As a widow and sharecropper, Rosa Ingram worked hard to provide for her 12 children. But when livestock ventured onto their white neighbor’s plot, something happened that would make their lives a living Hell.
The neighbor stormed to Ingram’s house. Red-faced and spitting, he confronted her. She reminded him that the land and the livestock belonged to the landowner, not him – so he attacked her, hitting her with his gun!
Her sons came to their mother’s aid, beating the man off of her. But in 1947, self-defense was not a privilege Black people could easily exercise.
The man later died. Without counsel or a fair trial, Ingram and her sons were sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
But all was not lost. Our community immediately took action.
The NAACP paid for their defense lawyer, and started a national campaign to free Ingram and her sons. But efforts didn’t stop there. They raised money to get the family a home away from sharecropping altogether!
The organizations never stopped working. Eventually, Ingram and her sons were freed in 1959.
Ingram and her sons defended themselves against a self-entitled white man who believed his whiteness gave him the authority to use violence against them during a dispute.
Their case showed that justice, which is so often lost to our people, is possible – especially when we work together to challenge the system!