Description
In the Jimmy Rogers Chronicles, book 1 (Can’t Stop It) Jediah Hudson’s back story includes his conviction at age nineteen of the rape and murder of a white teenage girl.
Hearing his wife Victoria Hudson sing “Love You More Than Ever” reveals she certainly thinks Jediah was innocent all along. Victoria never lost faith in her man. If Jediah is innocent, then for whom did he serve ten years in the State Penitentiary?
Is it just a coincidence, that on the same day a beautiful teenager’s virginity and life was maliciously taken from her, the grandfather Jimmy Rogers never knew, Harold Rogers was in an automobile accident that took his life? Jimmy never knew his paternal Grandfather.
Victoria met Jediah Hudson at a Greyhound bus station while working as volunteers for the Congress on Racial Equality (C.O.R.E). Jediah, along with the other African-American men on the bus were arrested. These C.O.R.E organized bus trips were called the “Journey of Reconciliation”.
C.O.R.E used these bus rides to test whether or not the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision on June 3, 1946, in Morgan v. Virginia would be honored. The Court ruled that a Virginia law requiring racial segregation on commercial interstate buses constituted a violation of the commerce clause of the U. S. Constitution.
Unfortunately, many of the destination cities for these “Journey of Reconciliation” rides defied the Supreme Court and the volunteer riders were ejected from the buses and treated inhumanely.
The “Journey of Reconciliation” rides were forerunners of the “Freedom Rides” that occurred in the 1960’s after the U. S. Supreme Court, in the Boynton v. Virginia case outlawed racial segregation of interstate transportation facilities.
Did Jediah’s work for racial equality play a role in his conviction and death sentence for the rape and murder of a white teenage girl?
You’ll have to read “Can’t Stop It”..
We do know, the court denied Jediah the right to call character witnesses and therefore, Victoria could not testify in the defense of the man she loved.
