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At 7:30 a.m. on June 16, 1944, George Junius Stinney Jr. was
escorted by four guards to the death chamber. Wearing socks but no
shoes, the 14-year-old Black boy walked with his Bible tucked under
his arm. The guards strapped his slight, five-foot-one-inch frame
into the electric chair. His small size made it difficult to affix
the electrode to his right leg and the face mask, which was clearly
too large, fell to the floor when the executioner flipped the
switch. That day, George Stinney became, and today remains, the
youngest person executed in the United States during the twentieth
century.How was it possible, even in Jim Crow South Carolina, for a
child to be convicted, sentenced to death, and executed based on
circumstantial evidence in a trial that lasted only a few hours?
Through extensive archival research and interviews with Stinney's
contemporaries-men and women alive today who still carry
distinctive memories of the events that rocked the small town of
Alcolu and the entire state-Eli Faber pieces together the chain of
events that led to this tragic injustice. The first book to fully
explore the events leading to Stinney's death, The Child in the
Electric Chair offers a compelling narrative with a meticulously
researched analysis of the world in which Stinney lived-the era of
lynching, segregation, and racist assumptions about Black
Americans. Faber 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,
the story of George Stinney remains one that can teach us lessons
about our collective past and present. By ably placing the Stinney
case into a larger context, 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. A foreword
is provided by Carol Berkin, Presidential Professor of History
Emerita at Baruch College at the City University of New York and
author of several books including Civil War Wives: The Lives and
Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent
Grant.
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