The UVA Center for Politics, Legacy Productions  and the Martinsville 7 Initiative are working on a joint project to develop a documentary about the Martinsville 7. The Martinsville 7 were seven black men accused of raping a white woman in 1949, incarcerated on death row, and wrongly put to death. The lives and circumstances of the men are critical in understanding and examining this obstruction in the American legal and social system. The documentary will follow: the story of plantations and KKK activity in Henry County and their link to the police in roles and law, the power and psychology of coercion within the penal system, and the history of the criminalization of black Americans from the US founding to the present.