Arizona sun., 1949-06-03
Seven More Negroes To Die
Assembly Technique Used Virginia Legal Lnhis Fromeup
BY MEL FISKE


lynching on a mass assembly line
basis is under way here with the
sentencing to death of seven Negro
men.
The smooth efficiency of Mar
tinsville court and police authori-
ties in perfecting Southern justice
by turning out one-a-day death
sentences has followed a pattern
reminiscent of the Scottsboro cases.
The seven men, six of them be-
tween 19 and 20, and the seventh,
a 37-year-old father of five chill
dren, are now in the state peniten-
tiary in Richmond, waiting until
July IS and % when they are
scheduled to die in the electric
chair.
They have been found guilty of
raping a 32-year-old white woman
in East MartinSville, Jan. 8. Con-
feSsions were produced by police.
Witnesses were produced by the
Commonwealth a attor ney, when
the trials were conducted in the
county courthouse from April d
to May 2.
The trials lasted from 10 A. M.
until 4 P. M. with precision like
regularity, each of the six juries,
composed entirely of whites made
recommendations for the extreme
death penalty sh ortly after A
o'clock each day.
The verdicts were a foregone
conclusion before the trials even
started. Since the alleged rape at
tack took place in January "a wide
spread campaign to "give them the
rope" has been whispered and
spoken in this little industrial town.
Apparently to prevent mob
from breaking into the county Jail
and set off a lynching bee that
would have blotted the name of
Martainsvil1e throughout the world,
the authorities hit on the scheme
of legal lynching.
The scheme worked this way:
y Attorneys for the seven were
appointed by Henry County Judge
Kennon C. Whittle before a pre-
liminary hearing was held. Two
other attorneys retained by the
families of one of the men were
shunted out of the case.
q JurieS were selected from
store clerks, m all businessmen,
former in some of the large fac
tories, most of Whome were friends
and associates of the merchant
whose wife brought charges against
the seven Negroes. The Common
wealth attorney struck the names
of Negroes off each jury as they
were brought before him.
s3) Before these juries, Mrs. Ruby
Stroud Floyd went into what ap-
peared to be a carefully rehearsed
act as she told her story of the al
legged mass rape. One man who
saw Mrs. Floyd during the six times
she took the stand said she sobbed
at the same point in her story,
cried out at the same point and
went into Mysteries at the same
place each time she repeated her
story.
4) The defense attorneys con-
Quoted very little cross examina-
ton of Mrs. Floyd. They didn't
question the discrepancies in her
story. One attorney, who held Mrs.
Floyd on the stand for 20 minutes,
the same amount of time the pros
ecuting attorney questioned her, is
still being criticized by the towns
people.
81 The defense attorneys only
placed five of the seven men on
the stand in their own behalf. The
questions they asked them steered
carefully away from vital ques-
tions of the manner in which the
alleged t t ack was supposed to
have started and their knowledge
of and, in one case, acquaintance
with Mrs. Floyd.
g. Judge Whittle, while keeping
his judicial robe straight of many
minor legal technicalities, support
ed the prosecuting attorney on the
major ones. He denied defense mo-
tions to move the trials to any
other county.
After the assembly line was
established on that legal basis, the
legal lynchings rolled out without
any trouble. Credited with mas
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