George Stinney - The boy who was sent to the electric chair aged fourteen.

 

George Stinney (centre)

On June 16, 1944, a fourteen-year-old African-American boy called George Stinney, was executed in the electric chair in South Carolina. He became the youngest person in the U.S. to be executed during the 20^th century.

With hardly evidence whatsoever, George had been charged and convicted by an all-white jury with the murder of two young white girls. It seems that while helping a search party to look for the two girls, George had disclosed that he’d seen the two girls the day before. He was then arrested.

The defence called no witnesses and no black people were allowed into the courtroom. The only witness to give evidence was the local sheriff who claimed that George had confessed during an interview. There was no written confession signed by George Stinney.  

George Stinney weighed 95 pounds and was five feet one inches tall. When the boy was placed in the electric chair the prison wardens had to place a book under his backside to lift him up. The mask slipped off his face and witnesses saw his wide open and weeping eyes and his dribbling mouth. The was then given a hit of 2,400 volts of electricity.

I have only recently become aware of this terrible and tragic case after reading about young George Stinney. The case of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old child from Chicago, who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi, for allegedly wolf whistling at a white woman, is probably better known. Those two men, who later confessed to his murder in a magazine interview, were also acquitted of his murder by an all-white jury.