J. Robert Martin Papers, 1947-1990

This collection consists of material donated to the South Carolina Legal History Collection by Patricia Keys, with the assistance of attorney and USC Law alumnus Lowell W. Ross, in December 1990. James Robert Martin, Jr. was a graduate of the Washington and Lee School of Law in 1931, who served in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1943 to 1944, as judge on the Thirteenth Judicial Circuit of South Carolina from 1944 to 1961, as United States District Judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of South Carolina from 1961 to 1965, and as chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina from 1965 to 1979. Judge Martin presided over the May 1947 Willie Earle lynching trial that gained national attention, including articles in the New York Times and Time magazine. The lynching of Willie Earle is considered to be the last instance of a public lynching in South Carolina. A white mob attacked and killed Earle, who had been jailed on the charge of stabbing a taxi driver in Greenville, South Carolina.

Mrs. Keys was Judge Martin’s secretary during his tenure as U.S. District Court Judge. The collection she donated consisted of 187 items, including newspaper clippings, a Walter Winchell radio transcript, and over 100 letters written to Judge Martin regarding his handling of the Willie Earle lynching trial. With the addition of an original June 14, 1947 New Yorker issue containing Rebecca West’s eyewitness report on the trial, “A Reporter At Large: Opera in Greenville,” and a program and newspaper clippings regarding the Willie Earle Lynching symposium held at Furman University on November 27, 1990, the collection consists of a total of 196 items.

The portion of the collection digitized here consists of the correspondence Judge Martin received from judges, attorneys, and members of the public across the United States between May 7 and August 2, 1947, regarding his handling of the trial proceedings. The originals of these digitized papers and the portion of the collection that could not be digitized due to copyright restrictions may be viewed by arrangement with the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law Library: https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/law/law_library/index.php.