Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair

This episode includes topics and archival audio that some people will find disturbing. Seventy-five years ago, on the night of May 7th, 1951, close to a thousand people gathered around the courthouse in the small town of Laurel, Mississippi. They came to witness an execution. Willie McGee was a young Black man who had been accused of raping a white woman and sentenced to death. Six decades later, Bridgette McGee-Robinson teamed up with Radio Diaries to find the truth about what happened to her grandfather. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You can listen to Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Willie McGee and the Traveling Electric Chair is an episode from Radio Diaries by Radio Diaries & Radiotopia.

This episode is 27:39 long.

This episode was published on May 7, 2026.

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