The youngest child executed in America

Brut America

Two girls walked off into the woods and never came back. A 14-year-old black boy was executed for their murder three months later. This is the story of George Stinney Jr.

Transcript

00:00They gave him a trial that only lasted two and a half hours.

00:03They deliberated for 10 minutes.

00:05And then on June 16, 1944, they executed him.

00:11They visited George Stinney's house prior to...

00:30They were looking for flowers.

00:32They went by his house to ask his sisters if they knew where the flowers were.

00:39Later on that evening, they came up missing.

00:41And after a long search, the very next morning, they were found dead.

00:47George was part of the search party.

00:49And he mentioned that they had come by his house earlier.

00:54And immediately, he became the number one, not even a suspect.

01:03There was no investigation.

01:05He was their killer.

01:10They gave him a trial that only lasted two and a half hours.

01:38They deliberated for 10 minutes.

01:41And then on June 16, 1944, they executed him via electric chair.

01:49And they used the Bible to prop him up so that the head fasteners would fit his head.

01:58They electrocuted this young boy four times before they pronounced him dead.

02:13We have letters from the governor that he...

02:16When people would write to the governor and say,

02:18hey, don't do this, don't execute this boy.

02:21Then he goes on to say, but I have you know that this little Negro killed those two girls,

02:29raped the oldest girl's dead body, and then came back and raped it 20 minutes later and raped it

02:36again. Very specific, you know, allegation, except no rape was actually presented.

02:46And if you hear what he said, he made him into a monster.

02:48And that's what the community thought he was.

03:22So this stuff is still happening.

03:32It didn't just happen in 1944.

03:34It didn't just happen with Emmett Till and, you know,

03:38and Medgar Evers and all these others that have come there.

03:41It's still happening today.

03:44There's a pattern of systematic injustice that is going on, has been going on in this country,

03:49and it's been hidden for a long, long time.

03:52So the hope is in telling the story that we can kind of introduce the reality of it,

04:00because we've been hiding as a country behind it for a long, long time.

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