Jackson Advocate

Australian Unions Protest Imminent Execution Of Willie McGee

Justice Black Grants New Hearing

WILLIE McGEE

SYDNEY. March 14. - Eleven major Australian labor unions have cabled protests to President Truman against the imminent execution of Willie McGee. the innocent Mississippi Negro facing death on March 20th on a false charge of rape.

The unions also protested the "attempted legal lynching of the Trenton Six Negroes" whose second trial is scheduled to begin today.

The text of the cable reads "emphatically protest attempted legal lynching of Trenton Six Negroes and Negro War Veteran Willie McGee. We demand all be freed and all forms of racial discrimination ended in interest of inter- (Continued on Page Four)
Australian
(Continued from Page One)
"national peace, freedom, and democracy."
The cable was signed by the Waterside Workers Federation, Sheet Metal Workers Union, Clerks Union, Engineers Union, Miners Federation, Building Workers Union and Postal, Boilermakers and Hotel Restaurant Employees Union.
Four times in the last five years national and world-wide protests and efforts of the American Civil Rights Congress have saved McGee from death.
The Civil Rights Congress appeals for letters and telegrams to President Truman urging him to use his power under the Federal Civil Rights Act to save McGee.
Meanwhile back in the United States the case was undergoing a series of rapid developments as the defense continued its last ditch fight to save the condemned man.
In Jacksonville, Florida, Tuesday morning, Judge Edwin R. Holmes, a member of the Fifth Circuit Bench, U. S. Court of Appeals, himself a native of Mississippi and a former Judge of the Southern District of the Federal Court in Mississippi, upheld the action of the previous week of his successor Judge Sidney C. Mize, in refusing to grant a petition for a certificate of probable cause for a new trial, even though counsel for McGee intimated that evidence would be presented at the new trial showing that the man was known to have consorted with the woman for whom he is condemned to death for rape; an allegation which Judge Mize rejected as being false on its face.
The ultimate fate of the condemned man however seemed to rest with Associate Justice Hugo Black, Liberal Southern member of the United States Supreme Court, who, immediately following the action of Judge Holmes, granted a petition for a hearing in the case which will be heard Thursday morning, March 15, in Washington, D. C.
During the hearing on the case in Vicksburg last week, Governor Fielding L. Wright, who has already said no clemency will be granted, said that he was getting an average of 300 letters per day seeking clemency for the condemned man.