Speaker 1: Now y'all know, each season, I gotta do my absolute
Speaker 1: best to introduce y'all to powerful black women that I
Speaker 1: didn't know and maybe you didn't either. Well, today I
Speaker 1: introduced to you two women from Alabama that did nine
Speaker 1: years in jail unfairly all for standing on business. I
Speaker 1: didn't know. Maybe you didn't. No, I didn't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: you didn't. I didn't know. I didn't know. Maybe you didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. Fifty
Speaker 1: one year old Maggie Boseman and sixty nine year old
Speaker 1: Julia Wilder went to jail in Alabama January twelfth, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, for nineteen seventy eight voter fraud. For perspective,
Speaker 1: white folks in the town had been hit with voter
Speaker 1: fraud in the past and were met with minimal punishments
Speaker 1: and or fines. Nobody had ever been jailed. Fifty one
Speaker 1: year old Maggie Boseman got four years and sixty nine
Speaker 1: year old Julia Wilder got the maximum five years, and
Speaker 1: they could have pled guilty and got probation, but they
Speaker 1: took it to court because they said they had done
Speaker 1: nothing wrong, like being black in Alabama, wasn't offense enough.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy eight, there was an election in Pickens County, Alabama. Now,
Speaker 1: Julia Wilder was the president of the Pickens County Voters League,
Speaker 1: and Maggie Boseman, who just so happens to be the
Speaker 1: cousin of one of my comedy partners, Chris Jones, set
Speaker 1: it off. And that's how I even came across these women.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you, Chris. But Maggie Boseman was president
Speaker 1: of the local NAACP chapter and they were just urging
Speaker 1: elderly literate Blacks to vote by absentee ballot. Maggie and
Speaker 1: Julia picked up the absentee ballot applications from the County
Speaker 1: Elections Commission, used central addresses for him, and had all
Speaker 1: thirty nine notaras by the same notary. It wasn't even
Speaker 1: really an issue until on election day when one of
Speaker 1: the absentee voters showed up at the polls adamant to vote.
Speaker 1: That led to an investigation because that lady was seventy
Speaker 1: nine year old Sophie span and she testified she knew
Speaker 1: nothing about no absentee ballots, she never signed one, and
Speaker 1: that testimony was largely the reason the jury voted for conviction.
Speaker 1: But she was sus like the sheriff bought her lunch
Speaker 1: right before she testified for what And she even testified
Speaker 1: that she would do whatever the chef wanted me to do,
Speaker 1: but he ain't told me to say nothing. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: It was twelve other folks whose ballots were filed by
Speaker 1: Miss Bozman and Miss Wilder. They testified too, but their
Speaker 1: testimonies were a bunch of confusing stories and all over
Speaker 1: the place. They didn't really stick. The Sophie span testimony.
Speaker 1: That's what did them in, even though they had fifteen
Speaker 1: character witness to vouch for them. To the twelve white jurors,
Speaker 1: it was to novel. They were painted as a couple
Speaker 1: of women who went out and stole thirty nine votes. Listen,
Speaker 1: listen here, listen. If we really wanted to be vindick DEVAQUEI,
Speaker 1: we could have got him thirty nine counts of forger
Speaker 1: repunishable bob to ten years each. That's what the da
Speaker 1: pep Johnson said, who scratched all blacks from the jury.
Speaker 1: They spent eleven days in the state penitentiary. Whatever were
Speaker 1: daily protests. The then governor scrambled to put together a
Speaker 1: work release program form. They got transferred to Tuskegee to
Speaker 1: finish out their turn. They lived in a trailer house
Speaker 1: instead of jail. One juror, thirty three year old William
Speaker 1: Tay said, it may sound like five years to a
Speaker 1: little lady, but if someone's found guilty, their age shouldn't
Speaker 1: make much, no difference. A white deputy sheriff said, listen,
Speaker 1: if they can get out there in march them ages,
Speaker 1: they gonna do just fine in jail. Maggie Boseman and
Speaker 1: Julia Wilder went to jail for trying to help elderly,
Speaker 1: illiterate black folks to cast their votes in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either, I didn't know.