From George to Troy.

"Many black men have an absurd dark comic lurking inside them, inspired by the experience of racism in America-which is one of the biggest dumbest jokes in the history of the world..." ~Patrice Evans writing in Negropedia.~

"all the things that you wrote are completely off. we know how much you people love to fight! we know that when you are not picking on a white person you are picking fights with eachother. thats why we don't want you savages anywhere near us! ive never considered black people as religious. onfact i see all of you as hypocrites because you are always going to church singing (trying to outsing eachother) (competeting aka fighting) and then go rob a hard working mexican. this is only a little bit. but u are wayyyyyyyyy off. i hate all you people i hope you all die!" ~Anonymous commenter responding to a post by the field~

I am sure that a lot of you do wish that we would die. And back in the day you damn sure knew how to make it happen.

Along those lines, I was reminded of the story of George (Junius) Stinney while reading over at the theGrio today.

"It's 1944, and police escort a 14-year-old boy into the death chamber. He stands just 5'1 and weighs a mere 95 pounds. He is so small in stature that dictionaries need to be stacked on the seat of the electric chair so that when he sits in it his head reaches the height of the electrodes. His chains are loose around his narrow ankles.

This young boy is about to be the youngest person ever to be executed in the history of the United States. Before there was a Troy Davis there was George Junius Stinney, Jr. and the state of South Carolina electrocuted him.

Stinney was accused of murdering two young white girls. They were eleven year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames. The two girls went missing one day after they were riding their bikes while looking for flowers on the wrong side of the tracks in a small working class town of Alcolu, South Carolina where whites and blacks were separated by railroad tracks. The girls went missing and were later found dead in a ditch, murdered with a railroad spike.

George Junius Stinney was even part of the search crew and told a bystander simply that he had seen the girls earlier that day. This claim was enough probable cause for the South Carolina police to arrest Stinney for the double murder, even though, the idea of him being strong enough to kill not one but two girls is a stretch. Despite this fact, the police hauled Stinney into the station for hours of intense interrogation, without the presence of either of his parents. Reports claim the police offered Stinney ice cream if he confessed to them that he committed the double murder.

Stinney confessed. There is no written record of his confession in the archives. There is no physical evidence linking Stinney to the murder. There is no paper record of Stinney's conviction.

The lack of any physical evidence or archived police and court records is the reason South Carolina attorney Steve McKenzie, who detailed Stinney's story to TheGrio, said he wants to re-open the case of the execution George Junius Stinney, Jr. McKenzie said he believes Stinney was innocent of the murder and with "no investigative notes, no trial transcripts, no written confession, and nothing to indicate guilt," it is clear Stinney's trial and subsequent execution were suspicious at best and a miscarriage of justice at worst. (Story)

Yep,it kind of reminds me of another story from the deep south, recently.