17 Facts About Odell Waller

Odell Waller was an African-American sharecropper from Gretna, Virginia, executed for the fatal shooting of his white landlord, Oscar Wheldon Davis, on July 15,1940.

Odell Waller was born in 1917 to Dollie Jones and an unknown father, who died shortly after his birth.

Jones gave the boy to her sister Annie Waller and Annie's husband, Willis Waller, to adopt, and Odell considered Annie his mother.

Odell Waller completed three years of high school, but was forced to leave school to work on the farm.

Annie and Odell Waller then agreed to become sharecroppers for a white landlord, Oscar Davis.

At 6:30 AM on July 15,1940, Odell drove to Davis's farm to get the wheat with Annie, relatives Archie Waller and Thomas Younger, and a friend named Buck Fitzgerald.

Henry Davis, a teenage black employee of Oscar Davis, maintained that Odell Waller had fired at Oscar Davis without provocation or warning, hitting him four times.

Oscar Davis' sons testified that their father had stated before he died that Odell Waller had shot him without cause.

One son added that Davis had said Odell Waller had continued to shoot after Davis had already fallen to the ground.

The testimony of other witnesses, including Odell Waller's relatives, was inconclusive, as they were too distant to hear the conversation between Odell Waller and Davis.

The testimony of Henry Davis and Oscar Davis's sons proved damning, and several witnesses testified that they had heard Odell Waller declare he would come home with his wheat or kill Oscar.

Dewey later co-signed an open letter comparing Odell Waller to Dred Scott, a slave who had unsuccessfully sued for his freedom before the US Supreme Court.

Odell Waller wrote in an open letter of her own that Waller "has ceased to be an individual, he has become a personification of all those to whom democracy is denied in our country".

Historian Richard B Sherman states that she became involved after receiving a letter from Murray, which prompted her to write Governor Price requesting that he investigate whether Waller had received a fair trial and delay the execution.

Odell Waller wrote a ten-page "Dying Statement" before his execution, admitting he had made mistakes but insisting that he had acted in self-defense:.

Odell Waller was executed by electric chair on the morning of July 2,1942.

At the time of his execution, Odell Waller had been on death row for 630 days, then the longest death row stay in the state's history.