THE THREE DEATH SENTENCES OF CLARENCE HENDERSON: A Battle for Racial Justice at the Dawn of the Civil Rights Era

In January 1950, in a small town outside Atlanta, an all-white jury convicted Clarence Henderson, a Black share-cropper, of murdering a white man while attempting to rape a white woman. The trial was conducted under armed guard and lasted just a single day. Henderson pleaded with the jury to send him home to his wife and children, but the judge ordered him to be executed within a month.