SC Board Pardons Relatives of Tom Joyner; Executed in 1915

South Carolina’s Parole and Pardons board unanimously pardoned two great-uncles of national radio host Tom Joyner Wednesday. Thomas and Meeks Griffin were convicted of the 1913 murder of a white farmer in Chester County.

Joyner came to Columbia from Dallas to plead their case. “They went to trial and had one day to prepare for a murder case. One day. They were convicted and two years later they were executed,“ he said.

The men were accused by John “Monk” Stevenson, who was an early suspect. He later told several people that the Griffin brothers and the two other men he accused with them were innocent and that he had named them to save himself.

Harvard professor Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., who discovered the story about Joyner’s great-uncles while researching Joyner’s genealogy for the PBS documentary “African American Lives 2”, said after the pardon hearing, “He framed them because he said they could afford their own defense. And of course they were only given one day to prepare before they were put on trial. They were railroaded. But the good people of South Carolina today have done the right thing.“ 

The Griffin brothers owned about 130 acres of land, Joyner says. “These were hard-working, outstanding community citizens with outstanding record and reputation. And they were unjustly convicted and executed.“

Even after their trial, white members of the community came to their defense. Magistrates, business leaders, former sheriffs and the mayor of their town all signed a petition to the governor asking him to commute their sentence. Even the judge who heard their case signed it, adding, “I heard this case and I don’t think I could have given a verdict of guilty.“

But then-governor Richard Manning allowed the sentence to stand and the Griffin brothers were executed in the state’s electric chair on September 29, 1915.

Joyner says it’s an injustice that could have happened to almost anyone, and could happen again today. “Racism is alive. And we can’t move forward until we close the past. We have to bring closure first and I think that it’s important as a family, as a race, as a country to bring closure so we can move forward to repairing the damage that racism has brought on all of us,“ he said.

Albany Law School professor Dr. Paul Finkelman, who helped with the research on the case, says he’s never seen a case in which so many white public officials and sentences came forward to try to help black men who had been convicted.

“The Griffin brothers stand for the thousands of people who are unjustly accused, unjustly convicted,“ he said after the pardon was granted. “It’s not just Tom Joyner’s family. This is a much bigger story and there are other stories that need to be told. The whole story is one of no one wanting to step up and saying, ‘Let’s do justice.‘ And that’s a problem today just as it was then. And we’ve seen justice done today. It needs to be done all the time.“