Republican/Populist coalition disintegrated, and the Democrats won

12696-437: The electric chair, only black men had been executed for rape in the state for what was a non-lethal crime. Though Governor William Tuck initially agreed to a stay during appellate litigation, by late July 1950, newly elected Governor John S. Battle refused to commute the men's sentences, saying he was horrified by the rapes. The appellate courts upheld the convictions and sentences, and the US Supreme Court twice refused to hear

12834-483: The fact that in the entire history of the Old Dominion state, no white man has ever received capital punishment for rape, then of necessity we must conclude that the death penalty for seven men for a singular crime was neither righteous, nor compassionate, nor wise. The case of the Martinsville Seven was taken up by outside groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and

12972-421: The first African Americans for whom they campaigned on a national level for an appeal. The Ingrams, who were sharecroppers, were accused of murdering their white neighbor, John Ethron Stratford, in 1947 over an argument about animals on his land and his sexual harassment of the mother, Rosa Lee. They had been convicted—on the basis of circumstantial testimony, with no eyewitnesses—by a jury of twelve white men after

13110-428: The former Confederate States, Delaware voted for the Republican Party in a majority of presidential elections from 1876 to 1964 (12 out of 23). Delaware voted for the Democratic Party presidential candidate from 1876 to 1892, but then consistently voted for the Republican Party presidential candidate from 1896 to 1932, except in 1912 for Woodrow Wilson when the Republican Party split. The allegiance of industries with

13248-494: The governorship for eight of the next nine terms, and electing 82 of 106 U.S. Representatives until 1932. West Virginia had a relatively low percentage of African Americans from 1870 to 1960, comprising between 4% to 7% of the state's population. In 1932, as the nation swung to the Democrats, West Virginia again became solidly Democratic. It was perhaps the most reliably Democratic state in the nation between 1932 and 1996, being one of just two states (along with Minnesota) to vote for

13386-403: The group as subversive and as a Communist front. Again excluded from the legal process, the CRC launched a national campaign based on injustices in the cases of Martinsville Seven and Willie McGee in Mississippi. McGee was also sentenced to death for conviction of rape of a white woman. The CRC created national attention and coordinated mailing campaigns to the government in Washington, DC, but

13524-438: The group held a "Freedom Crusade" in Washington, D.C., right before the re-inauguration of President Truman . Before the demonstration, the group had a public exchange with Congressperson John S. Wood . Wood accused the group of threatening "violence and riot" in the capital; the group responded that the white supremacy of the status quo "is constantly the scene of 'violence and riot' against Negro citizens." The Freedom Crusade

13662-534: The group throughout its existence. Frank Marshall Davis served on the organization's National Executive Board. Patterson also headed the Abraham Lincoln School in Chicago , with Davis also on the faculty and Board of Directors. The group gained about 10,000 members at its peak. It was generally stronger on the coasts and weak in the South, but it did conduct several major campaigns to defend

13800-557: The group, and many of its leaders were jailed. The group's power weakened in 1951 when the federal government barred it from posting bail for communist defendants in the resulting trials. During the Second Red Scare , many Americans wary of the group because of its communist connections. In 1956, the CRC was declared a communist front by the Subversive Activities Control Board . It disbanded

13938-706: The juries quickly convicted each defendant and sentenced them to execution in the electric chair. The judge presiding was Kennon C. Whittle . Virginia had historically convicted and executed numerous black men accused of raping white women; for most of its history, only blacks were sentenced to death for rape. Since Virginia started using an electric chair in 1908, all 45 of the men sentenced to death for rape had been black men convicted of raping white women. From 1908 to 1951, only Texas, North Carolina and Georgia executed more black men for rape than did Virginia. An editorial in New York's Amsterdam News read, When we consider

14076-424: The last vote being the most decisive. The existence of substantial Italian immigration completely absent from the former Confederate states meant that these immigrants were exposed to the possibility of disfranchisement, but much more critically allowed for much stronger resistance amongst the white population. The Democrat-dominated state legislature tried to pass disfranchising bills in 1905, 1907, and 1911, but

14214-494: The law." The group denied these charges and provided a list of sponsors, including Representatives Adam C. Powell , Senator Glen H. Taylor , and Atlanta University President Rufus Early Clement . Patterson called the group "non-partisan" and described it as "the Red Cross of the defenders of peace, constitutional rights, justice and human rights". The 1950 McCarran Internal Security Act increased government persecution of

14352-524: The leadership of the national Democratic Party. During the Great Depression , legislation establishing numerous national social programs were passed without the representation of African Americans , leading to gaps in program coverage and discrimination against them in operations. In addition, because black Southerners were not listed on local voter rolls, they were automatically excluded from serving in local courts . Juries were all white across

14490-598: The legal rights of Southern Blacks. Its largest and strongest chapters in the South were in New Orleans and Miami . Altogether, the CRC founded more than 60 local chapters which sought to combat racial discrimination, racist stereotyping, and legal injustice in their communities. The U.S. Congress and courts weakened the group with legal restrictions in 1951. In 1956, members voted to disband. The CRC took up legal causes of those they considered unjustly accused. In addition to pursuing legal campaigns, often alongside

14628-555: The legislature proposed the Digges Amendment to the state constitution. It would have used property requirements to effectively disenfranchise many African American men as well as many poor white men (including new immigrants). The Maryland General Assembly passed the bill, which Governor Austin Lane Crothers supported. Before the measure went to popular vote, a bill was proposed that would have effectively passed

14766-485: The majority of its soldiers to the Union. The prospect of those returning ex-Confederates prompted the Wheeling state government to implement laws that restricted their right of suffrage, practicing law and teaching, access to the legal system, and subjected them to "war trespass" lawsuits. The lifting of these restrictions in 1871 resulted in the election of John J. Jacob , a Democrat, to the governorship. It also led to

14904-468: The men she passed. A relative of the Hairstons has said that their family tradition always said that Floyd had been having an affair with one of the defendants, but this was not explored at trial. No trial lasted more than a day, and the longest jury deliberation lasted less than two hours. The shortest was little more than half an hour. Although the defense attorneys pointed out mitigating circumstances,

15042-503: The mid-1870s. The insurgent Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was formed in 1865 in Tennessee (as a backlash to defeat in the war) and it quickly became a powerful secret vigilante group, with chapters across the South. The Klan initiated a campaign of intimidation directed against blacks and sympathetic whites. Their violence included vandalism and destruction of property, physical attacks and assassinations, and lynchings . Teachers who came from

15180-462: The most "consistently competitive political system in the South". A bitter election battle in 1888, marked by unmatched corruption and violence, resulted in white Democrats taking over the state legislature. To consolidate their power, they worked to suppress the black vote and sharply reduced it through changes in voter registration, requiring poll taxes , as well as changing election procedures to make voting more complex. In 1890, Mississippi adopted

15318-463: The negro to govern white men, and we never will.... I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores. The disfranchisement of a large proportion of voters attracted the attention of Congress, and as early as 1900 some members proposed stripping the South of seats, related to the number of people who were barred from voting. Apportionment of seats

15456-465: The neighborhood. Residents warned her not to stay too long, noting the time as late afternoon. She passed four men at the railroad tracks and continued into the neighborhood, where she was later assaulted by some of those four and other men. At 7:30 p.m., after dark, she went to Mary Wade's house for shelter, showing signs of an assault. The Wades called an ambulance for her. Based on her account, in which she claimed to have been raped by 13 black men,

15594-400: The organizations had different approaches; it spent more of its funds on direct defense of clients, including appeals, whereas the CRC mounted a public campaign, complete with distribution of pamphlets and advertising on billboards. Because the CRC had attracted adverse attention from the government, with the potential to negatively affect reception of appeals in the Martinsville Seven case,

15732-694: The party nominee. In the South by this time, the Republican Party had been hollowed out by the disfranchisement of African Americans, who were mostly excluded from voting. Democrat Woodrow Wilson was elected as the first southern President since 1848. He was re-elected in 1916, in a much closer presidential contest. During his first term, Wilson satisfied the request of Southerners in his cabinet and instituted overt racial segregation throughout federal government workplaces, as well as racial discrimination in hiring. During World War I , American military forces were segregated, with black soldiers poorly trained and equipped. Disfranchisement had far-reaching effects in

15870-494: The police quickly arrested Frank Hairston Jr. and Booker Millner. Four more suspects were arrested that night, based in part on the first two men's confessions. By the next morning, all the men in custody had signed confessions. The last to be arrested, Joe Hampton, was taken into custody on January 10. All but one man were in their early 20s. After being held by police overnight, the first six all signed confessions, implicating themselves and each other. All admitted to being present at

16008-628: The political system. The disenfranchisement of poor whites was not merely an unintentional byproduct of laws intended to prevent blacks from voting, because many supporters of disenfranchisement explicitly stated a desire to also prevent poor whites from voting. Senator and former South Carolina Governor Benjamin Tillman defended this on the floor of the Senate: In my State there were 135,000 negro voters, or negroes of voting age, and some 90,000 or 95,000 white voters... Now, I want to ask you, with

16146-575: The polls and ensuring a white Democratic takeover of legislatures and governorships in most Southern states in the 1870s, most notoriously during the controversial 1876 elections . As a result of a national Compromise of 1877 arising from the 1876 presidential election, the federal government withdrew its military forces from the South, formally ending the Reconstruction era. By that time, Southern Democrats had effectively regained control in Louisiana , South Carolina , and Florida – they identified as

16284-477: The populations of Missouri and West Virginia were African American. In Kentucky, 5-20% of the state's population was African American. In Delaware, 10-20% of the state's population was African American. In Maryland, 15-25% of the state's population was African American. Despite Delaware not abolishing slavery until the ratification of the 13th amendment, due its proximity to the Northeast and not bordering any of

16422-415: The prosecutors rejected all of them on various grounds. The juries were all white and all male. Judge Kennon Whittle told the attorneys: "this case must and will be tried in such a way as not to disturb the kindly feeling now, locally, existing between the races. It must be tried as though both parties were members of the same race." The prosecution did not explicitly discuss race; it argued the case based on

16560-449: The rate of white illiteracy in the South at that time was 31 percent. Some states used grandfather clauses to exempt white voters from literacy tests altogether. Other states required otherwise eligible black voters to meet literacy and knowledge requirements to the satisfaction of white registrars, who applied subjective judgment and, in the process, rejected most black voters. By 1900, the majority of blacks were literate, but even many of

16698-509: The rejection of the war-time constitution by public vote and a new constitution written under the leadership of ex-Confederates such as Samuel Price , Allen T. Caperton and Charles James Faulkner . In 1876 the state Democratic ticket of eight candidates were all elected, seven of whom were Confederate veterans. For nearly a generation West Virginia was part of the Solid South. However, Republicans returned to power in 1896, controlling

16836-507: The same year. The CRC was also infiltrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation . FBI agent Matt Cvetic , who had joined the Communist Party, testified to HUAC in 1950 that the CRC was Communist-controlled and that Patterson was a Communist. He also identified a long list of politicians as Communist, as well as celebrities and community leaders. Various other agents surfaced to testify at anti-Communist trials. Association with

16974-637: The segregation of federal facilities in the District of Columbia, which had been integrated during Reconstruction. With a population evenly divided between races, in 1896 there were 130,334 black voters on the Louisiana registration rolls and about the same number of whites. Louisiana State legislators passed a new constitution in 1898 that included requirements for applicants to pass a literacy test in English or his native language in order to register to vote or to certify owning $ 300 worth of property, known as

17112-532: The sentence a "barbaric" example of American "fascist hooliganism". The men were executed in early February. In 1977, in its ruling in Coker v. Georgia , the US Supreme Court ruled that "it is repugnant to an enlightened society for the state to kill a person for a crime that does not result in death," declining to extend the death penalty to a person guilty of raping an adult woman. In the United Kingdom ,

17250-537: The state constitutions almost eliminated black voting. Although nothing approaching precise data exists, it is estimated that in the late 1930s, less than one percent of blacks in the Deep South and around five percent in the Rim South were registered to vote, and that the proportion voting even in general elections, which were of no consequence due to complete Democratic dominance, was much smaller still. Secondly,

17388-571: The states. At the same time, by 1870 all Southern states had dropped enforcement of disfranchisement of ex-Confederates except Arkansas, where disfranchisement of ex-Confederates was dropped in the aftermath of the Brooks-Baxter War in 1874. White supremacist paramilitary organizations, allied with Southern Democrats, used intimidation, violence, and even committed assassinations to repress blacks and prevent them from exercising their civil and political rights in elections from 1868 until

17526-724: The violence. In 1870, the strongly Republican Congress passed the Enforcement Acts , imposing penalties for conspiracy to deny black suffrage. The Acts empowered the President to deploy the armed forces to suppress organizations that deprived people of rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment . Organizations whose members appeared in arms were considered in rebellion against the United States. The President could suspend habeas corpus under those circumstances. President Grant used these provisions in parts of

17664-663: The vote by most blacks and, often, many poor whites; voter rolls dropped across the South into the new century. Florida approved a new constitution in 1885 that included provisions for poll taxes as a prerequisite for voter registration and voting. From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven Southern states rewrote their constitutions. All included provisions that effectively restricted voter registration and suffrage, including requirements for poll taxes, increased residency, and subjective literacy tests . With educational improvements, blacks had markedly increased their rate of literacy. By 1891, their illiteracy had declined to 58 percent, while

17802-607: The vote." Perman noted the goals of disfranchisement resulted from several factors. Competition between white elites and white lower classes, for example, and a desire to prevent alliances between lower-class white and black Americans, as had been seen in Populist-Republican alliances, led white Democratic legislators to restrict voter rolls. With the passage of new constitutions, Southern states adopted provisions that caused disfranchisement of large portions of their populations by skirting US constitutional protections of

17940-478: The white population in Louisiana, and represented more than 40 percent of the population in four other former Confederate states. In addition, the Reconstruction Acts and state Reconstruction constitutions and laws barred many ex-Confederate Southern whites from holding office and, in some states, disenfranchised them unless they took a loyalty oath . Southern whites, fearing black domination, resisted

18078-420: Was appalled at the nature of the crime. The CRC also had organized an international campaign, and Governor Battle was swamped by letters from overseas asking him to commute the sentences of the men. He resented being under so much pressure. One telegram from Moscow was signed by "workers in science, literature, the arts," including composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev . Another, from China, called

18216-419: Was consensual, or that she did not resist or say no, either considered necessary as a condition to prove rape. Virginia law authorized capital punishment for accessories, parties to the act of rape who did not take part in the act. On the stand, each of the defendants at least partially rejected his confession. In some cases, they said that the police had written the confessions, that the formal account varied from

18354-501: Was devastating; by 1900 black voters were reduced from 130,334 to 5,320 on the rolls. By 1910, only 730 blacks were registered, less than 0.5% of eligible black men. "In 27 of the state's sixty parishes, not a single black voter was registered any longer; in nine more parishes, only one black voter was." In 1894, a coalition of Republicans and the Populist Party won control of the North Carolina state legislature (and with it,

18492-455: Was overruled by the Supreme Court in the early 20th century, states quickly devised new methods of excluding most blacks from voting, such as the white primary . Democratic Party primaries became the only competitive contests in southern states. For the national Democratic Party, the alignment after Reconstruction resulted in a powerful Southern region that was useful for congressional clout. Nevertheless, before President Franklin D. Roosevelt ,

18630-430: Was rebuffed on each occasion, in large part because of black opposition and strength. Black men comprised 20% of the electorate and had established themselves in several cities, where they had comparative security. In addition, immigrant men comprised 15% of the voting population and opposed these measures. The legislature had difficulty devising requirements against blacks that did not also disadvantage immigrants. In 1910,

18768-511: Was still based on total population (with the assumption of the usual number of voting males in relation to the residents); as a result, white Southerners commanded many seats far out of proportion to the voters they represented. In the end, Congress did not act on this issue, as the Southern bloc of Democrats had sufficient power to reject or stall such action. For decades, white Southern Democrats exercised Congressional representation derived from

18906-420: Was the complete elimination of black voters from voter rolls by 1904. Contemporary accounts estimated that seventy-five thousand black male citizens lost the vote. In 1900 blacks numbered 630,207 citizens, about 33% of the state's total population. The growth of the thriving black middle class was slowed. In North Carolina and other Southern states, there were also the insidious effects of invisibility: "[w]ithin

19044-582: Was ultimately an orderly demonstration in which several thousand people visited elected politicians to demand action against lynching , freedom for communist leaders imprisoned for subversion (known as the Top Eleven), and implementation of the Fair Employment Practices Commission . In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress issued its petition to the United Nations entitled " We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against

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