Black newspaper publisher Mary Alice Jervay Thatch, 78, dies

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) — The third-generation editor and publisher of a historic Black newspaper in North Carolina and a driving force behind the pardons of the Wilmington 10 has died. Mary Alice Jervay Thatch was 78. Cousin Paul R. Jervay Jr., said Thatch died Tuesday. Thatch was the daughter of The Wilmington Journal publisher Thomas C. Jervay Sr. Her grandfather started the newspaper as the Cape Fear Journal in 1927. When Thatch succeeded her father in 1996, she took on the fight for pardons for nine Black men and one white woman who were wrongly convicted of a 1971 firebombing. In 2012, Gov. Beverly Perdue issued pardons for the group, who were known as the Wilmington 10.