| Contents |
June 16, 1944 -- A company town -- March 24-25, 1944 -- Postponing a lynching -- The road to trial -- Clarendon County speaks -- The silence of the NAACP -- The governor -- "This case will not die." |
| Abstract |
"Eli Faber, professor of history emeritus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has written a narrative history of the case of George Stinney, a fourteen-year-old African American boy who was executed for the alleged murder of two white girls (ages 8 and 11) in June 1944. This made Stinney the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. In 2014, a circuit court judge in South Carolina vacated the conviction. Faber moves beyond the single horrific moment to give a fuller picture of Stinney's world, attempting to answer the question, 'How was it possible, even for a state in the Deep South like South Carolina, to send a fourteen-year-old child to the electric chair in the middle of the twentieth century?' While the Stinney case has received periodic attention in the popular press, especially around the time of the vacated conviction, Faber's work represents the first extended, scholarly treatment of the case, its context, and its legacy. One reason for the lack of extended attention is the fact that no trial transcript exists (indeed, the trial itself lasted only 10 minutes). Faber makes use of traditional newspaper and archival sources in order to build the context necessary for understanding the events that led to Stinney's execution. Of note is a hitherto untapped collection of oral interviews conducted with observers and participants in 1983. The Stinney case, and even more its context and legacy, remain of vital importance today. The story that Faber tells is one of how a systemically racist system, paired with the personal ambitions of powerful individuals, combined to sacrifice the life of an African American child in order to support the maintenance of that system ... The ability to place the Stinney case into a larger context is the most significant contribution that Faber provides and he effectively shows how this case is not just a travesty of justice that is locked in the past, but rather one that continues to resonate in our own time ... [Faber] does more than ... [the] journalistic accounts to understand the events of 1944 as operating within a racial caste system, one evident not only in the trial itself but also the landscape and power structures of the town and the state..."-- Provided by publisher. |
| Abstract |
June 16, 1944: George Junius Stinney Jr., a 14-year-old Black boy, was strapped into a South Carolina electric chair. He became, and today remains, the youngest person executed in the United States during the twentieth century. Faber explores the events leading to Stinney's death, and explains how a systemically racist system, paired with the personal ambitions of powerful individuals, turned a blind eye to human decency and one of the basic tenets of the American legal system that individuals are innocent until proven guilty. As society continues to grapple with the legacies of racial injustice, Faber reveals how this case is not just a travesty of justice locked in the era of the Jim Crow South but rather one that continues to resonate in our own time. -- adapted from jacket |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages [157]-170) and index. |
| Issued in other form | Online version: Faber, Eli, 1943- Child in the electric chair. Columbia, South Carolina : University of South Carolina Press, 2021 9781643361956 |
| Genre/form | History. |
| Genre/form | Trials, litigation, etc. |
| LCCN | 2021010746 |
| ISBN | 9781643361949 hardcover |
| ISBN | 1643361945 hardcover |
| ISBN | electronic book |
