Troy Davis Isn't the Only One

In light of the execution of Troy Davis, more sad execution stories keep emerging in the news.

The story I learned today is about George Junius Stinney Jr. in the picture below.

He was born in 1929 and executed in a South Carolina prison during 1944 at fourteen years old six months and five days.

Can you imagine for a second?

He could have been my baby. Your baby. A friend's baby. Any person's baby that was executed for a crime he did not commit.

Jeffrey Collins of the Bluffton Post reported, "Stinney was accused of killing two white girls 11 year old Betty June Binnicker and 8 year old Mary Emma Thames by beating them with a railroad spike then dragging their bodies to a ditch near Acolu, about five miles from Manning in central South Carolina. The girls were found a day after they disappeared following a massive manhunt. Stinney was arrested a few hours later, white men in suits taking him away. Because of the risk of a lynching, Stinney was kept at a jail 50 miles away in Columbia. His father, who had helped look for the girls, was fired immediately and ordered to leave his home and the sawmill where he worked. His family was told to leave town prior to the trial to avoid further retribution. An atmosphere of lynch mob hysteria hung over the courthouse. Without family visits, the 14 year old had to endure the trial and death alone."

At fourteen years old he was escorted to the electric chair by guards with a bible in his hand. He was so small, only 5' 1" and 95 pounds that the electric chair straps didn’t fit his body. The electrode was too big for his legs as well.

Witnesses recap the story of his execution, describing an adult size death mask covering his face. When the switch was pulled, the mask fell from his face. Revealing tears that streamed from his eyes during his death. 

*Hearing this part of the story made me cry. 

He is said to be the youngest person executed in the United States in the past century. However, it is possible that his death was the only one recorded in the books.

These stories eat me up inside!

Why would a 14 year old black boy kill 2 little white girls in South Carolina during the 1940s? And how could a boy who only weighs 95 pounds drag both of their bodies five miles away from the murder scene? 

Unbelievable. 

Let me tell you what I learned from my grandmother who was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1934. As a child she watched so many black adults and children in her town get lynched. Every black child in her town was afraid to be near a white person. They lived in fear of a white person spitting on them, yelling derogatory terms at them, and being accused of doing something they did not do. My grandmother and other black people in her town saw it happen so many times. 

They believed white people were devils in Birmingham. And in her case? Imagining what she saw white people do to other black people in town, I honestly cannot blame her. 

Anyone who can kill black boys without mercy. Rape little black girls and throw them away like garbage. Beat a man to death, urinate on him, and then hang him by a tree, and all because of the color of their skin.

Must be the devil in disguise.

With that said, can you really believe a 14 year old black boy in South Carolina would murder two white girls?

Of, course not.