47. The NAACP Got Involved To Halt The Death Sentences
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had formed a decade ago, in 1909, to promote civil liberties and social integration and advancement for African Americans. One of its most prominent offices was in New York City, a metropolitan area that had also been swept up in the race riots of the Red Summer.
The New York office of the NAACP immediately began coordinating with people in Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas, to get the guilty verdicts reversed and the death sentences dropped. The 12 men who had been sentenced to death became known as the Elaine Twelve, and what would unfold around them would shape national politics.
