Olin DeWitt Talmadge Johnston (November 9, 1896April 18, 1965) was an American politician from the US state of South Carolina. He served as the 98th governor of South Carolina, from 1935 to 1939 and again from 1943 to 1945. He represented the state in the United States Senate from 1945 until his death from pneumonia in Columbia, South Carolina in 1965. He has become infamously remembered for denying clemency to George Stinney, a 14 year-old African American boy who was wrongfully sentenced to death in 1944 after a trial that lasted for one single day, a conviction overturned 70 years later.
Early life
Johnston was born near Honea Path, South Carolina in Anderson County. His family maintained a farm and worked in the Chiquola Manufacturing Company's textile mill. In 1937, he signed the South Carolina Public Welfare Act into law Where previous governors used the National Guard and martial law to crush strikes, he would largely ignore the issue of preserving racial segregation, Meanwhile, Smith had opposed Roosevelt's labor reform and for years campaigned on a two-plank platform to "keep the Negro down and the price of cotton up," and had recently demonstrated that he intended to maintain his fight to preserve racial segregation after he had walked out of the 1936 Democratic National Convention when he heard that a black minister was going to deliver the invocation. South Carolina US Senator James F. Byrnes, though also an ardent New Dealer, opposed this new push, claiming it would make the state's textile mills uncompetitive. declined to endorse Johnston and instead supported the re-election of Smith. Stinney had been wrongfully convicted for the murders of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. Johnston wrote in a response to one appeal for clemency that
<blockquote>It may be interesting for you to know that Stinney killed the smaller girl to rape the larger one. Then he killed the larger girl and raped her dead body. Twenty minutes later he returned and attempted to rape her again, but her body was too cold. All of this he admitted himself.</blockquote>
It is reported that these statements were merely rumors, and were contradicted at the time by the medical examination report on the girl's body. In 2014, 70 years after the execution, Stinney's conviction was posthumously overturned. His case is remembered in the modern day as a wrongful execution and miscarriage of justice.
Death
Johnston died on April 18, 1965, following a long battle with cancer. near Honea Path, South Carolina.