In the State penitentiary at Richmond, Va., young Odell Waller awaited death this week by electrocution. A Negro sharecropper, guilty of murdering a white man, Waller would have died long since if his case had not become a cause célèbre.
Liberals, writers, college president, labor leaders, Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, Mrs. Calvin Coolidge had asked the President to investigate. Fortnight ago, 18,000 Negroes, massing at Madison Square Garden to orate about racial discrimination, had added their petition. Worried over the Negro's role in democracy, the New York Times declared: "The Waller case transcends sectional issues."
50 Sacks of Wheat. The case had...
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