The Martinsville Seven

"MILLIONS FIGHT TO SAVE INNOCENT NEGROES," screamed the Daily Worker. "Negroes lynched, Nazis freed, where's our democracy?" chanted a crowd outside Manhattan's city hall. Pickets, led by Author Howard Fast, turned up in the snow before the White House, carrying black-bordered signs: "Seven Negroes framed and condemned by all-white jury." The well-greased Communist apparatus was making propaganda hay out of the Martinsville Seven--with suitable adjustments in the facts.

The Martinsville Seven were seven Negroes who had confessed to raping the wife of a Martinsville, Va. store manager just two years ago. They had been duly tried and convicted, their cases had twice been carried to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to review them. Even the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which provided legal counsel for the prisoners' appeal, did not seriously question their guilt; it argued that they were denied equal treatment under the 14th Amendment, pointing out that since 1908, Virginia had executed 45 Negroes for rape, but no white man.

But last week some 517 of the faithful, masterminded by the Communist-front Congress of Civil Rights, descended on Richmond to establish a "vigil of prayer." The Communist calliope swung into high. The Union of Polish Youth cabled a demand for a "full pardon for the seven innocent Negro youths." Moscow trotted out its tame intellects. "In the name of justice and the sacred rights of man, we raise our wrathful voice in protest," said Shostakovich, Prokofiev & Co. The radio of the Chinese People's Government broadcast an appeal to stay "this barbaric sentence."

A delegation waited on Virginia's Governor John Battle, who patiently recited the long history of judicial review, pointed out that there was not the "slightest suggestion" of police brutality. "These people were not convicted because they were Negroes," said Battle. "Neither should they be released because they are Negroes."

At week's end, while the "vigil" continued in freezing weather, four of the seven rapists died in the state's electric chair. Early this week, on schedule, the three remaining men, perpetrators of a brutal crime, were executed. --

This week another case avidly taken up by the Communists was back in the news again, when six Negroes went on trial in New Jersey's superior court for the murder of an elderly junkman. A new trial for "the Trenton Six" had been ordered by the state supreme court after a finding that they had been convicted without getting their due rights under law.

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