Pardon
In May 2012, Benjamin Chavis and six surviving members of the group petitioned North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue for a pardon. The NAACP was supporting the pardon, as well as compensation to be paid to the men and their survivors for their years in jail. On December 22, 2012 The New York Times published an editorial titled, "Pardons for the Wilmington Ten" that urged Governor Perdue to "finally pardon" the group of civil rights activists. Perdue granted a pardon of innocence on December 31, 2012 which qualified each of the ten to state compensation of $50,000 per year of incarceration.
Read more about this topic: Wilmington Ten
Famous quotes containing the word pardon:
“Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?”
—Ernest Renan (1823–1892)
“Your letter of excuses has arrived. I receive the letter but do not admit the excuses except in courtesy, as when a man treads on your toes and begs your pardon—the pardon is granted, but the joint aches, especially if there is a corn upon it.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“A beautiful person among the Greeks, was thought to betray by this sign some secret favor of the immortal gods; and we can pardon pride, when a woman possesses such a figure that wherever she stands, or moves, or leaves a shadow on the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, she confers a favor on the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)