The NAACP appeals also noted that since Virginia started use of the electric chair, only black men had been executed for rape in the state for what was a non-lethal crime.
According to historian Eric W. Rise, this case "demonstrated the power of the southern legal system to enforce codes of racial behavior.
"[2] The rapes occurred on Saturday, January 8, 1949, after Ruby Stroud Floyd, a 32-year-old white woman, entered a black neighborhood in Martinsville, Virginia, to collect money for clothing she had sold.
Based on her account, in which she claimed to have been raped by 13 black men,[3] the police quickly arrested Frank Hairston Jr. and Booker Millner.
When the NAACP appealed their convictions, its defense team noted that when the police had questioned the men, they had been drinking for some time, and they were not allowed to consult lawyers or their families.
[2] Judge Kennon Whittle told the attorneys: "this case must and will be tried in such a way as not to disturb the kindly feeling now, locally, existing between the races.
"[2] The prosecution did not explicitly discuss race; it argued the case based on the "preservation of community stability, not the protection of southern womanly virtues,"[2] as had formerly been common.
[2] Rise says that the white community disdained Ruby Floyd for her missionary work with the Jehovah's Witnesses and for her willingness to enter the black part of Martinsville.
The prosecution pointed out that Floyd had gone to an area considered unsafe for white women, ignored warnings of black residents of staying too long there, and not been attentive to her surroundings or the men she passed.
Although the defense attorneys pointed out mitigating circumstances, the juries quickly convicted each defendant and sentenced them to execution in the electric chair.
[9][10] An editorial in New York's Amsterdam News read, When we consider the fact that in the entire history of the Old Dominion state, no white man has ever received capital punishment for rape, then of necessity we must conclude that the death penalty for seven men for a singular crime was neither righteous, nor compassionate, nor wise.
[11]The case of the Martinsville Seven was taken up by outside groups, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Civil Rights Congress (CRC).
[12] The NAACP's interest was in establishing legal precedent "for the benefit of due process and equal protection in general and the Negroes' rights in particular.
[2] One of the convicted men's parents contacted the CRC directly and asked one of its lawyers to defend their son DeSales Grayson.
The CRC focused on producing pamphlets and publicity for outside campaigns to raise awareness about the case, including internationally, and hoped to put pressure on government officials.
The Court of Appeals upheld the rulings on March 13, 1950, with Chief Justice Edward W. Hudgins writing: "one can hardly conceive of a more atrocious, a more beastly crime".
Together representatives, both black and white, of the CRC and NAACP, as well as other citizens, met with Battle in June 1950 to appeal for a pardon or clemency for the defendants in the case.
In this period of the second Red Scare, Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee had raised alarms about purported communist influence in government and society.
Both African American newspapers, the Richmond Afro-American and Norfolk Journal and Guide concluded the national and international crusades by the CRC hurt the defendants' chances for clemency.
[2] The CRC also had organized an international campaign, and Governor Battle was swamped by letters from overseas asking him to commute the sentences of the men.
One telegram from Moscow was signed by "workers in science, literature, the arts," including composers Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.
In the United Kingdom, the London branch of the Caribbean Labour Congress, then led by leading Black British civil rights leader Billy Strachan, condemned the US government for their actions towards the Martinsville Seven.