Nationally syndicated radio host Tom Joyner is going to state appeals court in Columbia, South Carolina on Oct. 14 to seek posthumous pardons for two great-uncles who were put to death for a crime they didn’t commit.
Joyner learned the story of his uncles when noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, PhD, announced the results of genealogy research conducted on Joyner’s family as part of Gates’ PBS special, “African American Lives II.”
Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed on Sept. 29, 1915 after their arrest and conviction one day later for the slaying of a woman. Gates and his research team learned Joyner’s uncles were, in fact, framed by a black man who, Gates said, may well have done the killing himself.
The Joyner family knew nothing about the case, just that his grandmother was suddenly uprooted from South Carolina and relocated in a small, migrant town in Florida. She never told the family why she was forced to move.
“It was totally by surprise to me and my family,” Joyner said, noting that Gates did not tell the family the results of his research in advance of the taping, so their reactions were caught on the air as the story was revealed. “My father, who wasn’t in the room at the time, had never heard that story.”
Click here to read this feature in full.
Source: BlackAmericaWeb.com, October 6, 2009
Joyner learned the story of his uncles when noted Harvard scholar Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, PhD, announced the results of genealogy research conducted on Joyner’s family as part of Gates’ PBS special, “African American Lives II.”
Thomas and Meeks Griffin were executed on Sept. 29, 1915 after their arrest and conviction one day later for the slaying of a woman. Gates and his research team learned Joyner’s uncles were, in fact, framed by a black man who, Gates said, may well have done the killing himself.
The Joyner family knew nothing about the case, just that his grandmother was suddenly uprooted from South Carolina and relocated in a small, migrant town in Florida. She never told the family why she was forced to move.
“It was totally by surprise to me and my family,” Joyner said, noting that Gates did not tell the family the results of his research in advance of the taping, so their reactions were caught on the air as the story was revealed. “My father, who wasn’t in the room at the time, had never heard that story.”
Click here to read this feature in full.
Source: BlackAmericaWeb.com, October 6, 2009
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