Biography
Howard Hairston was one of the "Martinsville Seven," seven Black men convicted by all-white juries of the rape of Ruby Stroud Floyd, a white woman, in Martinsville, Virginia in 1949 and executed in Virginia's electric chair in 1951. The convictions rested on confessions the defendants said were coerced, and the case became a landmark of racial injustice — every person executed for rape in Virginia's history was Black. The Civil Rights Congress mounted a national and international campaign to stop the executions, even picketing the White House, but four of the men were electrocuted on February 2, 1951 and the remaining three on February 5. In 2021 the Governor of Virginia granted all seven posthumous pardons, citing the racial bias and denial of due process in their trials.
One of the Martinsville Seven — seven Black Virginia men arrested January 1949 for the alleged gang rape of Ruby Stroud Floyd, a white Jehovah's Witness, in Martinsville. In six separate one-day trials before Judge Kennon C. Whittle and all-white juries (the prosecution struck every Black potential juror), all seven were convicted within hours and sentenced to death. The Civil Rights Congress and NAACP mounted dueling defense campaigns; Eleanor Roosevelt and figures across the world appealed for clemency. Four were electrocuted at the Virginia State Penitentiary on February 2, 1951 and the remaining three on February 5, 1951 — the largest mass execution for a single non-capital-murder crime in U.S. history. Posthumously pardoned by Governor Ralph Northam, August 31, 2021.
