Wilmington 10 member Willie Earl Vereen

Willie Earl Vereen, a member of the so-called Wilmington 10, delivers more than 14,000 signatures seeking pardons of innocence for the civil rights activists to Gov. Beverly Perdue's office on Dec. 7, 2012. The men were convicted in 1972 of burning a white-owned grocery store during a race riot, but their convictions were later overturned on grounds of perjury and prosecutorial misconduct.