Biography
Julia Wilder was a Black voting-rights organizer in Pickens County, Alabama, and president of the Pickens County Voters League. She helped elderly and house-bound Black voters complete absentee ballots in the 1978 election. An all-white jury convicted her of vote fraud in 1979. The Militant reported that she was jailed on January 11, 1982 after appeals were exhausted and Judge Clatus Junkin denied probation. Governor Fob James ordered her placement in a restrictive Macon County work-release program on January 22; the report says the women had left Tutwiler prison but remained under restrictions, including a ban on political activity. Civil-rights organizations campaigned to overturn the convictions.
Julia Wilder was a Black voting-rights organizer in Pickens County, Alabama, and president of the Pickens County Voters League. She helped elderly and house-bound Black voters complete absentee ballots in the 1978 election. An all-white jury convicted her of vote fraud in 1979. The Militant reported that she was jailed on January 11, 1982 after appeals were exhausted and Judge Clatus Junkin denied probation. Governor Fob James ordered her placement in a restrictive Macon County work-release program on January 22; the report says the women had left Tutwiler prison but remained under restrictions, including a ban on political activity. Civil-rights organizations campaigned to overturn the convictions.
