The Daily Oklahoman
Saturday
03-17-1934
p.7/16

EIGHT SLAYERS PUT TO DEATH

All Executed in Southern States Are Negroes

(By The Associated Press)

Eight Negroes were executed in the south Friday, three for
murder and four for attacks on white girls. Three of those
convicted of attack admitted their guilt but the other
protested he was innocent.

At Hernando, Miss., Issac Howard, Ernest McGehee and Johnny Jones
confessed they attacked a 17-year-old white girl, warned others
not to commit similar crimes and faced the hangman singing Negro
spirituals.

John Downer, electrocuted at the Georgia prison at Milledgeville,
claimed until the last that another Negro wearing Downer's shoes
committed the attack of which the Negro went to the chair.

Sandy Walker followed Downer to the death chamber in Milledgeville
and said he was "satisfied" with the penalty he was paying for
killing two Worth county, Ga., Negroes.

Another double electrocution at Raleigh, N.C., took the lives of
Jesse Brooke, who killed Detective Roland A Gill of Durham, and
James Johnson, convicted of slaying his sweetheart.

Bob Owens was hanged at Tupelo, Miss., for the slaying of
R.B. Johnson, a wealthy recluse.


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