Scottsboro Boys
Published on Nov 19, 2015
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The Scottsboro boys got into trouble because they were riding in
the back of a train with a bunch of other people, black and white,
when a white boy stepped on one of the scottsboro boys hands and a rock throwing fight broke out. The boys with the two white girls
jumped out, but the scottsboro boys stopped the girls from jumping out because the train was beginning to move at high speeds. After the girls got off the train they told the police that the Scottsboro boys raped them so that they could get back at them for the fight.
At around 5:45 a.m. on April 6, 1931 Major Joe Stearnes and a detachment of the 167th infantry, containing 118 members of five national guard companies of Gadsden, Albertville and Guntersville, Alabama, brought the Scottsboro boys from Gadsden and locked them in the county jail at Scottsboro until their trial. People had arrived by train and car from surrounding counties and states. By dawn thousands had arrived by the time the trial opened. The trial opened at 8:30. The trial was severely affected by the fact that all these people were from areas where they looked down on blacks.
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The NAACP stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This organization was formed in 1909 to protect the equality and remove any racial barriers from racial minority groups in America. You may be wondering, Why wouldn’t this organization help these kids in this situation? Well at first, the NAACP wanted to help but was scared that it would hurt their reputation if it turns out the some or all of the boys did rape the two girls. Eventually, they did realize that the boys were most likely going to be innocent but by the time that they wanted to take the case, the communist party had beat them to it and already done so.
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At the time of this event the Communist Party was looked at poorly. They were almost considered as low class as black people at the time. As I stated before the Communist Party jumped to the aid of the Scottsboro Boys before the NAACP because the NAACP was reluctant and cautious into coming in to help them out in their case. These cases took place around the time of the Great Depression and the Communist Party thought that they could repair the economy so they were trying to promote Communism by helping in civil right's movements. So by beating the NAACP to the punch the Communist Party's main goal was to promote themselves.
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The defense lawyers were incompetent in multiple ways. First, they
expressed how they wanted all the boys tried together when it would
cause prejudice to Roy Wright, the youngest of the boys at 12 years
old. Also, they only cross Victoria Price for a couple minutes, and
proceeded not to examine the doctors, Ruby Bates wasn't asked about
contradictions between her testimony and Victoria Price's, and the
defense only used the defendants themselves as witnesses. To make
matters worse, their testimonies were rambling and incoherent at
times.
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Eight of the nine boys were sentenced to death after four trials. The other boy was charged as a minor and sentenced to life in prison. There are many reasons why the trials were unfair. There was racism, lying, and inexperience. The defense lawyers were inadequate because they were inexperienced, they were prejudice, and they were attorneys, not lawyers.
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After a long time, many trials, and jail time, the Scottsboro boys were finally, officially innocent and were pardoned. A few of them were pardoned around 1940 and even after that. they were on parole. By 1950, every single one of them had left alabama. They had to deal with this for about 15 years of their life even though they were innocent. In 1950 Haywood Patterson, one of the boys, wrote a book about the whole ordeal. Later that year, he got into a bar fight where someone died and went to jail and died there of Cancer 2 years later. The most recent pardon occurred fairly recently in 2013 for Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems, and Andy Wright. The pardons which were granted in 2013 were all posthumous.
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The trials were a main driving force for Harper Lee's book probably because it connects with the theme of having discrimination towards African Americans. It shows how African American men and woman were treated unfairly and without justice. And by seeing the awful discrimination towards the African Americans at the time probably gave Harper Lee inspiration to write the book.
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Citations
Linder, Douglas. "Scottsboro Boys." Scottsboro Boys. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Oct. 2014.
"NAACP: 100 Years of History." NAACP. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 2014. Web. 06 Oct. 2014. …
"NAACP: 100 Years of History." NAACP. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 2014. Web. 06 Oct. 2014.
