The Story of Maggie Bozeman
b'This week on the Stay Talking Ish podcast we share an interview we did with the daughter of Maggie Bozeman.
In 1979, Pickens County Alabama officials accused Maggie Bozeman and her longtime friend Julia Wilder of casting absentee ballots for 39 elderly residents without their permission. All-white state-court juries convicted both black women of vote fraud. Bozeman and Wilder denied any wrongdoing, and the convictions sparked national outrage.
When the two were imprisoned in 1982, civil rights activists organized a motorcade from Montgomery to the Pickens County seat of Carrollton. Bozeman and Wilder spent 15 days in prison and 10 months in a work-release center before being paroled. The combination of pressure from protesters and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, as well as media coverage, brought attention to the case\\u2014and, ultimately, a federal judge threw out the cases against both.
Please make sure to comment and subscribe. Intro by Kin Rich.'