Willie McGee (convict)

Willie McGee (c. 1916 – May 8, 1951) was an African American man from Laurel, Mississippi, who was sentenced to death in 1945 and executed on Tuesday, May 8, 1951, after being controversially convicted for the rape of a white woman on November 2, 1945. McGee's legal case became a cause célèbre that attracted worldwide attention, as it was roundly decried as a miscarriage of justice in the Jim Crow South.

However, when journalist Alexander S. Heard wrote a book about the case in 2010, he found it to be far more complex than historically portrayed. For example, Rosalee McGee, who was the only witness who could verify her husband's claims that the victim had forced him into a sexual relationship, was later found to be a fraud. In reality, she never married McGee and only met him after the trial. She had been recruited by the Civil Rights Congress to pretend to be his wife to boost public sympathy for him.