Rosa Lee Ingram

Ingram farmed adjoining lots with white sharecropper John Ed Stratford in Schley County, Georgia, near Ellaville. On November 4, 1947, Stratford confronted Ingram, accusing her of allowing her livestock to roam freely on his land. When Ingram reminded Stratford that both the livestock and the land were owned by their landlord, he struck her with a gun. Several of Ingram's sons came to her defense, and Stratford was killed by blows to the head. Ingram, along with four of her sons, Charles (age 17), Wallace (age 16), Sammie Lee (age 14), and James (age 12), were initially arrested, although James was later released. Charles was tried separately and was released at the conclusion of his trial due to insufficient evidence. The judge presiding over the case was Judge W. M. Harper. The attorney representing Ingram (and appointed to her the morning of the trial) was S. Hawkins Dykes. The jury for the trial was an all- white, all-male jury. ==Protest response to sentences and eventual 1959 parole, release==

The sentencing of Ingram and two of her sons to die in the electric chair was handed down by an all-white, all male jury on February 7, 1948. When the defendants' executions were scheduled for February 27, 1948, less than three weeks later, the U.S. erupted in protests against the trial and sentences, which had been conducted in haste and secrecy. These protests were spearheaded by the Civil Rights Congress, Communist Party USA, and the NAACP. The Pittsburgh Courier's reporting on the facts of the attempted sexual assault were further amplified by The Chicago Defender and the Daily Worker further publicized important details of the case. A second wave of protests ensued after the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the Ingrams' life sentences. When Sojourners for Truth and Justice came to visit Georgia governor Herman Talmadge in January 1953 to plead for the Ingrams' release, they were turned away by the governor's wife, who told them the governor was out hunting. In 1955, the Ingrams were again denied parole. The State Board gave no reason for the denial. After multiple subsequent requests were denied, on August 26, 1959, Ingram and her sons were paroled and released from prison. Following Ingram's release, she lived in Atlanta, Georgia until her death. ==Civil rights impact of the case==

The Ingrams were defended by the Civil Rights Congress, as well as Sojourners for Truth and Justice. As historian Erik S. McDuffie notes, the case galvanized Black feminists, highlighting the specific forms of oppression experienced by poor black women, as well as foregrounding the history of white men's sexual violence against black women. According to McDuffie, "Ingram's case represented in glaring terms the interlocking systems of oppression suffered by African American women: the painful memories of and the continued day-to-day sexual violence committed against Black women's bodies by white men, the lack of protection for and the disrespect of Black motherhood, the economic exploitation of black working-class women, and the disenfranchisement of Black women in the Jim Crow South." Black progressive women were the leaders of the global campaign to free the Ingrams. == See also ==