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Scottsboro Boys

The case of the Scottsboro Boys arose in Scottsboro, Alabama during the 1930s, when nine black youths, ranging in age from twelve[1] to nineteen, were falsely accused of raping two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. Although repeatedly found guilty and sentenced to death by all-white southern juries, the case garnered international attention and eventually all the men went free, the last over 20 years from the initial incident.

The Incident

The nine (Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Roy Wright, Willie Roberson, Charles Weems, Ozie Powell, Olen Montgomery, and Eugene Williams) were accused of the rapes of two white women, which was alleged to have occurred on March 25, 1931, on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to Memphis. On the train that day, catching an illegal (but common) ride on the freight train were the nine black youths, two white women, and a number of white youths. An altercation occurred between the white youths and the black youths, resulting in most of the white youths being ejected from the train by the black youths. Several of the white youths then told the nearest stationmaster that they had had an altercation with a gang of black youths. The stationmaster at the next stop prepared for their arrival, and a posse of white men armed with guns grabbed all black youths they could find on the train and took them to jail in Scottsboro.

Two women on the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, then claimed they had been raped by several of the black youths (Bates would later recant). Word quickly spread and a lynch mob gathered, prepared to storm the jail and kill the youths. Given the situation, the governor of Alabama, Benjamin M. Miller, was forced to call in the National Guard to protect the jail. Authorities pleaded against mob violence by promising speedy trials and executions.

The First Round of Trials

On March 30, the so-called Scottsboro Boys were indicted by an all-white jury, and the trial began several days later. The boys were defended by the only lawyers the parents could afford: a drunk real estate lawyer, Stephen Roddy, and Milo Moody, an aged lawyer who had not defended a case at trial in decades. The boys were divided into several groups, each of which was to be tried separately. Six of the boys denied the charges, two confessed (but later recanted, saying they had been beaten into confessing), and one claimed that all of the others were guilty. In April, all were convicted and sentenced to death, except for 13 year old Roy Wright. The prosecution had asked for life in prison for Wright due to his age, but the jury voted for execution, causing a mistrial to be declared for him.

Private investigations took place, and revealed that Price and Bates had been prostitutes in Tennessee. Hearing this the southern newspapers used it for slander, and asked for a appeal for the court. The court denied it, and because of all the pressure from the media, Bates disappeared.

In this second trial, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions of seven of the eight boys who were on death row, in an opinion written by Judge Thomas Knight, Sr. The tenth defendent, Eugene Williams, had his sentence overturned on the grounds that he, at age 13, should not have been tried as an adult.

Supreme Court of the U.S.

In November of that year, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Powell v. Alabama, reversed the convictions and ordered new trials based on the fact that the rights of the Boys under the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause to competent legal counsel had been denied by Alabama.

The Second Round of Trials

The second round of trials was held beginning in March 1933, with the Boys being in prison during the interim. Haywood Patterson's trial was the first of the retrials, as this time, each defendant was to be tried separately. The ILD hired Samuel Leibowitz, a noted attorney from New York (with no connection to the Communist Party) who was widely known for never losing a murder trial, to defend the Scottsboro Boys at the new trials, held in nearby Decatur. IDL attorney Joseph Brodsky was selected to assist him. This selection would backfire on the boys as the whites from the south viewed Leibowitz and Brodsky as foreigners, northerner, communists, and Jews. Particularly upsetting was that the lawyers called into question the southern practice of excluding Blacks from juries, and addressing whites in court by their last name, and blacks by first name.

The prosecuting attorney was Thomas Knight, Jr. This time one of the accusers, Ruby Bates, after disappearing for a time to escape from the pressure and the media attention, returned to testify in court when newspapers used private investigation information that Bates and Price had once been prostitutes in Tennesse. She recanted her previous testimony, now stating that she and Price had lied about being raped because they were afraid that they might be charged with the federal crime of crossing state lines for immoral purposes, as they had been traveling with some non-related male companions on the train. Jury members again voted for conviction, having apparently believed the prosecution's suggestion that Bates was now lying and had changed her testimony only because the defense had paid her to do so. The attorney for the prosecution, Attorney General (of Alabama) Knight attacked Bates, calling attention to her new clothes and accessories, and Bates answered that the Communists had supplied her with everything.

The jury sentenced Haywood Patterson to death. The defense motioned for a retrial, and Judge James Horton, privately believing the defendants to be innocent, agreed to set aside the guilty verdict, despite knowing it meant the loss of his job when he ran for re-election.

The Third Round of Trials

In Haywood Patterson's retrial (i.e. his third trial) in November, 1933, as well as Clarence Norris' second trial, which occurred about the same time, a new judge, William Callahan, presided. He acted heavily in favor of the prosecution, even instructing the jury that they should assume no white woman would ever have consensual sex with a Black man. A new white witness, Orville Gilley, was found; the prosecution admitted sending checks to Gilley's mother from time to time. Both men were found guilty and sentenced to death.

The Supreme Court of the U.S.

Liebowitz appealed to the Supreme Court, on the grounds that the convictions should be overturned because Alabama excluded blacks from its jury rolls in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. Judge Callahan agreed to postpone future trials until a final decision was made on the Norris and Patterson cases. In Norris vs. Alabama, the Supreme Court unanimously found that Alabama's system of jury selection was unconstitutional, and Norris and Patterson's convictions were overturned.

The Fourth and Final Round of Trials

Leibowitz reluctantly recognized that he was viewed by Southerners as an a meddling outsider, and allowed local attorney Charles Watts to be the lead attorney, while Leibowitz assisted from the sidelines.

* In this retrial, Haywood Patterson was again convicted of rape, but sentenced to 75 years in prison rather than the death penalty—the first time a black man had been sentenced to anything other than death in the rape of a white woman in Alabama. Haywood Patterson escaped in 1948 and fled to Detroit, Michigan. In the 1950s he wrote a book about his ordeal, and then shortly afterwards was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, Governor of Michigan G. Mennen Williams would not allow him to be extradited back to Alabama.

* In July, 1937, Clarence Norris was convicted of rape and sexual assault and sentenced to death. Later, Governor of Alabama Bibb Graves reduced Clarence Norris' death sentence to life in prison. He was paroled in 1946. Norris was later pardoned by Governor George Wallace, and he wrote a book about his ordeal.

* Andy Wright was convicted of rape and sentenced to 99 years. He was paroled, then violated parole and was re-imprisoned, then finally released in 1950.

* Charlie Weems was convicted of rape and sentenced to 75 years in prison. He was paroled in 1943, having served 20 years in some of the worst prisons in the nation.

* Ozie Powell pleaded guilty to assaulting a sheriff (during a previous escape attempt) and was sentenced to 20 years, and the state dropped the rape charges against him in return. After Powell had assaulted the deputy with a razor (and, according to him, had surrendered), he was shot in the head, and consequently permanently brain damaged. He was released in 1946.

* Roy Wright, age 12 at the time of the alleged crime had all charges against him dropped; the state said that they felt that given his age, and time served, he should now be released.

* Eugene Williams, age 13 at the time of the alleged crime had all charges against him dropped, for the same reasons given for Wright

* Olen Montgomery, who was nearly blind and had been found alone in a car at the end of the train had all charges against him dropped, as the state announced that after consideration, they now believed him to be not guilty

* Willie Roberson, who was suffering acutely from syphilis and could barely walk at the time of the alleged crime also had all charges against him dropped, for the same reasons given for Montgomery.

The four who had charges dropped had spent over 6 years in prison on death row without trial.

Governor Graves had planned to pardon all of the defendants before he left office in 1938. However, during the customary pre-pardon interview, Graves was angered by the mens' hostility towards him and refusal to admit their guilt, so he did not issue pardons.

In the media

In 1976, NBC aired a TV movie called Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys, apparently under the impression that Victoria Price was no longer living. Price emerged to file a defamation and invasion of privacy suit against the network. The case was dismissed. Price died in 1982.

After escaping from prison, Haywood Patterson wrote a book about his experiences, Scottsboro Boy. While attempting to sell copies of the book one night in a Detroit bar, Patterson got into an altercation with a man and stabbed him. Patterson was arrested, convicted, and died in prison from emphysema two years later.

While it has sometimes been suggested that the case inspired Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning To Kill a Mockingbird, she denies this, claiming it was a far less sensational case that moved her to write the novel.

Author Kelly Covin published a book about the case in 1972 titled, "Hear That Rain Below."

Samuel Leibowitz became a justice on the New York Supreme Court, and died in 1978.

In 1998 Court TV produced a television documentary on the Scottsboro trials for its "Greatest Trials of All Time" series.[2] Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman produced the story of the so-called Scottsboro Boys in a 2000 documentary.[3] Timothy Hutton stars in a 2006 film adaptation titled Heavens Fall.[4]

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