The Three Death Sentences of Clarence Henderson A Battle for Racial Justice at the Dawn of the Civil Rights Era

Chris Joyner

eBook - 2022

Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR... SO FAR by The New YorkerThe story of Clarence Henderson, a Black sharecropper convicted and sentenced to death three times for a murder he didn’t commitThe Three Death Sentences of Clarence Henderson is the story of Clarence Henderson, a wrongfully accused Black sharecropper who was sentenced to die three different times for a murder he didn’t commit, and the prosecution desperate to pin the crime on him despite scant evidence. His first trial lasted only a day and featured a lackluster public defense. The book also tells the story of Homer Chase, a former World War II paratrooper and New England radical who was sent to the South by the Communist Party to recruit African Americans to the caus...e while offering them a chance at increased freedom. And it’s the story of Thurgood Marshall’s NAACP and their battle against not only entrenched racism but a Communist Party—despite facing nearly as much... more