Liberty and Justice for All

Human failures

Ignored and unnoticed

Life goes on-

Oblivious to the suffering

When life stops for those

We’ve Diminished, Dismissed and

Betrayed.

Our youngest victim:

George Junius Stinney, Jr.-

A boy of 14

Guilty before proved innocent

Legally lynched

Tried, Convicted, and

Electrocuted.

His final breaths

Agonizing-

A young life brutally

Extinguished.

Murdered White girls,

Thrown into a muddy ditch

A shroud of dirty water,

Covering bodies

Cold, bruised, broken

For riding bicycles

At the wrong place and time

While looking for “Maypops,”

Passion-flowers

Never found.

Heinously taken-

Their final moments

Horrifying,

Mary and Betty are laid to a

Restless peace.

While a "Prodigal Son’s" 

Body Burns

His Soul tormented in the

Hell of Abomination:  

Undue, Unmerciful,

Unrelenting. 

Watching over

Children and fools,

The Lord hears His prayers

After seven decades

A conviction vacated,

His punishment deemed

“cruel and usual”

For young George,

Poor and Black,

A man-child forever

At the wrong Place

And Time.

Grace and mercy

Right the wrongs of

Our injustices.

Yet cannot heal

Gaping wounds,

Bleeding for Forgotten Souls

Lost and obscured

In the shadow of prideful

Idealism.

\

"Seventy years after South Carolina executed a 14-year-old boy, 

 so small he sat on a book in the electric chair,

 a circuit court judge threw out his murder conviction."