Wilmington Ten

In Chavis v. State of North Carolina, 637 F.2d 213 (4th Cir., 1980), the convictions were overturned by the federal appeals court on the grounds that the prosecutor and the trial judge had both violated the defendants' constitutional rights.

Despair at the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. increased racial tensions, with a rise in violence, including the arson of several white-owned businesses.

On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, January 15, 1971, a delegation of Black students at John T. Hoggard High School requested a memorial.

In February, the United Church of Christ sent then-23-year-old Benjamin Chavis, from their Commission for Racial Justice, to Wilmington to try to calm the situation and work with the students.

Chavis, who had once worked as an assistant to King, preached non-violence and met with students regularly at Gregory Congregational Church to discuss black history, as well as to organize the boycott.

In response to tensions, members of a Ku Klux Klan chapter and other white supremacist groups began patrolling the streets.

[2] Chavis and nine others, eight young black men who were high school students, and an older, white, female anti-poverty worker, were arrested on charges of arson related to the grocery fire.

Based on testimony of two black men, they were tried and convicted in state court of arson and conspiracy in connection with the firebombing of Mike's Grocery.

Another witness, Allen Hall, had a history of mental illness and had to be removed from the courthouse since he recanted on the stand under cross-examination.

[1] Ann Shepard of Auburn, New York, 35, received 15 years as an accessory before the fact and conspiracy to assault emergency personnel.

[2] In 1978, the New York Times reporter Wayne King published an investigatory article; based on testimony of a witness whose anonymity he protected, he said that perhaps the prosecution had framed a guilty man, as his source said that he had committed the crimes at the behest of Chavis.

[citation needed] A group called the Wilmington Ten Foundation for Social Justice was established to work to improve conditions in the city.

[citation needed] In May 2012, Benjamin Chavis and six surviving members of the group petitioned North Carolina governor Bev Perdue for a pardon.

The NAACP supported the pardon, as well as arguing for compensation to be paid to the men[clarify] and their survivors for their years in jail.