Biography
Richard Morris was one of three Black youths held with Angelo Herndon in the death-house section of Fulton Tower in Atlanta. Herndon describes him as 15 years old; this recalled age is not used to invent a birth date. According to Herndon, the youths were convicted as accomplices after an off-duty officer shot Mose White’s older brother during a dispute over change in an ice-cream shop, and the brother fired back; both wounded men later died. Herndon maintained that the three youths were innocent and that racial injustice drove their convictions. He recalls the Georgia Supreme Court rejecting their appeal, Governor Eugene Talmadge declining clemency, and their departure from jail on an early Tuesday morning to face execution. He personally witnessed their imprisonment and farewells; no exact arrest, sentence, transfer or death date, execution-site confirmation, or complete served duration is supplied here. These are attributed memoir claims rather than independent judicial findings. Source: Angelo Herndon, Let Me Live (1937), PDF pages260–276 (printed252–268), https://www.marxists.org/archive/herndon/1937/let-me-live.pdf#page=260
