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Mississippi
Bus Station
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"I became involved in my first civil rights case
[as chief counsel of appeals proceedings in
1950]. The man I defended -Willie McGee- was
accused of raping a white woman, even though he and
the woman had had a long-standing sexual
relationship. That fact, of course, only made the
crime all the more heinous to the Mississippi jury,
and McGee was sentenced to death. Challenging the
traditional practice of excluding blacks from the
jury and arguing that Southern judges and juries
reserved the death penalty for 'rape' as a cruel
and inhuman punishment for blacks only, I managed
to get the Supreme Court to stay the execution
twice."
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Yet the Supreme Court refused to rule on the
case, and McGee's execution date approached once
again. In the final few days, Abzug traveled to
Jackson, Mississippi for a last minute clemency
hearing. Local whites were incensed and had been
threatening violence throughout the trials and
appeals. When she arrived in town she found that no
hotel would take her. Alone, and also pregnant,
Abzug spent the night awake in the locked bathroom
stall of a bus station to avoid the Ku Klux
Klan.
The next day Abzug argued before the state
Governor for six hours, but despite extensive
publicity and protests organized by the Civil
Rights Congress, McGee was executed in 1951.
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How to Cite This Page
For a bibliography:
Jewish Women's Archive. "JWA - Bella Abzug - Mississippi Bus Station." <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wov/abzug/bus.html>.
For a footnote:
Jewish Women's Archive, "JWA - Bella Abzug - Mississippi Bus Station," <http://jwa.org/exhibits/wov/abzug/bus.html>.
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