Scottsboro Boys

The Scottsboro Boys were nine African American male teenagers accused of raping two white women in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a legal injustice in the United States legal system.

On March 25, 1931, two dozen people were "hoboing" on a freight train traveling between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee. The hoboes were an equal mix of blacks and whites. A group of white teenage boys saw 18-year-old Haywood Patterson on the train and attempted to push him off, claiming that it was "a white man's train".^[1] A group of whites then gathered rocks and attempted to force all the black teenagers from the train. Patterson and the other black teenagers were able to ward off the group. The humiliated white teenagers jumped or were forced off the train and reported to a nearby train master that they had been attacked by a group of black teenage boys. Shortly thereafter, the police stopped and searched the train at Paint Rock, Alabama and arrested the black teenage boys.^[2] Two young white women were also taken to the jail, where they accused the African American teenage boys of rape. The case was first heard in Scottsboro, Alabama, in three rushed trials, in which the defendants received poor legal representation. All but 13-year-old Roy Wright were convicted of rape and sentenced to death (the common sentence in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white females), even though there was no medical evidence indicating that rape had taken place.^[3]

With help from the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the case was appealed. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed seven of the eight convictions, and granted 13-year-old Eugene Williams a new trial because he was a minor. Chief Justice John C. Anderson dissented, stating that the defendants had been denied an impartial jury, fair trial, fair sentencing, and effective counsel. While waiting for their trials, eight of the nine defendants were held in Kilby Prison. The cases were twice appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which led to landmark decisions on the conduct of trials. In Powell v. Alabama (1932), the US Supreme Court ordered new trials.^[4]

The case was first returned to the lower court and the judge allowed a change of venue, moving the retrials to Decatur, Alabama. Judge Horton was appointed. During the retrials, one of the alleged victims admitted to fabricating the rape story and asserted that none of the Scottsboro Boys touched either of the white women. The jury still found the defendants guilty, but the judge set aside the verdict and granted a new trial.

The judge was replaced and the case retried. The new judge ruled frequently against the defense. For the third time a jury—now with one African American member—returned a guilty verdict. The case was sent to the US Supreme Court on appeal. It ruled that African Americans had to be included on juries, and ordered retrials.^[5] Charges were finally dropped for four of the nine defendants. The other five were convicted and received sentences ranging from 75 years to death. Three served prison sentences. In 1936 one of the Scottsboro Boys, Ozie Powell, was shot in the face and permanently disabled during an altercation with a sheriff's deputy in prison. He later pleaded guilty to assaulting the deputy. Clarence Norris, the oldest defendant and the only one sentenced to death in the final trial, "jumped parole" in 1946 and went into hiding. He was found in 1976 and pardoned by Governor George Wallace. Norris later wrote a book about his experiences. He died in 1989 as the last surviving defendant.

The individuals involved and the case have been thoroughly analyzed. It is widely considered a legal injustice, highlighted by the state's use of all-white juries. African Americans in Alabama had been disenfranchised since the Reconstruction era and thus were not allowed on juries because jurors were selected from voter rolls. The case has also been explored in many works of literature, music, theater, film and television. On November 21, 2013, Alabama's parole board voted to grant posthumous pardons to the three Scottsboro Boys who had not been pardoned or had their convictions overturned.^[6]