George Stinney Jr.

Long before fourteen-year old Emmett Till’s tragic murder in 1955 became an unhealable wound on America’s psyche, there was 14-year-old George Stinney, Jr., brutally killed on June 16, 1944, in Alcolu, South Carolina., by state-sanctioned racial violence. George Stinney Jr. was killed by electrocution in 1944, after being charged with capital murder. Now we know that Stinney, Jr., did not commit the crimes. In the 1940s, Black people routinely were considered guilty with little need for evidence that could prove otherwise. Stinney was said to have confessed, but the confession was forced with promises that he would be permitted to see his parents while in jail. Initially, was kept alone, not provided counsel, and was interrogated by those determined to charge a Black male. Later a court-appointed lawyer running for political office did not object to or counter the police officers who claimed the child had confessed even when the confessions were inconsistent. Nonetheless, a swift and decisive all-white jury, in an all-white courthouse that did not allow Blacks to be present, found the young boy guilty. In less than 10 minutes a verdict was reached. Stinney would die in the electric chair for the murder of two white girls, ages seven and eleven. Appeals to the South Carolina governor to spare Stinney failed. Sixty years later, in 2004, thanks to filmmaker Ray Brown, historian George Frierson, and other lawyers, the case of George Stinney, Jr. was re-examined. Evidence and information long buried about the Stinney case finally came to light. Ray Brown’s film, “83 Days,” tells the little-known story of George Stinney, Jr., an incredible gross miscarriage of justice, and state-sanctioned racial violence that killed an innocent child in 1944 America.