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Eisnehower's "Crusade of Freedom"... Man convicted of "leering"...
Eisnehower's "Crusade of Freedom"... Man convicted of "leering"...
Item # 723835
November 12, 1952
THE NEW YORK TIMES, Nov. 12, 1952
* Convicted of "Leering" from a distance
* Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina
* President Eisenhower's "Crusade of Freedom" speech
The front page has: "Negro in North Carolina Convicted Of Assault by 'Leer' at White Girl", which continues on page 21. It tells of sharecropper Mack Ingram's conviction of assaulting a white woman by leering at her from 60 feet. The trial became the subject of much Communist propaganda. The details are worth reading.
Page 13 has the entire text of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's third "Crusade of Freedom Speech" - a speech given just a few days after being elected President.
Fifty-Six pages, rag edition in nice condition.
AI notes: In 1952, Mack Ingram, a Black farmer from Yanceyville, North Carolina, was convicted of “leering” at a white teenage girl, Willa Jean Boswell, a charge that reflected the racially charged legal climate of the Jim Crow South. The incident arose when Ingram reportedly glanced in the girl’s direction from approximately 65–75 feet away while driving past, with no physical contact or direct interaction. Despite the minimal nature of the act, an all-white jury found him guilty of assault on a female, sentencing him to six months in jail, though the sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation pending appeal. The case drew attention from civil rights groups, notably the NAACP, who argued that the conviction was both racially motivated and legally unsound, highlighting issues such as the exclusion of Black jurors and the insufficiency of evidence. In 1953, the North Carolina Supreme Court overturned the conviction, ruling that fear alone based on a distant look did not constitute criminal assault, and the case subsequently became a cited example of the racial injustice inherent in Jim Crow-era prosecutions.
Category: The 20th Century
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