Scottsboro: An American Tragedy Questions (PBS).docx



Name:________________________________Scottsboro: An American Tragedy 453390076200“Hear the rattle of gravel as it rides whistling through the day and night. Not the old or the young on it, nor people with any difference in their color or shape, not girls or men, Negroes or white, but people with this in common: people that no one had use for, had nothing to give to, no place to offer, but the cars of a freight-train careening through Paint Rock, through Memphis, through town after town without halting.”Directions: As you watch the movie during class this week, answer the following questions:1. What was the image of Black men that the Scottsboro case “met head-on”?2. Summarize what happened on the train on March 25, 1931:3. Describe Alabama during the Great Depression:4. Describe Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. What kind of relationship did they have?5. What type of lawyer defended the Scottsboro boys during the first trial?6. The first trials lasted _______ days.7. Explain the end of the first Scottsboro Trials:8. Why did some of the Scottsboro boys (namely Clarence Norris and Haywood Patterson) try to blame the others for the rape?9. Why did the boys get a second set of trials?10. Who was assigned to defend them this time around? What was special about him?11. Why was Victoria Price such a difficult witness? 12. Who was Samuel Leibowitz’s last witness on the stand?13. What does she reveal?14. How was her testimony received by the jury?15. How long did the second set of trials last?16. What was the final verdict?17. Why was Samuel Leibowitz naive?18. What movement did the Scottsboro Trials re-spark?19. In what ways was Judge William Callahan different from Judge James Horton?20. How long did the jury take to re-convict the boys during the third trial?21. How did the boys’ relationships with each other start to change?22. How did Leibowitz get yet another trial for the boys?23. What had Alabama done to “overturn the guilty verdicts”?24. What happened to Sam Leibowitz during the fourth trial?25. How many boys did Alabama set free during the fourth trial? 26. What finally brought the Scottsboro Trials to an end?27. Who remained in prison? Why?28. Describe what happened to Victoria Price. Where did she end up after the trials?29. Of all the defendants, who made a life for himself? How?30. Read the quote, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”What relation does it have to the Scottsboro Trials? ................
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