Thursday, May 31, 2012

THE WILMINGTON TEN PARDONS OF INNOCENCE PROJECT


DECLARE THE WILMINGTON TEN INNOCENT



It is one of the most racist, most disturbing legal cases in American jurisprudence.
They are known as “The Wilmington Ten,” eight teenage black male students, and one white female community worker, nonviolent social activists, led by the fiery Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., who were falsely convicted forty years ago of conspiracy in connection with the racial violence that engulfed Wilmington, NC in February 1971.

This was just three short years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tenn. The South was a tense place. Whites weren’t at all pleased with capitulating to federal court-ordered desegregation decrees. Where they could drag their feet on integration, they did.
In Wilmington, NC in 1968, the New Hanover County Public School System lost a legal suit brought by the NAACP to desegregate its schools. The white school system retaliated by closing, without warning, Williston High School, an all-black high school that was a source of tremendous pride for Wilmington’s African-American community because it was one of the best high schools overall in North Carolina.
Williston’s black students were forced to attend two white high schools in Wilmington, where they were ignored by teachers and staff; not allowed to engage in regular activities like white students, and were forced to fight almost every day just to survive.
By 1971, Wilmington was a racial tinderbox. Blacks and whites were on edge. Black students began organizing to speak out against the injustices of the school system.
The United Church of Christ sent 24-year-old Rev. Ben Chavis, a young, talented civil rights organizer who once worked under Dr. King, to lend leadership and guidance to the black student movement in Wilmington.
It was at Gregory Congregational Church in Wilmington - a black church led by an extraordinary white pastor, Rev. Eugene Templeton - where the students would meet and rally, and Chavis would instruct them in nonviolent demonstrations, black history, and the need for black empowerment.
But it wouldn’t be long before Gregory Church became the target of white supremacists that would ride the streets of Wilmington’s black community, firing weapons at black citizens at the church and surrounding neighborhoods.

Chavis repeatedly asked the mayor and police authorities to stop the violence and call a curfew, and was routinely rebuffed.
Finally, on Feb. 6, 1971, some firebombed a white-owned grocery store a black away from Gregory Church. Authorities alleged that there was sniper fire from the roof of the church towards firefighters as they fought to put out the flames.
The National Guard was finally called in to maintain order. At least two Wilmington citizens - one black, one white - lost their lives.
It was a year later when 16 suspects, mostly high schools students ages 17 to 20 - were rounded up by police in connection with the events of Feb. 6th, 1971.
Police were really after Chavis, and slowly whittled the number of suspects down to nine, including Chavis, in hopes of turning state’s evidence against what they considered to be a dangerous black radical.
They arrested black students in their homes in the middle of the night, handcuffing them in front of their parents. Their only “real” crime was that they knew Chavis, and had followed his leadership. Otherwise, they were all innocent.
They were all made to stand trial twice in 1972 - first in June, until the prosecutor realized he couldn’t possibly get a conviction with a jury of ten blacks and two whites, so he got “sick” to cause a mistrial; and then the second trial in September, this time with a jury of ten whites, some who were Ku Klux Klan sympathizers, and two rural, small town blacks.
The ten were convicted, and sent to prison, where they suffered for several years, and their families relentlessly prayed that one day, the truth would come out.
Prosecuted solely because they all stood up for an equal public education for all students, the “Ten,” as they’re also known, became America’s first designated “political prisoners” by Amnesty International.
Even though the CBS News program 60 Minutes proved in 1977 that the evidence against them was fabricated; and even though all three witnesses against the Ten later recanted their testimony, admitting that state prosecutors paid them to lie under oath; and even though the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned those convictions in 1980 after all of the Ten had served a portion of their collective 282 years in prison, the state of North Carolina has never officially acknowledged their innocence.
Not in the forty years since their trials, or over thirty years since they’ve been free.

As of May 17 of this year, attorneys for the Wilmington Ten filed a petition for individual pardons of innocence for the seven surviving members - Dr. Chavis; Marvin Patrick; Connie Tindall; James “Bunn” McKoy; Willie Earl Vereen; Wayne Moore; and Reginald Epps - all in their late fifties to mid-sixties.
Petitions for pardons of innocence were also filed for the three deceased members of the Ten - Jerry Jacobs; William “Joe” Wright; and Anne Shepard Turner.
And thus has begun a national movement to once again “free” the Wilmington Ten.
It is now in the hands of outgoing North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, to grant the declarations of individual “actual innocence” upon each of the Ten. A decision is not expected until after the 2012 presidential elections, and certainly not before the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte this September.
Because she has been a good governor, standing up against the Republican- dominated NC General Assembly by vetoing voter ID, restrictions on a woman’s right to choose, and standing strong for North Carolina’s unique Racial Justice Act - which prevents racial bias from being a factor in death penalty cases - it is believed that Gov. Perdue and her staff will give the Wilmington Ten pardon petitions a fair hearing.
Beyond the sheer injustice of the case, it is important, indeed vital, many say, that young people today know why they must stand strong with the Wilmington Ten.
Courage to stand up, and speak truth to power, and demand their constitutional rights no matter what the costs - that is the true legacy of the Wilmington Ten.
From now, until Gov. Perdue renders her pardon decision later this year, we will be organizing across the nation, asking everyone who believes in freedom and justice, to sign our national petition on Change.Org at https://www.change.org/petitions/nc-governor-bev-perdue-pardon-the-wilmington-10; and to learn more about the Wilmington Ten at our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/TheWilmingtonTenPardonOfInnocenceProject?ref=ts, where they see videos, photos, and link to important websites like Wayne Moore's "Triumphant Warriors."
Already, at least three US Congressmen, the NC Legislative Black Caucus, the national NAACP Board of Directors, and hundreds of petition signers from across the nation have come onboard to ask Gov. Perdue to pardon the Wilmington Ten.
I hope you, and your family and friends, join us.
With so much wrong in the world, this cause - returning the dignity of innocence to those who have been denied such for forty long years - is so right! 

Cash Michaels
Coordinator,
The Wilmington Ten Pardons of Innocence Project
                             --------------------
STORIES ON THE WILMINGTON TEN PARDON PROJECT





[Originally published May 17, 2012]

EXCLUSIVE
GOV. PERDUE ASKED TO
PARDON WILMINGTON TEN
By Cash Michaels
Editor

Seven survivors and the families of three deceased members of the Wilmington Ten - ten 1970’s civil rights activists convicted forty years ago of conspiracy charges to commit violence, charges a federal appeals court; the US Justice Dept; and fifty-five members of Congress later determined were not true - formally petitioned the governor of North Carolina Thursday to grant each of the original group a pardon of innocence.
The pardon petition called the Wilmington Ten case, “…a politically inspired prosecution.”
The May 17th petition filing was immediately announced to the world during a press conference conducted Thursday by members and family of deceased members of the Wilmington Ten; their attorney, Irving Joyner; National Newspaper Publishers Association Board members; and numerous supporters outside the North Carolina State Capital Building.
 A nationwide petition drive to support the pardon effort was also announced.
 Support for the effort has already begun to come in from local and national leaders.
 “There are still too many black activists who are still being mistreated in this country, who carry badges of shame, if you will, for spending time in prison, who at the end of the day their only crime was standing up for the people,” Benjamin Jealous, president/CEO of the NAACP said when asked several weeks ago. “In the case of the Wilmington Ten, we will push [for pardons] and support our state conference in their push to ensure that finally, their names are cleared.”
   Rev. William Barber, president of the NC NAACP, has also expressed his support for the pardon effort as well.
   The Wilmington Ten pardons, if granted by NC Gov. Beverly Perdue, would officially declare the innocence of the seven surviving members - Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., Wayne Moore, Marvin Eugene Patrick, Connie Levinesky Tindall, James Matthew McKoy, Willie Earl Vereen, Reginald Epps - and the three deceased members - Anne Shepard-Turner, William “Joe” Wright, and Jerry Gerald Jacobs.
    The pardon petition, authored by attorney Joyner - the original coordinator of the Wilmington Ten legal defense for the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice - and James Ferguson, the lead defense attorney in the case forty years ago, bears the authorizing signatures of the seven survivors and representative family members of the deceased.
It urges Gov. Perdue to issue the pardons, “…in order to declare each Wilmington Ten member innocent of the offense for which they were wrongfully prosecuted and convicted in the New Hanover County Superior Court in September 1972.”
The charges - associated with the firebombing of Mike’s Grocery in Wilmington on Feb. 6, 1971 - included conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to assault emergency personnel, conspiracy to burn property with incendiary devices and the actual burning of property, according to the pardon petition.
 For the past forty years, and even when they were collectively convicted and sentenced to 282 years in prison, the Wilmington Ten have always maintained that they were innocent of all charges.
 Their ages, at the time of their convictions, ranged from 19 to 35.
 Today, many of the surviving members are in their late 50’s, early sixties, and in dwindling health.
 In exclusive interviews, some revealed that after their arrests, police offered to set them free if they turned state’s evidence against the others, especially Wilmington Ten leader Rev. Ben Chavis.
  None ever took the offer.
  In a February, 2011 op-ed piece for NNPA member newspapers, Dr. Chavis, now an NNPA columnist, wrote about the events that led up to the arrest of the ten activists:
                  _________________

  During the Nixon Administration in the early 1970's, African Americans in the South, as well as in other regions of the nation, were being challenged with the systematic racial disparities involved in the details of how federal court-ordered school desegregation was being enforced.
  Black students, parents, and community leaders made a decision in Wilmington in February 1971 that they would stand up and fight to protect and secure the "quality" education of African American students by attempting to preserve the high academic integrity and institutional legacy of African American public schools such as Williston Senior High School (which the New Hanover County Public School Board closed, to the outrage of the African-American community there).
The United Church of Christ, as a progressive mainline Protestant denomination of 1.7 million members, and its Commission for Racial Justice, led by The Reverend Dr. Charles E. Cobb, decided to stand with the student-led coalition in Wilmington to demand fairness and equal justice. As a young civil rights activist, I was dispatched by the Commission for Racial Justice to give organizational assistance to our brothers and sisters in Wilmington.
 Because we dared to speak out and to engage in non-violent street protests to the long, unprecedented history of racial violence and injustice in that port city, the African American community became the targets of a violent, paramilitary, anti-Black terror campaign led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Rights of White People (ROWP) organization. Our movement's headquarters in Wilmington - Gregory Congregational United Church of Christ - and the surrounding African American community, was placed in a state of siege by armed White vigilantes, who opposed racial justice and equality.
  [Wilmington Police refused to do anything to stop the White supremacist attacks in the black community. On Feb. 6, 1971, a local store called Mike’s Grocery was firebombed amid the violence. It took a year, but authorities finally targeted Rev. Chavis, eight young black student leaders, and a 35-year-old white female social worker, Anne Shepard, for arrest and prosecution, even though there was no evidence that any of them committed any crimes]
  Because of our involvement in the struggle in Wilmington in 1971, we were unjustly charged, arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a combined maximum total of 282 years in prison in North Carolina in 1972. We all were completely innocent of the alleged charges of arson and conspiracy to assault. In 1978, Amnesty International declared that we were "Political Prisoners." We stayed in prison during most of the 1970's while our case was on appeal.
[The three so-called state’s “witnesses” North Carolina prosecutors used against the defendants, all began to recant their testimony against the Wilmington Ten]
 On December 4, 1980, the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned the unjust convictions of the Wilmington Ten because of "prosecutorial misconduct" in the unconstitutional and unfair frame-up. Yet, to date there has not been an official "pardon of innocence" issued by the state of or by the federal government.
                   ________________

In the Wilmington Ten petition for a pardon of innocence, attorney Joyner writes, “As a result of the State Prosecutor’s knowing use of perjured testimony, the State of North Carolina fraudulently procured the convictions of ten innocent North Carolina citizens.”
“This misconduct was aided and abetted by the actions of the Trial Judge which improperly prevented relevant facts from being presented to the jury,” atty. Joyner continued. “These wrongful convictions resulted in each Wilmington Ten member spending significant periods of time incarcerated in the North Carolina Dept. of Corrections where they lost critical developmental years.”
Joyner adds, “The time which they spent in prison can’t be replaced, and those experiences and history remain as a blot on their life’s stories.”
In exclusive interviews, many of the Wilmington Ten say they could not get jobs after they were released from prison. Some were shunned by their churches. Some had to leave Wilmington, they say.
All were virtually denied the dreams they held dear as high school students, dreams that included becoming a doctor, a lawyer, musicians, and in one case, a professional football player.
“His whole world just came tumbling down,” says Mrs. Margaret Jacobs, mother of deceased Wilmington Ten member Jerry Jacobs. Jacobs had dreams of being a professional tennis player and a doctor before being arrested by police in the Wilmington Ten case at age 19.
As a result, after Jacobs left prison, he was forced to leave Wilmington for New York, where he began shooting up drugs, contracted the AIDS disease, and died in 1989.
“Yes it did,” Mrs. Jacobs now laments when asked if the Wilmington Ten changed her son’s life. “Yes it did. He probably would have been living today.”
As in the Jerry Jacobs case, the burden of the Wilmington Ten’s arrests, convictions and incarcerations was also shared by all of their families, who always believed in their innocence.
“Only the granting of Pardons of Innocence can remove this deeply engrained tarnish which continues to hang over this state,” attorney Joyner writes.
The pardon petition effort, the first ever for the Wilmington Ten in the forty years since their case became a national and international cause célèbre, was spearheaded by the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project Committee, the manifestation of the national initiative the National Newspaper Publishers’ Association kicked off during its 2011 Black Press Week “Power of the Black Press Luncheon.”
 The project committee is co-chaired by Mary Alice Thatch, publisher of NNPA member The Wilmington Journal - a black newspaper that was firebombed by a white supremacist in 1972; and attorney Irving Joyner, a law professor at North Carolina Central University School of Law in Durham, NC, and chair of the NC NAACP Legal Redress Committee.
  "We are going to tell the story of the Wilmington 10," then NNPA Chairman Danny J. Bakewell, Sr., publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel said during the 2011 Black Press luncheon in Washington, D.C. "And, we think it is incumbent for us to fight for a pardon for those 10 people.”
 “Justice to this day,” Bakewell added, “ has not been served."
In an exclusive interview, attorney Joyner says the filing of the Wilmington Ten petition for pardons of innocence, is an historic moment.
“It is historic in many respects, he says. “First, this case represents one of the first documented disclosures of prosecutorial misconduct in North Carolina where nine innocent African-Americans and a lone White woman were persecuted by state agents because they stood up and protested against racial injustices in a local school district.”
 “Second, the Wilmington Ten became another outstanding example in North Carolina of young people daring to protest and defy entrenched racism within the North Carolina education and criminal justice systems.”
 Atty. Joyner continued, “Third, the State of North Carolina, through the New Hanover County District Attorney's Office and the North Carolina Attorney General's Office, used every weapon at its disposal to "cover-up" the vicious persecution of these ten young people and, after this massive misconduct was publicly exposed, refused to do anything to rectify the harm  that had been done to these ten victims and the Wilmington community.”
“It is now time for the Governor of North Carolina to make amends for the State and correct the record by issuing Pardons of Innocence for each member of the Wilmington Ten, attorney Joyner says.
 NC Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat who was elected in 2008 as the first female governor in North Carolina history, has announced that she is not running for re-election, and will be stepping down when her term ends in December.
If she grants the Wilmington Ten’s pardon of innocence petition, it is not expected until after the November presidential election.
Editor’s Note - a website for the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project will be launched shortly, detailing the history of the case and other features. Meanwhile, readers can show their support at the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project Facebook page.
Cash Michaels is the coordinator of the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project for the NNPA.



[Originally published May 17, 2012]
CASH IN THE APPLE
By Cash Michaels

 THE WILMINGTON TEN - Earlier today, I took part in an historic press conference at the North Carolina State Capital.
  The announcement was made that a legal petition for pardons of innocence on behalf of the Wilmington Ten had been submitted to the Governor’s Clemency Office. 
   For those of you who remember who the Wilmington Ten were, you know that this was historic.
   This year is the fortieth anniversary of when eight black male student activists, along with a white female social worker, and their leader, the Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., were falsely put on trial, and convicted of conspiracy to commit violence during the racial upheaval in Wilmington in 1971.
    In fact, all ten were brave, committed and nonviolent young social activists - from ages 17 to 35 - who bravely stood up against the New Hanover County Board of Education in 1971, and demanded an equal quality of public education for African-American students after the school system closed Williston High, the all-black high school.
    Remember, this was all happening just three years after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968. The South was still dealing with desegregation issues, and it wasn’t easy.
    Here’s how Dr. Ben Chavis described the tenor of the times in an NNPA column he wrote in 2011:
                     _________________

    During the Nixon Administration in the early 1970's, African Americans in the South, as well as in other regions of the nation, were being challenged with the systematic racial disparities involved in the details of how federal court-ordered school desegregation was being enforced.
    Because we dared to speak out and to engage in non-violent street protests to the long, unprecedented history of racial violence and injustice in that port city, the African American community became the targets of a violent, paramilitary, anti-Black terror campaign led by the Ku Klux Klan and the Rights of White People (ROWP) organization.
    Because of our involvement in the struggle in Wilmington in 1971, we were unjustly charged, arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a combined maximum total of 282 years in prison in North Carolina in 1972. We all were completely innocent of theoje alleged charges of arson and conspiracy to assault. In 1978, Amnesty International declared that we were "Political Prisoners." We stayed in prison during most of the 1970's while our case was on appeal.
               ____________________

    As the coordinator for the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project, a project sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association - the major black trade association of 200 African-American member newspapers across the nation (of which the Carolinian and Wilmington Journal newspapers are members of) - it has been my responsibility to pull the project together, and work with the best team possible - project co-chairs Mary Alice Thatch, publisher of The Wilmington Journal; and attorney Irving Joyner, law professor at North Carolina Central University School of  Law.
    The hard work and commitment of these two giants inspire me to put in the extra effort to make sure that this would be an endeavor that we can all be proud of.
    But the highlight of this project for me personally has been meeting, interviewing, and spending time with the seven surviving members of the Wilmington Ten, and the family of the three deceased members.
    The Wilmington Ten’s stories, told to me firsthand, of struggle, faith and fortitude after being targeted for crimes they didn’t commit, are compelling.
    There is no question that the false prosecution and imprisonment of the Wilmington Ten radically impacted their lives individually, as well as those of their families and loved ones.
     Each defendant was young, some barely in their twenties, when they were convicted in 1972 of crimes that they didn’t commit. Some were still in high school, and living with their parents.
     At least one, Ms Shepard, was raising three young children.
     All of the defendants had dreams of a bright, hope-filled future of either practicing the law, playing professional sports, or even performing as a musician.
Their only collective “crime,” they each individually say, was their willingness to openly, but peacefully, challenge injustice. Because of their individual courage, and commitment to equality, the Wilmington Ten suffered false prosecution, years of imprisonment and great personal hardships for themselves and their families. The collective impact for all of them has extended decades beyond their release from prison, and well after a federal appellate court overturned their convictions.
Today, forty years hence their false prosecutions, three of the Wilmington Ten - Jerry Jacobs, William Joseph Wright and Anne Shepard-Turner - have died, their dreams unfulfilled, according to their bereaved families.
One member, Reginald Epps, has worked so hard to protect his privacy and rebuild his life, vowing to leave the pain of his false imprisonment behind.
Another member, Rev. Benjamin Chavis, the leader of the Wilmington Ten, has evolved into one of the most accomplished civil rights leaders of our time, but he’s paid a dear personal price to do so.
So has Wayne Moore, who has had to move from Wilmington after his release from prison, leaving family and friends behind, because he was denied the opportunity to work and live in his hometown due to his association.
Willie Earl Vereen, Connie Tindall, James McKoy and Marvin Patrick, all now elderly men, struggling with their health, all feel robbed of the promise they once had to be productive citizens forty years ago. They have lost faith in government, and angrily challenge North Carolina to render to them long overdue justice - both tangibly and symbolically - to remove the clouds they say still follow their names, and reputations.
In all, the lives of the Wilmington Ten have been marked by struggle, hardship and indignities they otherwise would not have experienced if the state of North Carolina, forty years ago, had not sought to punish them for their political activism, and willingness to demand social change.
While past cannot be changed, amends can be made today for what was unjustly done to ten innocent North Carolinians, and American citizens.
Being intimately involved in this NNPA project has made me very proud to be a member of the Black Press. Some may ask, “How is it that the Black Press can be involved in making news, when that’s not what the press is supposed to be doing at all?”
My answer, it doesn’t stop newspapers and television stations from sponsoring fundraisers and telethons for hurricane relief - helping innocent victims regain their lives after a disaster!
That’s what we’re doing here, helping ten innocent people to officially reclaim their rightful innocence after the injustice that was perpetrated against them by the state of North Carolina.
 In effect, the Black Press, through the NNPA and The Wilmington Journal, is leading the way in telling the story of the Wilmington Ten to a new generation.
 It is a story that should be told, just like the Greensboro Four - four NC A&T students in 1960 who boldly integrated the Woolworth lunch counter, sparking the sit-in movement.
  Just like Rosa Parks, a brave woman of the South who in 1956 decided she would standup, by sitting down in the front of the bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama.
  And just like the Little Rock Nine - nine black students in Little Rock, Arkansas who, amid hatred and violence in the late 1950;s, bravely walked into an all-white high school, determined to get their education.
  Yes, the story of the Wilmington Ten MUST be told.
   But thanks to the efforts of the Black Press, it must also ...be finished!
    And it will!
    I hope that you will support our pardon effort on behalf of the Wilmington Ten. You can go to The Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project on Facebook to learn more, and show your support. We are constructing a dedicated website to further educate this new generation about the Wilmington Ten, and we'll announce that as soon as it's ready.
  Make sure you tune in every Thursday afternoon at 4 p.m. for my talk radio show, ''Make It Happen'' on Power 750 WAUG-AM, or online at www.myWAUG.com. And read more about my thoughts and opinions exclusively at my new blog, ‘The Cash Roc” (http://thecashroc.blogspot.com/2011/01/cash-roc-begins.html). I promise it will be interesting.
 Cash in the Apple - honored as the Best Column Writing of 2006 by the National Newspaper Publishers Association. Columnist Cash Michaels was also honored by the NNPA for Best Feature Story Journalist of 2009, and was the recipient of the Raleigh-Apex NAACP’s President’s Award for Media Excellence in Sept. 2011.
Until next week, keep a smile on your face, GOD in your heart, and The Carolinian in your life. Bye, bye.
                                      30-


[Originally published May 27, 2012]

NNPA EXCLUSIVE

SUPPORT SWELLS FOR WILMINGTON TEN PARDONS

By Cash Michaels

1135 words


 After only a week, significant local and national support to secure pardons of innocence for the Wilmington Ten is already coming in.
But organizers for the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s  “Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project” say ultimately more support, from every quarter, will be needed.
Thus far, at least two members of Congress; the heads of both the national and state NAACP; a prominent UNC-Chapel Hill law professor, and the head of the United Church of Christ have joined a growing number of supporters on Facebook, and an online national petition at Change.org, in calling on NC Gov. Beverly Perdue to grant pardons of innocence to the ten civil rights activists falsely convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and arson four decades ago.
In his letter of support to Gov. Perdue, NC Congressman G. K. Butterfield [D-NC-1], a former NC Associate Supreme Court justice, wrote, “As a former member of the North Carolina judiciary, and now a member of the United State House of Representatives, I have worked my entire adult life to bring equality and racial justice to my community, state and country. It is never too late to see justice fully achieved.”
That sentiment was echoed by the Rev. Geoffrey A. Black, general minister and president of the United Church of Christ (UCC).
“Any injustice of this magnitude is worth revisiting and rectifying, no matter how long ago it occurred,” Rev. Black said in a statement last week. “This is an opportunity for the governor of the state of North Carolina to undo the wrong done to these individuals and their families.”
 Rev. Black continued, “The United Church of Christ stood with the Wilmington Ten in their quest for justice then, and we stand with the Wilmington Ten now as they pursue an official pardon from the governor.”
Perdue’s press office indicated that the governor will give the pardon request due consideration.
Led by then UCC civil rights leader Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. to protest racial discrimination in the public school system in Wilmington, the ten - mostly teenagers at the time - were falsely charged forty years ago for the 1971 firebombing of a Wilmington, NC white-owned grocery store, and subsequent sniper fire at firefighters, during the height of racial tension there.
The ten were collectively tried, convicted and sentenced to 282 years in prison, with Chavis drawing 34 years.
In 1980, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, based on evidence of prosecutorial misconduct; the withholding of exculpatory evidence; and all three of the state’s witnesses recanting their testimonies and confessing that they were bribed by state prosecutors, overturned those convictions.
But the state of North Carolina, which had released the ten earlier from prison, refused to pardon them. As a result, a legal cloud has remained for the past 32 years.
On May 17th, attorneys for the seven survivors, and the families of the three deceased Wilmington Ten members, filed a petition for individual pardons of innocence with the NC Governor’s Office of Executive Clemency for Chavis; Connie Tindall; Willie Earl Vereen; Marvin Patrick; Anne Shepard Turner (deceased); William “Joe” Wright (deceased); Wayne Moore; Reginald Epps; Jerry Jacobs (deceased) and James McKoy.
“Our petition is for a declaration of actual innocence [from] the governor,” attorney Irving Joyner, pardon project co-chair, told reporters. “Our claim for actual innocence is based on the court record; based on judicial determinations that are already made…”
Attorney James Ferguson, the lead defense lawyer for the Wilmington Ten in 1972, said that since then they, “…have labored under an unjust conviction, and for forty years they have done it with dignity, and without bitterness.”
NNPA Chairman Cloves Campbell, Jr., publisher of the Arizona Informant, was present at the press conference, as were NNPA Board members and publishers Dorothy Leavell of the Chicago Crusader; John B. Smith of the Atlanta Inquirer; and Mary Alice Thatch, publisher of the Wilmington Journal, which strongly advocated for the ten when they were first convicted in 1972.
Campbell said the NNPA was sponsoring the pardon project because the story of the Wilmington Ten “must be told,” so that young people in the black community can learn from it, and better themselves.
Dr. Benjamin Chavis, who is also an NNPA columnist, told reporters and supporters, “The case of the Wilmington Ten is about justice for all people.”
            “Forty years ago, we stood up for what, in the presence of God, was right,” Chavis said, adding, “and in the presence of our community.”
It is because of that commitment to the community over forty years ago that supporters across the country are being encouraged to join the national petition drive
to ask Gov. Perdue to grant the pardons of innocence to the Wilmington Ten this year before she leaves office in January.
A Cary, North Carolina woman who saw news coverage of the pardon story, started a national online petition at Change.Org titled, “NC Governor Bev Perdue: Pardon the Wilmington Ten” at https://www.change.org/petitions/nc-governor-bev-perdue-pardon-the-wilmington-10.
At press time she had collected over fifty signatures in one day, and expects more as the story gets more national play.
On the popular social media site Facebook, in just two days, over one hundred people “liked” the Wilmington Ten Pardon of Innocence Project site, and actively urged others to join them.
Organizers are directing those who want to learn more about the Wilmington Ten online to go to “Triumphant Warriors” at http://triumphantwarriors.ning.com/, which is hosted by Wilmington Ten member Wayne Moore.
There are also plans for a dedicated NNPA-sponsored website that will not only display historical videos, stills and writings about the Wilmington Ten, but updates and stories about the current pardon effort.
There are also plans to form a local advisory committee in Wilmington, and a national committee, with the expressed task of attracting more broad-based support from across the state and nation.
Democratic Congressman Brad Miller of North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, urged Gov. Perdue in his letter of pardon support, “Although the years of incarceration can’t be reclaimed, North Carolina can still address [this] injustice with a pardon to clear the factual record, and concede serious state wrongdoing.”
             Fourth District Congressman David Price, also a Democrat, told Gov. Perdue in his letter, "Although the convictions were overturned, I don't believe justice has yet been served in this case. The Wilmington Ten were wrongly accused and spent many years of their lives imprisoned for crimes they did not commit."
"They were innocent," Rep. Price concluded, "and they deserve to be pardoned."
Professor Gene Nichol, of the University of North Carolina School of Law, wrote Gov. Perdue, “It is imperative that the state of North Carolina act to remove constitutional injuries inflicted in so invidious a manner.”
And North Carolina NAACP Pres. Rev. William Barber, who presented a resolution to the national NAACP Board last weekend in Miami, Fla. in support of the Wilmington Ten, told Gov. Perdue in his letter, “Our [legal] system does not empower our courts to repair and heal such breaches and wounds [of false convictions]. Our Constitution, instead, places such acts of human compassion in your hands.”
                                           -30-


[Originally published May 24, 2012]
EXCLUSIVE
NATIONAL NAACP BOARD PASSES RESOLUTION
SUPPORTING WILMINGTON TEN PARDONS

By unanimous vote, the national NAACP Board passed a resolution during its Florida retreat last weekend supporting the petition of pardons of innocence for the Wilmington Ten.
Rev. William Barber, president of the NCNAACP and a national NAACP Board member, and veteran civil rights attorney Al McSurely, crafted the resolution language. Barber, who is also chair of the national NAACP’s Political Action Committee, then asked NAACP Chairwoman Roslyn Brock to have the meeting agenda amended to allow for the proposed resolution to be heard, which it was without objection.
Guilford County, NC Commissioner Carolyn Coleman, another member of the national NAACP Board and Executive Committee member, introduced the motion, and after strong lobbying by both Ms. Coleman and Rev. Barber, it passed unanimously.
“What this means is not only do we have a public endorsement of the [national] NAACP,” says Rev. Barber, “but passage of a board resolution makes this an NAACP policy throughout the entire association, and the full weight and structure [of the NAACP] is available to support and promote the call for a pardon [of innocence],”
“This is why Ms. Coleman and I felt it necessary to insist and ensure that this resolution passed.”
Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., leader of the Wilmington Ten, and past president of the national NAACP, upon hearing the news of the resolution, thanked Rev. Barber, adding, “May God continue to bless the NAACP.”
The draft resolution to the NAACP Board supporting the petition for pardons of innocence for the Wilmington Ten reads:

WHEREAS in September 1972 ten young North Carolinians were tried and convicted of major felonies in New Hanover County;
AND WHEREAS after the dust settled, it turned out their main crime was trying to obey the law, namely the requirements of the U.S. Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court to dismantle the separate and unequal school systems of New Hanover County;
AND WHEREAS the young people were Benjamin Chavis, Wayne Moore, Marvin Patrick, Connie Tindall, James McKoy, Willie  Vereen, Reginald Epps,  Anne Shepard-Turner, William “Joe” Wright, and Jerry Jacobs, and were popularly called “The Wilmington Ten”;
AND WHEREAS in 1980, after the young people had spent many years in prison, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled they had been victims of outrageous acts of prosecutorial misconduct, Chavez v. State of North Carolina, 637 F.2d 213, using language all too familiar to those of us who believe in racial justice in North Carolina, saying: “The prosecution's failure to produce . . . to defense counsel the ‘amended’ statement and the record of the hospitalization of the state's key witness and the restrictions upon cross-examination of the key witness and another about favorable treatment which might have induced favorable testimony require us to overturn the convictions” ;
AND WHEREAS such gross prosecutorial misconduct is too often associated with the trials of poor minorities and civil rights activists;
AND WHEREAS each time this linkage is validated by higher courts, it widens the breach in our human family, and aggravates the hurts of past indignities;
AND WHEREAS our constitution does not empower the courts to repair and heal such breaches and wounds, but rather places such acts of human compassion in the Governor's hands;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the National NAACP will do all in its power to help its North Carolina Conference of NAACP Branches and its broad Historic Thousands on Jones Street Coalition in convincing the Hon. Governor Beverly Perdue to grant a full pardon to the Wilmington Ten, and become, as the Prophet Isaiah would say, “a repairer of the breach.”
                                        -30-




   5-24-12 wilmjourn-ed  A LETTER TO GOV. BEVERLY PERDUE

   Dear Gov. Perdue:
   By now you know about the petition for ten individual pardons of innocence submitted to your office last week on behalf of the Wilmington Ten.
   By now, you also know about the Ten - nine African-American males and one white female social worker, who forty years ago in 1972, were all falsely arrested, and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and arson in connection with the 1971 firebombing of Mike’s Grocery. 
All ten were falsely tried, convicted and sentenced to a total 282 years in prison.
Years later while the Ten were still in prison, the witnesses state prosecutors used to convict them, began to recant their testimony.
Indeed, the whole case begins to fall apart, thanks to a CBS News “60 Minutes” report.
And finally, the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals overturns all of the convictions in the case, citing prosecutorial misconduct, among other things.
Given that the state had absolutely no evidence beyond three witnesses who admitted that they were bought off by prosecutors, it becomes very clear that the Wilmington Ten were never guilty of the dastardly crimes they were accused of.
But the state of North Carolina refused to clear their names.
The responsibility for considering that recourse now is in your hands.
And as you read through the legal materials, and letters of support from political, legal and civic notables, we’d like for you to realize something.
Not only are three of the Wilmington Ten dead, but the surviving seven have had their lives dramatically altered from what their once youthful selves had originally planned to be.
There is no question that the false prosecution of the Wilmington Ten dramatically impacted their lives, as well as those of their families and loved ones.
 Most of the defendants were young, some barely in their twenties, when they were convicted in 1972 of crimes they didn’t commit.
Some were still in high school, and living with their parents.
At least one, Anne Shepard, was raising three young children.
 Most of them had dreams of bright, hope-filled futures. Some wanted to practice law. Some wanted to play professional sports.
And some were already musicians, looking for their first really big break.
Their only collective “crime,” they each individually say, was their willingness to openly, but peacefully, challenge the New Hanover County Public School System in the early 1970s when it declined to provide an equal, quality education to black students.
Because of their individual courage, and commitment to equality, the Wilmington Ten suffered false prosecution, years of imprisonment and great personal hardships for themselves and their families. The collective impact for all of them has extended decades beyond their release from prison, and well after a federal appellate court overturned their convictions.
Today, forty years hence their false prosecutions, three of the Wilmington Ten - Jerry Jacobs, William Joseph Wright and Anne Shepard - have died, their dreams unfulfilled, according to their bereaved families.
One member, Reginald Epps, has worked so hard to protect his privacy and rebuild his life, that he rarely speaks of his Wilmington Ten experience anymore.
Another member, Rev. Benjamin Chavis, the leader of the group, has evolved into one of the most accomplished civil rights leaders of our time, but he’s paid a dear personal price to do so, having almost lost his life in prison.
As has Wayne Moore, who had to move from Wilmington after his release from prison, leaving family and friends behind, because he was denied the opportunity to work and live in his hometown due to his well-known association.
Willie Earl Vereen, Connie Tindall, James McKoy and Marvin Patrick, all now elderly men with health challenges, all feel robbed of the promise they once had to be productive citizens forty years ago. They have lost faith in government, and angrily challenge North Carolina to render to them long overdue justice - both tangibly and symbolically - to remove the clouds they say still follow their names, and reputations.
In all, the lives of the Wilmington Ten have been marked by struggle, hardship and indignities they otherwise would not have experienced if the state of North Carolina, forty years ago, had not sought to punish them for their political activism, and willingness to demand social change.
While the past cannot be changed, amends can be made today for what was unjustly done to ten innocent American citizens, and North Carolinians.
                                    -30-



[Originally published May 31, 2012]

PETITIONERS FROM ACROSS THE NATION

SUPPORT WILMINGTON TEN PARDONS

By Cash Michaels

Editor


 Hundreds of citizens from across the nation are now expressing their support for the pardons campaign for the Wilmington Ten; joining congresspeople, state lawmakers and civil rights leadership in calling for the names of ten falsely convicted activists to be cleared after forty years.
 Meanwhile last week, after a presentation by attorney Irving Joyner, co-chair of the Wilmington Ten Pardons of Innocence Project, the North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus voted unanimously to request of Gov. Beverly Perdue that she grant individual pardons of “actual innocence” to the Wilmington Ten, three of whom are deceased.
 The NCNAACP, which facilitated that meeting, also spearheaded the effort to have the national NAACP Board of Directors to also unanimously pass a resolution of support.
  “It was one of the proudest things I’ve ever done,” Rev. William Barber, president of the NCNAACP, told The Carolinian.
  In addition, thousands have visited the Wilmington Ten Pardons of Innocence Project page on Facebook to see archival photos, watch the videos, read the posts and articles, and click over to the Change.Org petition page, which had amassed nearly three hundred signatures, after only just over a week, by press time Wednesday.
  Of course there are the expected in-state signatures of support on the online petition from Durham, Raleigh, Charlotte, and yes, Wilmington. But there are an impressive number of support signatures from places like Fair Oaks, California, Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, DC, among many more.
   And in many of those are comments of outrage that the state of North Carolina, has not seen fit in the past forty years to correct its wrongful convictions of the Wilmington Ten, sentencing them collectively to 282 years in prison on conspiracy charges associated with racial violence in Wilmington in Feb. 1971, and specifically the firebombing of a white-owned grocery store.
    I lived in NC from 1965 to 1970, so I followed this case with great concern from its inception. I hadn't realized that the ten hadn't been "completely" pardoned. Please pardon them now,” wrote Ted Cloak of Albuquerque, New Mexico.
    Rhonda Baird of Silver Spring, Maryland wrote, “As Dr. King stated, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
    “It is past time to ring the bells of justice,” wrote Linda Jaramillo of Cleveland, Ohio on the Change.Org petition for the Wilmington Ten pardon petition. “The General Synod of the United Church of Christ stands in solidarity with the Wilmington 10 and appeal to our brothers and sisters of the Church to do the same. We pray for a just and speedy decision by Governor Perdue.”
    “Prosecutorial Misconduct,” declared Danita Parker of Rougemont, NC. “The things which were done in the Wilmington 10 case contrasted with the Duke Lacrosse Case makes Nifong appear to be an angel. Let's right the wrong in this situation. Yes NC has a very storied history, so does America. These fellows have lost any real opportunity to live a normal life. Give them peace at this late age. May the Peace of the Lord be with you always!
     Scott Douglas of Birmingham, Alabama wrote, “Unfinished human rights business of importance."
     From Wilmington, NC, Dr. Bettie Glenn wrote, “People of courage stood their ground, sacrificed life and liberty to bring attention to the inequality in American Society. The Wilmington 10 took bold and historic action to hold America accountable. Democracy is not free; therefore, those wronged in the fight for human rights should be treated justly. Do that which is right, just, and moral!”
      A former North Carolina resident, Frank Chadwick of Rantoul, Illinois, wrote directly to Gov. Perdue, saying, “I call on you to make it clear where you stand on the terrible injustice done forty years ago, because on this matter you speak for North Carolina. You cannot undo that injustice, but your actions will tell the world that North Carolina today either abhors the criminal acts of its former prosecutors, or it shrugs and considers them unimportant. Please do not simply shrug.”
      From Craftsbury, Vermont, Sonia Dunbar wrote, “As an attorney, a member of the United Church of Christ and a ministerial student, I firmly believe that the correct judicial, moral, ethical, religious and policy-based action to take is to issue a pardon and thereby reaffirm the importance of the First Amendment in North Carolina.
      And Latasha Perry of Wilmington, a grandchild of a late Wilmington Ten member Anne Shepard, wrote, “You have no choice but to pardon the innocent. There is no legal justification for withholding a public pardon of the innocent as ruled by our own courts.”
“It is shameful enough that innocent citizens spent time in prison due to wrongful convictions based primarily on the admittedly fictitious testimony of the witnesses the conviction was founded on. Apparently our justice system is so jaded that it is implied that release of the Wilmington 10 should be compensation enough. It is not.”
 Ms. Perry continued, “
Lives were ruined. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters divided from their families. Years of life lost behind bars. And even after release, many suffered the consequences of being deemed guilty, despite being presumed innocent according to our own laws. 
For us it is not about monetary compensation, it is about righting a wrong that is long overdue.”
“How can we preserve the rights we are due as citizens, preserve the justice system we are taught to rely on for the enforcement of those rights for "The people," unless we take the steps to make this right? 
Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat - innocent until proven guilty. 
Pardon the innocent,” Ms. Perry wrote.
The petition page is located at https://www.change.org/petitions/nc-governor-bev-perdue-pardon-the-wilmington-10.
The Wilmington Ten Pardons of Innocence Project is located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheWilmingtonTenPardonOfInnocenceProject
Editor’s Note - Cash Michaels is the coordinator for the Wilmington Ten Pardons of innocence Project, which is sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
                                       -30-



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