Legal groups seek exoneration of Black man from Halifax hanged in 1935

In 1935, shortly after midnight at a jail behind the old courthouse in Halifax, Daniel Perry Sampson was executed by hanging.

Mr. Sampson’s death was the culmination of a sensational murder case. The middle-aged Black labourer had been charged with the killing of two white boys in 1933. There was a deluge of local outcry and national attention: “Stabbing of Boys Alleged Confessed by Halifax Negro” read The Globe’s front-page headline late that year.