Odell Waller
| Odell Waller | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 1917 |
| Died |
July 2, 1942 (aged 25) Richmond, Virginia |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | sharecropper |
| Known for | 1940 shooting of Oscar Wheldon Davis |
Odell Waller (1917 – July 2, 1942) was an African American sharecropper from Gretna, Virginia executed for the fatal shooting of his white landlord, Oscar Wheldon Davis, on July 15, 1940. Waller unsuccessfully maintained at his trial that the killing had been in self-defense, but was convicted of a jury of white citizens who had paid the poll tax, a measure that effectively barred blacks and poor whites from jury service.
The Workers' Defense League, a socialist labor rights organization, began a national campaign calling for the commutation of Waller's sentence, and was supported in its efforts by novelist Pearl S. Buck, philosopher John Dewey, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. President Franklin D. Roosevelt also made a private appeal on Waller's behalf to Virginia Governor Colgate Darden. Though the campaign won several postponements of the sentence, Waller was finally executed on July 2, 1942. The case failed to overturn the poll tax, but led to reform of Virginia's penal system and motivated Pauli Murray to begin her career in civil rights law.
Odell Waller was born in 1917 to Dollie Jones and an unknown father, who died shortly after his birth. Jones gave the boy to her sister Annie Waller and Annie's husband, Willis Waller, to adopt, and Odell considered Annie his mother. Odell completed three years of high school, but was later forced to leave school to work on the farm. From 1935 to 1938, he was convicted of seven offenses, including assault, reckless driving, bootlegging, and carrying a concealed razor. In January 1939, he married a woman named Mollie.
During the Great Depression, the Wallers fell behind on the mortgage for their farm, and after Willis died in 1938, the bank foreclosed. Annie and Odell then agreed to become sharecroppers for a white landlord, Oscar Davis. The relationship quickly soured. Davis was also a sharecropper, and when his own landlord reduced Davis' land allotment, Davis reduced that of the Wallers to only 2 acres (0.81 ha; 0.0031 sq mi). The Wallers accused Davis of failing to pay Annie an agreed $7.50 for taking care of Davis' ill wife for three weeks; when the Wallers subsequently refused to work in Davis' fields, Davis evicted them. Following the eviction, someone on the Davis farm mutilated one of the Wallers' dogs. After Annie's cousin Robert helped her harvest the farm's wheat, Davis took the whole crop rather than give the Wallers their share. In April 1940, Odell had taken a job constructing electrical lines in Maryland, but he returned on the weekend of July 13–14 to investigate the worsening situation.
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