First Time

Last October, a Mississippi county jury sentenced a 21-year-old Negro named George A. Gordon to death for the rape of a white woman. But last week the nine-member Mississippi Supreme Court unanimously ordered a new trial. Reason: Gordon was sentenced by an all-white jury in a county that had systematically barred Negroes from jury duty for as long as anyone could remember. It was the first time that the Mississippi Supreme Court had ever remanded a case on this basis. In its opinion, the court pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court had previously ruled in a similar case that such racial discrimination on a jury was reason enough to order a new trial for a Negro.

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