Over the course of the two decades that followed, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives, produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America's political left.
Hoboing was a common pastime in the Depression year of For some, riding freights was an appealing adventure compared to the drudgery and dreariness of their daily lives. Others hopped rail cars to move from one fruitless job search to the next. Two dozen or so, mainly male--and mainly young--whites and blacks, rode the Southern Railroad's Chattanooga to Memphis freight on March 25, Among them were four black Chattanooga teenagers hoping to investigate a rumor of government jobs in Memphis hauling logs on the river and five other black teens from various parts of Georgia.
Four young whites, two males and two females dressed in overalls, also rode the train, returning to Huntsville from unsuccessful job searches in the cotton mills of Chattanooga. Soon after the train crossed the Alabama border, a white youth walked across the top of a tank car. He stepped on the hand of a black youth named Haywood Patterson , who was hanging on to its side. Patterson had friends aboard the train. A stone-throwing fight erupted between white youths and a larger group of black youths.
Eventually, the blacks succeeded in forcing all but one of the members of the white gang off the train. Patterson pulled the one remaining white youth, Orville Gilley , back onto the train after it had accelerated to a life-endangering speed.
Some of the whites forced off the train went to the stationmaster in Stevenson to report what they described as an assault by a gang of blacks. The stationmaster wired ahead. A posse in Paint Rock, Alabama stopped the train.
Dozens of men with guns rushed at the train as it ground to a halt. The armed men rounded up every black youth they could find. Nine captured blacks, soon to be called " The Scottsboro Boys ," were tied together with plow line, loaded on a flat back truck, and taken to a jail in Scottsboro. Ruby Bates, either in response to a question or on their own initiative, told one of the posse members that they had been raped by a gang of 12 blacks with pistols and knives. In the jail that March 25th, Price pointed out six of the nine boys and said that they were the ones who raped her.
The guard reportedly replied, "If those six had Miss Price, it stands to reason that the others had Miss Bates. Why Bates and Price told what everyone today understands to have been a bald-faced lie is not known for certain. We can only speculate. Perhaps they hoped to divert attention from their own behavior. Travelling from Tennessee, as they had done, with boyfriends was a possible violation of the Mann Act that criminalized the crossing of state lines for immoral purposes.
Bates suggested later this was the primarily reason for her falsehood. Perhaps also the young women wanted to "get even" with some of the African-Americans who forced one of their friends from the moving train.
But whatever the reason, the accusation of rape put all the young men in life-threatening positions. A crowd of several hundred men, hoping for a good old-fashioned lynching, surrounded the Scottsboro jail the night of their arrest for rape.
Their plans were foiled, however, when Alabama's governor, B. Miller, ordered the National Guard to Scottsboro to protect the suspects.
Trials of the Scottsboro Boys began twelve days after their arrest in the courtroom of Judge A. Haywood Patterson described the scene as "one big smiling white face. They were no "Dream Team. The defense lawyers demonstrated their incompetence in many ways. They expressed a willingness to have all nine defendants tried together, despite the prejudice such a trial might cause to Roy Wright , for example, who at age 12 was the youngest of the nine Scottsboro Boys.
The prosecution, fearing that a single trial might constitute reversible error, decided to try the defendants in groups of two or three. Victoria Price testified the defendants "told us they were going to take us North and make us their women or kill us. Bridges and John Lynch were not cross-examined at all. Ruby Bates was not asked about contradictions between her testimony and that of Price.
The defense offered only the defendants themselves as witnesses, and their testimony was rambling, sometimes incoherent, and riddled with obvious misstatements. But three others, all who later claimed they did so because of beatings and threats, said that a gang rape by other defendants did occur. Clarence Norris provided what one paper called "the highlight of the trial" when he said of the other blacks, "They all raped her, everyone of them.
A local editorialist described the state's case as "so conclusive as to be almost perfect. Guilty verdicts in the first trial were announced while the second trial was underway. The large crowd outside the courthouse let out a roar of approval that was clearly heard by the second jury inside.
When the four trials were over, eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys had been convicted and sentenced to death. A mistrial was declared in the case of year old Roy Wright, when eleven of the jurors held out for death despite the request of the prosecution for only a life sentence in view of his tender age. Rape was a politically explosive charge in the South, and the NAACP was concerned about damage to its effectiveness that might result if it turned out some or all of the Boys were guilty.
Instead, it was the Communist Party that moved aggressively to make the Scottsboro case their own. The Party saw the case as providing a great recruiting tool among southern blacks and northern liberals. The Communist Party, through its legal arm, the International Labor Defense ILD , pronounced the case against the Boys a "murderous frame-up" and began efforts, ultimately successful, to be named as their attorneys.
The NAACP, a slow-moving bureaucracy, finally came to the realization that the Scottsboro Boys were most likely innocent and that leadership in the case would have large public relations benefits. But it was by then too late. The young black defendants were like drowning people, and only the Communists were willing to throw them a rope--so they grabbed it. The Scottsboro Boys, for better or worse, cast their lots with the Communists who, in the South, were "treated with only slightly more courtesy than a gang of rapists.
In January, , the Alabama Supreme Court, by a 6 - 1 vote, affirmed all but one of the eight convictions and death sentences. The court ruled that Eugene Williams, age 13, should have not been tried as an adult. The cases were appealed to the United States Supreme Court which overturned the convictions in the landmark case of Powell vs Alabama. The Court, 7 - 2, ruled that the right of the defendants under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause to competent legal counsel had been denied by Alabama.
There would have to be new trials. The prosecutor in the retrials was Alabama's newly elected attorney general, Thomas Knight, Jr. Knight's father, Thomas Knight, Sr.
The ILD quieted skeptics who saw the organization caring more about the benefits it could derive from the case than the Boys' welfare by asking Samuel Leibowitz to serve as the lead defense attorney. Leibowitz was a New York criminal attorney who had secured an astonishing record of seventy-seven acquittals and one hung jury in seventy-eight murder trials.
Liebowitz was often described as "the next Clarence Darrow. This was a fight he believed in. Scottsboro Boy was published in June In December of that year, he was arrested after a fight in a bar resulted in a stabbing death. His first trial ended in a hung jury; the second was a mistrial. After his third trial, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to six to fifteen years.
He served only one, as he died of cancer in jail on August 24, Ozie Powell "Momma ain't but one thing I want to tell you right now. Don't let Sam Leibowitz have anything else to do with my case. Ozie Powell was born in rural Georgia, near Atlanta, in His parents separated when he was young and his mother worked for white people in Atlanta.
He could write his name, but not much else. When he was fourteen, he left home, working at camps and sawmills for weeks or months at a time before moving on. A year after leaving home, he was headed toward Memphis on a Southern Railroad train. At Haywood Patterson's first trial, Powell testified that he had followed a group of black boys who were going to throw the white boys off the train, but most of their opposition had jumped off the train by the time he got to the right car.
Soon afterward, the train was stopped and Powell was arrested, along with eight other African American boys he didn't know. He was tried before Judge A. Alabama, U. At Haywood Patterson's third trial at the end of , Ozie Powell's testimony was confused and contradictory. After a tough cross-examination, defense attorney Leibowitz asked him how much schooling he had had in his life. Patterson was convicted, but the decision was again overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States, this time on grounds that the absence of black jury members denied the defendants equal protection under the law, as required by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Patterson was tried and convicted again in January of Following the swift group conviction days after the incident, Ozie Powell had been imprisoned without a retrial for five years.
While being transported from Patterson's trial back to the Birmingham Jail, he pulled out a pocketknife and slashed Deputy Edgar Blalock in the throat. Sheriff J. Street Sandlin stopped the car, pulled out his gun and shot Powell in the head. Blalock was out of the hospital the same day with ten stitches. Remarkably, Powell also survived. His mother visited him in the hospital while Powell recovered. When asked why, he replied, "Cause I feel like everybody in Alabama is down on me and is mad with me.
In January Dr. Branche examined the Scottsboro defendants and reported that Powell like Roberson had an IQ of about 64 and a mental age of nine. A Life magazine story on the defendants stated that Powell "can barely spell out words. Nobody writes to him. In July of Powell pleaded guilty to assault and was sentenced to 20 years. Leibowitz requested that the six years already served be taken into account, but Judge Callahan, noting that the rape charge had been dropped against Powell, gave him the maximum sentence.
He was sent to Atmore, the prison for dangerous criminals known as "the murderers' home. Graves decided against granting clemency. These people make wise cracks talking about somebody in Alabama to defend us, say I would get out better.
They won't let the New York people come around. His father walked out a month after his birth and his mother died when he was two. Willie was raised by his grandmother until her death in Although he made it through to seventh grade in Atlanta, a doctor later measured Roberson's IQ to be about 64, and his mental age at nine. He could not read or write and had difficulty speaking, and was the butt of many courtroom spectators' jokes.
Roberson had boarded the Southern Railroad headed to Memphis in search of free medical care for his syphilis and gonorrhea. He was in pain and lying in a car near the back of the train when he was arrested along with the 8 other African American teenagers accused of rape. The cane he used to walk with was thrown away on orders of the deputy that took him into custody. This painful, syphilitic condition was evidence to defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz that Roberson could not have committed this crime.
Judge James Horton agreed that it was unlikely that Roberson could have jumped from car to car as Victoria Price claimed. However, when it was revealed that Ruby Bates had been treated for syphilis herself, Roberson's venereal disease was cited as evidence of his guilt. Horribly, he was not treated for his condition until Roberson was one of the defendants released in July of , after six years without a retrial.
Upon his release, Roberson said he wanted to become an airplane mechanic. After a brief foray into show business, Roberson settled into steady work in New York City. He was continually plagued by ill health, and suffered asthma attacks and bad luck. One night in Harlem, Roberson was in a bar when a fight broke out. Although not involved in the fight, he was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct. Of that incident he wrote, "I am again a victim of almost inconcievable maglinity and though I hartily dislike the role of myrter I have been cast in that role and it seems impossible to escape it.
Roberson's asthma had been greatly aggravated by his time in jail and he eventually died of an asthma attack. Charles Weems "Please tell all the young mens to try hard and not to go to prison for my sakes. Charles Weems was a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Alabama and Norris v. It was another landmark decision for the Scottsboro Boys, but it brought neither vindication nor freedom. They had simply won the right to be retried. Meanwhile, the bickering defense organizations worked out a rapprochement. The first retrial, under Judge Callahan, was set for January This time, twelve Black people were included in the jury pool of All were challenged by the state and removed.
The trials again took place before all-white juries. Again, the boys were found guilty. Over the next several years, the Defense Committee repeatedly went to court, launched public campaigns, and sought pardons for their clients. In July , they finally got a break. In a prepared statement, the prosecutor pronounced Roberson and Montgomery innocent.
Williams and Wright were shown clemency, he explained, because they were juveniles at the time of the alleged crime. The state also pronounced Ozie Powell innocent, but he remained in prison — under a year sentence — for attacking a guard.
In this July 26, file photo, police escort two of the five recently freed "Scottsboro Boys," Olen Montgomery, wearing glasses, third left, and Eugene Williams, wearing suspenders, forth left through the crowd greeting them upon their arrival at Penn Station in New York.
The Defense Committee appealed to Gov. Bibb Graves to free their clients who remained in prison, arguing that some could not be innocent and the rest guilty. On October 25, , Alabama Gov. Norris, then 64, had spent 15 years behind bars, five of those on death row. At an event that December, Norris was asked how he would change things if he could relive his life.
November Seven of the defendants appear in Callahan's court. November-December: The trials of Patterson and Norris end in death sentences for both. Judge Callahan's bias might be exemplified by his omissions: he forgets to explain to Patterson's jury how to render a not guilty verdict Leibowitz reminds him before the jury goes out and neglects to ask the mercy of God upon Norris's soul.
June The Alabama Supreme Court unanimously denies the defense motion for new trials. Leibowitz had argued that qualified blacks were systematically kept off jury rolls, and the names that were currently in the rolls had been forged after the fact.
October 1: Nashville police arrest two lawyers associated with the I. The lawyers were never convicted. He describes the absence of blacks in Jackson County juries and presents the justices with the jury rolls with forged names. The justices use magnifying glasses to determine the overlay of inks on the page. April 1: In Norris v.
Alabama, the United States Supreme Court finds the exclusion of blacks on jury rolls deprived black defendants of their rights to equal protection under the law as guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment. The case is overturned and remanded to a lower court. Patterson's case is not argued before the court because of technicalities in filing dates; however, the court strongly suggests the lower courts review his case "in light of the situation which has now developed.
December: Because of the prevailing sentiments in Alabama, both Leibowitz and the I. The sentence is a compromise between the foreman, who thought the defendant innocent, and the rest of the jury.
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