Emmanuel M. Roderick, Jr., was born in Wilmington (New Hanover County), North Carolina, on December 25, 1891 (or 1893). Roderick was a watchman for the Clyde Steamship Company in Wilmington when he murdered his wife in July 1917. A subsequent trial found him guilty of murder, and the judge sentenced Roderick to death. Governor Thomas W. Bickett later intervened and commuted the sentence to life in prison. While at the state prison farm in Halifax County in April 1919, Roderick signed his name to a document accusing prison officials of committing brutalities against a Black inmate named John Baker. During the ensuing investigation, he stood by the claims in the letter, despite immense pressure to do otherwise. In 1925, Governor Angus W. McLean paroled Roderick and released him from prison. He returned to Wilmington, at which place he died on March 19, 1955.