The case attracted pleas for mercy and in recent years has been denounced as an example of racial disparity in the use of the death penalty.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam granted posthumous pardons Tuesday to seven Black men who were executed in 1951 for the rape of a White woman, in a case that attracted pleas for mercy from around the world and in recent years has been denounced as an example of racial disparity in the use of the death penalty. Northam announced the pardons after meeting with about a dozen descendants of the men and their advocates. Cries and sobs could be heard from some of the descendants after Northam’s announcement. The “Martinsville Seven,” as the men became known, were all convicted of raping 32-year-old Ruby Stroud Floyd, a White woman who had gone to a predominantly Black neighborhood in Martinsville, Virginia, on January 8, 1949, to collect money for clothes she had sold. Four of the men were executed in Virginia’s electric chair on February 2, 1951. Three days later, the remaining three were also electrocuted. All of them were tried by all-White juries. It was the largest group of people executed for a single-victim crime in Virginia’s history. At the time, rape was a capital offense. But Northam said Tuesday that the death penalty for rape was applied almost exclusively to Black people. From 1908 — when Virginia began using the electric chair — to 1951, state records show that all 45 people executed for rape were Black, he said. The pardons do not address the guilt or innocence of the men, but Northam said the pardons are an acknowledgement that they did not receive due process and received a “racially-biased death sentence not similarly applied to white defendants.
