Judge Edward Aaron
{{Short description|African-American handyman}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=October 2019}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Judge Edward Aaron
| image =
| caption =
| birth_date = {{birth date|1923|1|24|mf=y}}
| birth_name =
| birth_place = Birmingham, Alabama, U.S.
| death_date = {{death date and age|1991|3|11|1923|1|24|mf=y}}
| death_place = Dayton, Ohio, U.S.
| death_cause =
| body_discovered =
| education =
| occupation = Handyman
| spouse =
| parents =
| children =
}}
Judge Edward Aaron (24 January 1923 – 11 March 1991) was an African American handyman in Birmingham, Alabama, who was abducted by seven members of Asa Earl Carter's independent Ku Klux Klan group on Labor Day, 2 September 1957.{{cite book|author=W. Edward Harris|title=Miracle in Birmingham: A Civil Rights Memoir, 1954–1965|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JngkvtvwMV8C&pg=PA41|access-date=July 8, 2013|date=January 1, 2004|publisher=Stonework Press|isbn=978-0-9638864-7-7|pages=41–}}
Background
Aaron, or Arone, was born in Barbour County, Alabama on 24 January 1923 and grew up in Batesville.{{cite web |title=U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940–1947 |url=https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/11103185:2238?tid=&pid=&queryId=5d013aecf812890bbd52a90de278a5fb&_phsrc=ddL12226&_phstart=successSource |access-date=30 May 2023 |website=Ancestry}}
Aaron, who was mildly developmentally disabled, was abducted by Klan members who beat him with an iron bar, carved the letters "KKK" into his chest, castrated him with a razor, and poured turpentine on his wounds. They then put him in the trunk of a car and drove him away from the scene, finally dumping him near a creek.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JngkvtvwMV8C |title=Miracle in Birmingham: A Civil Rights Memoir, 1954–1965 |last=Harris |first=W. Edward |date=2004 |publisher=Stonework Press |isbn=9780963886477 |pages=45 |language=en}} Police found Aaron, near death from blood loss, and took him to Hillman Hospital, where he was treated and survived.Eskew, Glenn T. But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle, Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 1997, p.115.
Two of the six Klansmen turned state's evidence and received five-year sentences in exchange for testifying against the other four men. Those four were convicted and received 20-year sentences at Kilby Prison. However, when George Wallace became governor of Alabama, he pardoned the four convicted men, but not the two who had turned state's evidence, with no explanation.{{cite web |url=http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/terrorists/birmingham_church/3.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090601205409/http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/terrorists/birmingham_church/3.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 1, 2009|title=The Birmingham Church Bombing: Bombingham |access-date=July 8, 2013}}
Alabama author, William Bradford Huie, broke the story of this atrocity in the October 1964 issue of "True" magazine in an article titled "Ritual Cutting by the Ku Klux Klan" pp. 22-24,28, 32, 36. Huie donated the $3000 "True" paid him for the story to Aaron to help pay his medical expenses. Huie also published the story in his 1964 bestseller, "Three Lives for Mississippi" pp. 18-36. In a 1979 interview by Blackside, Inc. for "Eye on the Prize" (available free online), Huie described his investigation of the story and contact with Edward Aaron.
The 1988 film Mississippi Burning references the story of Judge Aaron, but gives his name as Homer Wilkes.{{cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095647/quotes?item=qt0225528|title=Mississippi Burning Quote|website=IMDb}} He was interviewed about the abduction and attack in 1965.{{Cite web|title=User Clip: Judge Edward Aaron {{!}} C-SPAN.org|url=https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4731656/user-clip-judge-edward-aaron|access-date=2021-09-12|website=www.c-span.org|language=en-us}}
Aaron died on 11 March 1991 in Dayton, Ohio, aged 68.{{cite news |title=Obituary |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/103379089/obituary-for-judge-ed-arone-aged-68/ |access-date=30 May 2023 |work=Dayton Daily News |date=17 March 1991}}{{cite web |title=U.S., Veterans' Gravesites, ca.1775–2019 |url=https://www.ancestry.co.uk/discoveryui-content/view/262773:5763?tid=&pid=&queryId=5d013aecf812890bbd52a90de278a5fb&_phsrc=ddL12226&_phstart=successSource |access-date=30 May 2023 |website=Ancestry}}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
{{Lynching in the United States}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aaron, Judge Edward}}
Category:20th-century African-American people
Category:American torture victims
Category:Formerly missing American people
Category:Kidnapped American people
Category:Ku Klux Klan crimes in Alabama
"Ritual Cutting by the Ku Klux Klan" by William Bradford Huie "True" magazine, Oct. 1964, Vol. 45, No. 329, pp. 22-24, 28, 32, 36
"Three Lives for Mississippi" by William Bradford Huie, WCC Books, 1964
Category:Racially motivated violence against African Americans in Alabama