The Case of the Wilmington Ten: Legal Repression and Black Political Action in the 1970s

February 19, 2013

Kenneth Janken, Professor of African and Afro-American Studies

In 1972, police arrested the Wilmington Ten, a group of young African Americans, for crimes committed during unrest instigated by the local Rights of White People organization’s protests against school desegregation. They were put on trial, convicted on perjured testimony solicited by the prosecution, and sentenced to 282 years in prison. Kenneth Janken considers the violence that surrounded school desegregation in North Carolina in the 1970s, the connections between the events in Wilmington and civil rights struggles across the state, the efforts of the State of North Carolina to suppress the Black Freedom Struggle, and the national and international campaign to free the Wilmington Ten.