Themes: Diversity
SCOTTSBORO, Alabama (Achieve3000, February 21, 2022). A mob was waiting when the freight train rumbled to a stop in Paint Rock, Alabama, on March 25, 1931. The crowd swarmed the train and police arrested nine Black teens—most of them riding the rails in search of work—for an alleged fight with a group of White men. Then two White women who had also been on board added false accusations of assault to avoid being arrested themselves for vagrancy.
The Black youths—ages 13 to 19—were transported to Scottsboro and into the maw of Alabama's justice system. In a series of trials over several years, the Scottsboro Nine were repeatedly convicted using dubious evidence and sentenced to die. They were saved by appeals that reached all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The men were ultimately exonerated, but the glaring injustice forced overdue scrutiny of ways the U.S. justice system oppressed Black Americans.
The First Trials
For two-thirds of the 20th century, the American South was the land of "Jim Crow"—a system of laws and culture that segregated and subjugated Black citizens. For a Black person to be accused of a violent crime against White people could be tantamount to a death sentence, often by extrajudicial lynching. The trials of the Scottsboro Nine—Haywood Patterson, 18, Clarence Norris, 19, Olen Montgomery, 17, Willie Roberson, 17, Ozie Powell, 16, Eugene Williams, 13, Charlie Weems, 19, and brothers Andrew and Leroy Wright, 19 and 13, respectively—unfolded against this backdrop.
Within a week of their arrest, the Nine were indicted for allegedly assaulting Ruby Bates, 17, and Victoria Price, 21, on the train. Four trials were held on three days, with the defendants reluctantly aided by a pair of unqualified lawyers—one retired and the other a real estate attorney. Evidence consisted almost exclusively of the sordid testimony from the two women and from the defendants, who afterward reported being badly beaten and forced to make false confessions. Within a month of their arrest, all nine had been found guilty and eight sentenced to die in the electric chair.
Scottsboro treated the proceedings like a sporting event, and some 10,000 people flooded the town of less than 2,000. When the guilty verdicts were read, cheering erupted inside and outside the courthouse. "I never saw so many happy White folks," defendant Clarence Norris said later.
Appeals and Aftermath
By that time, the trials of the Scottsboro Nine were garnering international attention. Lawyers from International Labor Defense (ILD) and other groups offered legal representation, and ILD appealed the guilty verdicts. The appeal eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the decisions were struck down. It ruled the defendants had been denied due process because of inadequate legal representation.
Their cases were retried in 1933, but the trials again resulted in death sentences even though one of the alleged victims, Ruby Bates, recanted, saying none of the Nine had ever touched her or Price. The guilty verdicts were again appealed, and again thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court because no Black citizens had been considered for the jury. (Two landmark Supreme Court rulings from the case still influence U.S. jurisprudence today.)
Still, the saga of the Scottsboro Nine dragged on. In 1937, charges were dropped against five of the defendants. But in a third set of trials in 1936–1937, four were again convicted with one being given the death penalty and the others sentenced to 75–99 years, though all but one were paroled by 1946. Collectively, they spent more than 100 years behind bars stemming from a crime that never happened, and the experience deeply vitiated the rest of their lives. In 2013—decades after the last man had died—the state of Alabama finally issued posthumous pardons to all nine.
Historians today view the trials of the Scottsboro Nine as a terrible miscarriage of justice as well as an inflection point in U.S. history. It forced more American civic leaders—and more White Americans—to acknowledge the systemic inequality in their own country. The case demonstrated the urgent need for the awakening civil rights movement.
Think about and discuss these questions:
What facts would you select to show the injustices carried out against the Scottsboro Nine?
How would you summarize how the lives of these nine Black teens were affected by events related to their case and trials?
Question 3
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According to the article, which of these happened second?
The Scottsboro Nine were badly beaten and forced to make false confessions.
Lawyers from International Labor Defense offered their services to the Scottsboro Nine.
Police arrested the Scottsboro Nine for an alleged fight with a group of White men.
One of the women from the train admitted that the Scottsboro Nine were innocent.
1 answer
According to the article, the event that happened second was:
The Scottsboro Nine were badly beaten and forced to make false confessions.
This event followed their arrest for an alleged fight with a group of White men and occurred before lawyers from the International Labor Defense began offering their services and before one of the women from the train admitted the Scottsboro Nine were innocent.
