Word: mcgee
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...Communists all over the world, "the case of Willie McGee" had become surefire propaganda, good for whipping up racial tension at home and giving U.S. justice a black eye abroad. Stirred up by the Communist leadership, Communist-liners and manifesto-signers in England, France, China and Russia demanded that Willie be freed. The U.S. Information Service in London, worried by English concern about the case, released an official statement of the facts. Not only Communists took up the cry. In New York, Albert Einstein signed a newspaper ad protesting a miscarriage of justice. Mrs. McGee, a captive of the Communists...
...been drinking. But a neighbor came forward with a significant clue. At about 4:30 a.m., she had seen a Negro drive away in a grocery truck which had been parked near the Hawkins home. A truck had been reported missing by a grocery firm, along with Driver Willie McGee, who also had $20 of the firm's money. An alarm was sent out for McGee, a wiry, 31-year-old father of four. He was arrested the next afternoon and, according to a deputy sheriff, confessed to the attack. Two Negroes were found who said they had been...
After a day-long trial, a jury took only 2½ minutes to find McGee guilty, and he was sentenced to death in the chair. But the Mississippi supreme court reversed the conviction on the ground that McGee had been tried in so electric an atmosphere that state Guardsmen with fixed bayonets had patrolled the courthouse to prevent trouble...
...McGee got a change of venue and a second trial, 30 miles away in Hattiesburg. Again he was sentenced to death. Again the sentence was reversed, this time on the ground that Negroes were excluded from grand-jury lists. By the third trial, the Communists were in control of Willie McGee's defense, and they submitted a new and ugly accusation: McGee had been intimate with the woman for several years and had been framed because he tried to break off the relationship. In the small (pop. 20,000) town of Laurel, there was utterly no evidence of such...
...priest then spent an hour with him while state police and guards waited nearby. A little before one, they marched McGee to the electric chair and strapped him in. The switch was thrown two minutes later...