Pardoned member of Wilmington Ten, Willie Vereen, remembered for life of activism

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Dozens of people gathered for Willie Earl Vereen’s wake Tuesday evening.

Vereen passed away over the weekend at the age of 71 years old.

In 1972, an 18-year-old Vereen and nine others were wrongly convicted of arson and conspiracy for the burning of a grocery store a year prior.

Vereen was the youngest member of the Wilmington Ten.

The fire happened during desegregation protests in 1971, with Vereen sentenced to 29 years in prison.

In 1978, Governor Jim Hunt commuted their sentences but withheld a pardon.

Willis Bannerman grew up with Vereen and said justice was properly done when the Ten were released.

“I was gone when they were doing all that,” Bannerman said. “I knew all of them, most of them anyway. And I was glad to see them get out, because I don’t think it was the right thing they had done to them.”

The Wilmington Ten were officially pardoned in 2012.

Vereen’s daughter Atiya Nixon recalls working with her father to get that pardon.

“He let me go with him in certain places where he was fighting, not fighting, but like trying to knock on the doors and say hey, pardon me for this because I had to be locked up,” Nixon said. “And miss out of certain points in time in my life as well. And I was always very important to him.”

“You know, he always told me about the Wilmington Ten and what he had to go through when how he was unjustly locked up for something he did not do.”

A remembrance service for Vereen will be held Wednesday, May 29th at noon at the Temple of Truth, Light and Life in Wilmington.