Jeremiah Reeves was a 16-year-old respected senior in the segregated high school, a talented jazz drummer in a band. He was also working as a grocery delivery boy in Montgomery, Alabama when he was indicted in 1952 for the rape of a white woman. He was indicted, then quickly convicted at a two-day trial by an all-white jury that deliberated less than a half-hour; the judge imposed a death sentence. Members of the African-American community were outraged at the sentence, as they knew that not only were white men seldom prosecuted for rape of black women, but they never received the death sentence for such crimes.
