Story 02
The Martinsville Seven
In 1949, Dunnigan traveled to Martinsville, Virginia, where a white woman named Ruby Stroud Floyd had accused thirteen Black men of rape.
Seven of the accused were convicted and sentenced to death by an all male, all white jury. Dunnigan covered the proceedings thoroughly, including the appeals filed by the NAACP pointing out that only Black men had been executed for rape since Virginia began using the electric chair in 1908. When their legal avenues were exhausted, the NAACP and the Civil Rights Congress began a nationwide grassroots public relations campaign, hoping to pressure Virginia Governor John Battle into commuting the men’s death sentences. Letters, pickets, marches, and vigils had no effect, and the seven men were executed in February 1951. In that year, Dunnigan became the first woman to win the "Newsman's Newsman" award from the Capital Press Club, an organization of Black journalists in Washington.
