The 14-Year-Old Black American Sentenced to Death for Murder

In March 1944, George Stinney Jr’s life changed forever. While playing with his younger sister in their back yard, police arrived at their home and handcuffed George and his older brother, John. They were suspects in the brutal murder of two white girls.

The police were out for blood, they needed a scapegoat and deep in the Jim Crow South, “obviously” the murders had to have been committed by African Americans. In this unfortunate incident, police selected George, a fourteen-year-old black boy as the one to take the rap for this heinous crime.