The fight against lynching and the death penalty has a rich history. For Ida B. Wells, it was her life’s work. She and other abolitionists organized for federal anti-lynching legislation; as a result of this pressure, nearly two hundred anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, yet none passed. Rosa Parks spent years of her life fighting to win justice for Jeremiah Reeves, who was ultimately executed in Alabama for the “crime” of having an affair with a white woman.

Today, abolitionists are engaged in another battle against legal lynching playing out in the state of Texas. And, like the battles of the past, this one involves racism, police cover-ups, corrupt prosecutions, judges’ blatant disregard for evidence of innocence, and a public outcry demanding a wrong be righted.

Rodney Reed has spent twenty-two years on death row for the rape and murder of Stacey Stites in 1996 in Bastrop, Texas, thirty miles southeast of Austin. Reed will be executed on November 20 for a crime he says he didn’t commit if Texas governor Greg Abbott or the courts don’t intervene to stop it.