Mrs. Calhoun's English I Honors Class - Home
CCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read and annotate the overview of the Scottsboro case to get a general idea of what the case is about. Students will identify key events and aspects of the case and analyze the facts and author’s use of language to determine if this article was written with a bias.The Scottsboro CaseThe Scottsboro Boys, with attorneySamuel Leibowitz, under guard by the state militia, 1932The?Scottsboro Boys?were nine black teenagers accused of?rape?in?Alabama?in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with?racism?and the?right to a fair trial. The case included a?frameup, an?all-white jury, rushed trials, an attempted?lynching, an?angry mob, and is an example of an overall?miscarriage of justice.On March 25, 1931, several people were?hoboing?on a?freight train?traveling betweenChattanooga?and?Memphis,?Tennessee. Several white teenagers jumped off the train and reported to the?sheriff?that they had been attacked by a group of black teenagers. The sheriff deputized a?posse, stopped and searched the train at?Paint Rock, Alabama, arrested the black teenagers, and found two young white women who accused the teenagers of rape. The case was first heard in?Scottsboro, Alabama?in three rushed?trials, where the?defendants?received poor?legal representation. All but thirteen-year-old Roy Wright were convicted of rape andsentenced to death, the common sentence in Alabama at the time for black men convicted of raping white women.[1]?But with help from the?American Communist Party, the case was appealed. The?Alabama Supreme Court?affirmed seven of the eight convictions, and granted thirteen-year-old Eugene Williams a new trial because he was a?juvenile. Chief Justice John C. Anderson dissented, however, ruling that the defendants had been denied an?impartial jury, fair trial, fair sentencing, and?effective counsel. While waiting for their trials, eight of the nine defendants stayed in?Kilby Prison.The case was returned to the?lower court?and the judge allowed a?change of venue, moving the retrials to?Decatur, Alabama.?Judge Hortonwas appointed. During the retrials, one of the alleged victims admitted?fabricating the rape story?and asserted that none of the Scottsboro Boys touched either of the white women. The?jury?found the defendants guilty, but the judge set aside the verdict and granted a new trial. After a new series of trials, the verdict was the same: guilty. The cases were ultimately tried three times. For the third time a jury—now with one black member—returned a third guilty verdict. Charges were finally dropped for four of the nine defendants. Sentences for the rest ranged from 75 years to death. All but two served prison sentences. One was shot in prison by a guard. Two escaped, were charged with crimes, and were sent back to prison. Clarence Norris, the oldest defendant and the only one sentenced to death, escaped parole and went into hiding in 1946. He was?pardoned?by?George Wallace?in 1976 after he was found, and wrote a book about his experiences. Norris, the last surviving defendant, died in 1989.On November 21, 2013, Alabama's?parole board?voted to grant posthumous pardons to the Scottsboro Boys.[2]"The Scottsboro Boys", as they soon became known, were defended by many in the?North?and attacked by many in the?South. The case is now widely considered a miscarriage of justice that eventually produced the end of all-white juries in the South. The case has inspired and has been examined in literature, music, theatre, film and television.HISTORY OF THE CASECCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read and annotate the detailed version of the Scottsboro case to understand the complex issues presented in this court case. Students will identify key events and aspects of the case and analyze the facts and author’s use of language to determine if this article was written with a bias.Students will analyze all information presented, and make inferences on how the social situation of the time influenced the out trail. This will be demonstrated as students use the information presented in this article to complete a detail timeline of the events (and cause and effect) that took place during the Scottsboro Trail.????????Two Huntsville Mill Girls Hobo to Chattanooga??? On March 24, 1931, two mill girls from Huntsville in Madison County, northern Alabama, dressed up in overalls and hoboed their way by freight train to Chattanooga, Tenn., about 97 miles away.? The older of the two, Victoria Price, who said she was born in Fayettesville, Tenn. and gave her age as 21, planned the trip, urging the younger one, Ruby Bates, 17 years old, to go with her.??? All that is in known so far of this trip is what Victoria Price later told concerning? it on the witness stand.? No check on the truth of her story was made at the trial.? According to this story, the two girls arrived in Chattanooga late Tuesday, March 24, and went to spend the night at the home of Mrs. Callie Brochie, who lived, according to Victoria, several blocks off Market Street on North Seventh.? Victoria said she did not know the number of the house, but found the place by asking a boy on the street where Mrs. Brochie lived.? He pointed it out to the two girls, she said, and all she could say was that it was the fourth house in the block.??? A thorough investigation of the neighborhood later by the attorney for the defense failed to discover either Mrs. Brochie or the house she was said to live in.????The Return to Huntsville??? As the story of Victoria Price goes, the two girls spent the night with Mrs. Brochie, and set out the next morning with her to look for work in the mills.? Victoria was not clear in her trial testimony as to the number and location of these mills where she said they tried to get work.? Finding no jobs open, they decided to return home to Huntsville.? This was around ten o'clock on the morning of March 25.? Boarding an oil tanker at first, they later climbed over into a gondola, or open topped freight car used for carrying gravel.? The car was partly filled with gravel.? Here they met seven white boys and began talking to them? Ruby declared in a private interview later that she did not speak to them but stayed in one end of the car by herself, while Victoria was talking, laughing and singing with the white boys in the other end of the car.? Victoria, however, said that both she and Ruby had talked to the boys.??? As the freight neared Stevenson, less than half the way to Huntsville, Victoria testified that the 12 Negroes climbed into the gondola in which the two girls were riding with the seven white youths, walking over the top of a box car in front and jumping into the gondola.? Ruby said in a personal interview later that she did not know how many colored boys were in the crowd.? She said she was too frightened to count them.? The Negroes gave the number of their gang as 15.? Victoria maintained emphatically that there were 12.????The Alleged Rape??? According to Victoria's testimony, a Negro identified at the trial as Charlie Weems came first waving a pistol, followed by the others in the crowd.? A mile or two past Stevenson, Victoria said that the Negroes began fighting with the white boys, shouting "unload, you white sons-of-bitches" and forcing the white boys to jump from the freight which was moving at a fast rate of speed.? One of the white boys, Orvil Gilley, who said he was afraid to jump for fear he would be killed, was allowed by the Negroes to remain.? One of the Negroes testified that he pulled Gilley back upon the car as he was hanging over the edge for fear he might fall between the cars and be killed.? The local papers reporting the trial, however, claimed that he was forced to remain out of viciousness to witness the alleged assault.??? Victoria's story continued that while the freight was moving rapidly between Stevenson and Paint Rock, a distance of approximately 38 miles, the Negroes having driven the seven white boys from the train, attacked the two girls.? Victoria Price testified that six raped her and six, Ruby Bates.? Three of the ones who attacked Ruby got off before the train stopped at Paint Rock, Victoria said.? She alleged that Charlie Weems was the leader and carried a pistol, but that Clarence Norris was the first one to attack her.? He was followed by four others who took turns holding, she claimed, and then the leader, Weems, as the last one, was in the process of raping her when the train stopped at Paint Rock and the Negroes were captured by the posse who had been notified by telegraph from Stevenson that the Negroes were on the train.??? The white gang, after having been put off the train, had informed the station master at Stevenson that the Negroes and the two white girls were on the freight.? The station agent telegraphed ahead to Scottsboro, a station about 18 miles west of Stevenson, to have the train stopped, but the freight had already passed there, so Paint Rock, some 20 miles farther, was notified by telegraph.??? Here nine of the Negroes were seized by an armed posse of? officers and men.? The other Negroes had left the train before it arrived at Paint Rock and nothing more has been heard from them.? A report appeared in the press some days after the trial that two Negroes were captured and an attempt made to identify them as members of the crowd of nine Negroes in the Scottsboro case.? Nothing more was said about it, so the attempt apparently fell through.????Plausibility of the Charges Questioned??? The International Labor Defense, which had representatives on the scene at the time of the trial in Scottsboro, and whose attorney, George Chamlee, of Chattanooga, later made investigations of various phases of the case not brought out at the trial, claims that when the two girls were taken from the train at Paint Rock, they made no charges against the Negroes, until after they were taken into custody; that their charges were made after they had found out the spirit of the armed men that came to meet the train and catch the Negroes, and that they were swept into making their wholesale accusation against the Negroes merely by assenting to the charges as presented by the men who seized the nine Negroes.??? There is no way of proving this conclusively, but from the interview I had with the two girls separately several weeks after the trial, I would say that there is a strong possibility of truth in this statement.? The talk with Victoria Price, particularly, convinced me that she was the type who welcomes attention and publicity at any price.? The price in this case meant little to her, as she has no notions of shame connected with sexual intercourse in any form and was quite unbothered in alleging that she went through such an experience as the charges against the nine Negro lads imply.? Having been in direct contact from the cradle with the institution of prostitution as a side-line necessary to make the meager wages of a mill worker pay the rent and buy the groceries, she has no feeling of revulsion against promiscuous sexual intercourse such as women of easier lives might suffer.? It is very much a matter of the ordinary routine of life to her, known in both Huntsville and Chattanooga as a prostitute herself.??? The younger girl, Ruby Bates, found herself from the beginning pushed into the background by the more bubbling, pert personality of Victoria.? She was given little chance to do anything but follow the lead of Victoria, so much quicker and garrulous.? When I talked with her alone she showed resentment against the position into which Victoria had forced her, but did not seem to know what to do except to keep silent and let Victoria do the talking.? The general opinion of the authorities at the trial was that Ruby was slow and stupid, but that Victoria was a shrewd young woman whose testimony amounted to something because she got the point at once of what was needed to hurry the trial through so that sentence of death could be pronounced quickly.? From my many talks with Judge Hawkins, who presided at the trial; with Dr. Bridges who examined the girls, and with other officials, I believe any unbiased person would have come to the conclusion that this was the basis of their judgment of the two girls as witnesses.????The Trial??? About 5:45 in the morning on April 6, a picked detachment of the 167th infantry under Major Joe Stearnes, made up of 118 members of five national guard companies of Gadsden, Albertville and Guntersville, Alabama, brought the nine negroes from Gadsden and locked them in the county jail at Scottsboro until the hour of their trial.? People from surrounding counties and states began arriving by car and train with the coming of dawn.? Thousands had gathered by the time the trial opened at 8:30 o'clock.? By ten o'clock it was estimated that a crowd of 8,000 to 10,000 swarmed in the narrow village streets of the little county seat of Scottsboro, packing the outside rim of the Square around the Courthouse with a solid mass of humanity.? Armed soldiers formed a picket line to keep the mass of people out of the Square, and no one was admitted into the Courthouse without a special permit.????A Lynching Spiritleft0??? Officials and residents of Scottsboro maintained that the crowd was peaceful and showed no evidence of lynching spirit.? Mrs. Ben Davis, local reporter for the Chattanooga Times, wrote that the crowd was "curious not furious" and was so pleased with her phrase that she continued to repeat it innumerable times when interviewed.? Judge Hawkins, Dr. Bridges, Hamlin Caldwell, the court stenographer; Sheriff Wann and many others were emphatic in their statements that the crowd had poured into Scottsboro in the spirit of going to a circus and wanted to see the show, but were without malicious intent toward the defendants.??? Chance conversation with residents of the town, however, did not tend to substantiate this view of the officials.? A kind-faced, elderly woman selling tickets at the railroad station, for instance, said to me that if they re-tried the Negroes in Scottsboro, she hoped they would leave the soldiers home next time.? When I asked why, she replied that the next time they would finish off the "black fiends" and save the bother of a second trial.? Then she told me a lurid story of the mistreatment suffered by the two white girls at the hands of those "horrible black brutes" one of whom had had her breast chewed of by one of the Negroes.??? When I called to her attention that the doctor's testimony for the prosecution was to the effect that neither of the girls showed signs of any rough handling on their bodies, it made not impression upon her.? Her faith in her atrocity story which had been told to her "by one who ought to know what he was talking about," remained unshaken.??? If, as the town authorities claimed, there was no lynching spirit, Major Stearnes, in charge of the soldiers called to Scottsboro, certainly did not go on this supposition.? The town looked like an armed camp in war time.? Armed soldiers were on guard both inside and outside the courthouse, and before Court opened, the Major gave orders to have persons in attendance at the trial searched.Negroes Tried in Four Separate Cases??? The defense did not ask for severance but was willing to have all nine negroes tried together.? The State, however, demanded that they be tried in four separate cases.? For the first case, two of the oldest of the boys were chosen by the prosecution.? Clarence Norris, of Molina, Georgia, 19 years old, and Charlie Weems, of 154 Piedmont Avenue, Atlanta, Ga., 20 years old, were the defendants selected for the initial trial.??? The chief witness for the State was the older of the two girls, Victoria Price, who told the story of the trip to Chattanooga and back from Huntsville, as given previously.? She did it with such gusto, snap and wise-cracks, that the courtroom was often in a roar of laughter.? Her flip retorts to the attorney for the defense, Steven Roddy, especially caused amusement.? The sentiment of the courtroom was with her, she knew it and played up to it, as can be seen by the record of the trial testimony.??? The other girl, Ruby Bates, was found by the prosecution to be a "weak witness," as I was told several times by officials present at the trial.? The white youth, Orvil Gilley, who remained on the train with the girls, also was considered stupid and slow-witted.? The Gilley boy came from Albertville, a small village a short distance from Scottsboro.? Judge Hawkins remarked to me about him, saying, "Well, we all know what his family is. Her mother, for instance . . ." and he broke off as if it were too obvious for words what his mother was like.? I asked if he meant that the family was feeble minded or of low mentality.? "No, not that," her replied, "but . . . well we know here they are not much good."? He would commit himself no farther.??? From all I could gather later, it seems that the opinion of spectators and officials at the trial that both Ruby Bates and Orvil Gilley were no good because they could not make their testimony fit in with the positive identification of the Negroes and the account of events as given by Victoria on the stand.? Victoria told me later that she warned the prosecutor that he had better take Ruby off the stand as she was getting mixed up and would make identifications and answers that did not coincide with those she, herself, had made.? The minutes of the trial show certainly that she was the only alleged eye witness of the group on the freight train that testified at great length.? Questioning of Ruby Bates and Orvil Gilley was very brief, and the other six white boys were not put on the stand at all.??? Dr. M. H. Lynch, County Health Physician, and Dr. H. H. Bridges, of Scottsboro, testified at the trial that the medical examination of the girls made shortly after they were taken from the train, showed that both the girls had had recent sexual intercourse, but that there were no lacerations, tears, or other signs of rough handling; that they were not hysterical when brought to the doctor's office first, but became so later.? Dr. Bridges said that Victoria had a small scratch on her neck and a small bruise or two, but nothing more serious was found.? The lawyer for the defense, Mr. Roddy, inquired hesitantly and indirectly, in his cross-examination of the doctor, if it were possible to tell the difference between the spermatozoa of a white man and that of a colored male.? The doctor answered that it was not possible to distinguish any difference.??? Other witnesses put on the stand by the State included Luther Morris, a farmer living west of Stevenson, who testified that he had seen the girls and the Negroes on the freight train as it passed his hay loft, which he said was 30 miles away, and that he "had seen a plenty;"? Lee Adams, of Stevenson, who said he saw the fight between the white and colored boys on the train, and Charles Latham, deputy who captured the Negroes at Paint Rock.??? Mr. Steven Roddy, attorney for the defense from Chattanooga, was undoubtedly intimidated by the position in which he found himself.? At the beginning of the trial he had asked not to be recorded as the lawyer in the case, begging the judge to leave Milo Moody, Scottsboro attorney appointed by the Judge as lawyer for the defense, on record as counsel for the Negroes with himself appearing purely in advisory capacity as representing the parents and friends of the boys in Chattanooga.? He made little more than half-hearted attempts to use the formalities of the law to which he was entitled, after his motion for a change of venue made at the beginning of the trial was overruled.? It might be said for him, of course, that taking the situation as it was, he felt it was hopeless? for him to attempt to do anything much, except make motions for a new trial after the convictions, which he did.??? The first case went to the jury Tuesday afternoon at 3 o'clock, and a verdict calling for the death penalty was returned in less than two hours.? The Judge had previously warned the courtroom that no demonstration must be staged when the verdict was announced.? In spite of this the room resounded with loud applause, and the mass of people outside, when the news spread to them, cheered wildly.??? The next day, Wednesday, April 8, Haywood Patterson, of 910 West 19th Street, Chattanooga, 18 years old, was tried alone, as the second case.? In three hours the jury returned with the death penalty verdict.? It was met with silence in the courtroom??? In the third case, five of the remaining six boys were tried:? Olin Montgomery, of Monroe, Georgia, 17 years old, and nearly blind; Andy Wright, of 710 West 22nd Street, Chattanooga, 18 years old;? Eugene Williams, No. 3 Clark Apts., Chattanooga, Willie Robeson, 992 Michigan Ave., Atlanta, Ga., 17 years old; Ozie Powell, 107 Gilmore St., Atlanta, Ga., 16 years old.??? It was brought out in this trial that Willie Robeson was suffering from a bad case of venereal disease, which would have made it painful, if not impossible for him to have committed the act of which he was accused.? The case went to the jury at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, April 8, and early Thursday morning, the jury again turned in the verdict calling for the death penalty.??? Judge Hawkins proceeded at once after the convictions returned against the five Negroes in the third case, to pronounce the death sentence on the eight who had been tried.? He set the day of execution for July 10, the earliest date he was permitted to name under the law, which requires that 90 days be allowed for filing an appeal of a case.??? In three days' time, eight Negro boys all under 21, four of them under 18 and two of them sixteen or under, were hurried through trials which conformed only in outward appearance to the letter of the law.? Given no chance even to communicate with their parents and without even as much as the sight of one friendly face, these eight boys, little more than children, surrounded entirely by white hatred and blind venomous prejudice, were sentenced to be killed in the electric chair at the earliest possible moment permitted by law.? It is no exaggeration certainly to call this a legal lynching.??? The most shameful of the cases was left to the last.? This was the trial of fourteen-year-old Roy Wright, of Chattanooga, a young brother of another of the defendants.? Perhaps because of his youthfulness, the white authorities who had him at their mercy, seemed to be even more vicious in their attitude toward him than toward the older defendants.? The may unconsciously have been trying to cover up a sense of uneasiness at what they were doing to a child.? Several of the authorities at the trial assured me that he was really the worst of the lot and deserved no lenience on account of his youth.? But for the sake of outside public opinion, the State decided to ask for life imprisonment instead of the death penalty, in view of the youth of the defendant.??? At two o'clock on the afternoon of Thursday, April 9, the jury announced that they were dead-locked and could not agree on a verdict.? Eleven of them stood for the death penalty and one for life imprisonment.? Judge Hawkins declared a mistrial, and the child was ordered back to jail to await another ordeal at a later date.? He is now in the Birmingham jail.? The other eight defendants were kept a short time also in Birmingham, and then removed to Kilby prison, about four miles from Montgomery.? I visited them there in their cells in the death row on May 12, locked up two together in a cell, frightened children caught in a terrible trap without understanding what it is all about.Why the Two Girls made the Charge???? The first of these questions can be answered only by some knowledge of the conditions of?? life in the mill town of Huntsville, as it affected the lives and development of the two young mill workers, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.??? Huntsville, the town seat of Madison County in northern Alabama, has within its city limits, some 12,000 inhabitants.? Taking in the four mill villages which surround it, the population is about 32,000.? There are seven cotton mills in and around Huntsville, the largest being the Lincoln mill made up of four units. . . . Then there are two old fashioned plants under the same management and owned by local capitalists -- the Helen knitting mill and the Margaret spinning mill.? It is in this last place, the Margaret Mill, that both Victoria and Ruby Bates worked before the trial and afterward.??? Wages were always low and hours long in all the Huntsville Mills, but in the Margaret and Helen especially, working conditions are very bad.? The workers had to bear the brunt of the competition with the modern mills, backed by outside capital and with outside connections to help them out, while the Margaret and Helen management was muddling along in the old way.? Respectable citizens of Huntsville said that only the lowest type of mill worker would take a job in the Margaret and Helen Mills.??? All the mills were running on short time during the period of the Scottsboro case, and had been for some months before.? Most of them had cut down to two, three, and four days a week.? The Margaret had its workers on shifts employed only every other week, from two to four days a week.??? Mill workers found it a dreary, hopeless enough struggle making some sort of a living when times were good, so when the slump hit them, it did not take long for a large group to fall quickly below the self-sustaining line.? Low standards of living were forced down still lower, and many were thrown upon the charity organizations.? It is from the charity workers of Huntsville that one may get an appallingly truthful picture of what mill life in Huntsville in time of depression means to workers who are doggedly trying to live on the already meager and uncertain wages of "prosperity."??? High standards of morality, of health, of sanitation, do not thrive under such conditions.? It is a rare mill family that is not touched in some form by prostitution, disease, prison, insane asylum, and drunkenness.? "That's the kind of thing these mill workers are mixed up with all the time", complained one social service worker.? "I'm beginning to forget how decent people behave, I've been messing around with venereal disease and starvation and unemployment so long."??? Under the strain of life in Huntsville, the institution of the family does not stand up very well.? Charity workers grumble that too many men are deserting their families.? "If they get laid off, and can't get another job they seem to think the best thing for them to do is to leave town, because then the charities will have to take care of their families," said one.??? There was no father in evidence in either the families of Victoria Price or Ruby Bates.??? Husbands come and go in many cases, with marriage ceremonies or without.? A woman who takes in a male boarder to help out expenses is unquestionable assumed to share her bed as well as her board with him.? The neighbors gossip about it, but with jealousy for her good luck in getting him, rather than from disapproval of her conduct.? The distinction between wife and "whore," as the alternative is commonly known in Huntsville, is not strictly drawn.? A mill woman is quite likely to be both if she gets the chance as living is too precarious and money too scarce? to miss any kind of chance to get it.? Promiscuity means little where economic oppression is great.??? "These mill workers are as bad as the Niggers," said one social service worker with a mixture of contempt and understanding.? "They haven't any sense of morality at all.? Why, just lots of these women are nothing but prostitutes.? They just about have to be, I reckon, for nobody could live on the wages they make, and that's the only other way of making money open to them."??? It should perhaps be mentioned that there are undoubtedly very many mill families in Huntsville to whom these things just described do not apply, but is also true that there is a large group of workers to whom the conditions do apply, and Ruby Bates and Victoria, with whom this part of the report is concerned, come from this group.Ruby Bates and Her Family??? As has been said, it is from the most economically oppressed of the mill workers of Huntsville that the two girls in the Scottsboro case come.? Ruby Bates. the younger of the two, has a better reputation among the social workers of Huntsville than Victoria.? They say that she was quiet and well-behaved until she got into bad company with Victoria Price.??? Ruby is only seventeen.? She is a large, fresh, good-looking girl, shy, but a fluent enough talker when encouraged.? She spits snuff juice on the floor continually while talking, holding one finger over half her mouth to keep the stream from missing aim.? After each spurt she carefully wipes her mouth with her arm and looks up again with soft, melancholy eyes, as resigned and moving as those of a handsome truck horse.??? Ruby lives in a bare but clean unpainted shack at 24 Depot Street, in a Negro section of town, with her mother, Mrs. Emma Bates.? They are the only white family in the block.? Of the five children in the family, two are married and three are living at home.? Mr. Bates is separated from his wife and lives in Tennessee, according to the report of neighbors, who say that he comes occasionally to see his children.??? The house in which the Bateses lived when I visited them on May 12, several weeks after the trial, had been vacated recently by a colored family.? The social service worker who accompanied me on the visit sniffed when she came in and said to Mrs. Bates:? "Niggers lived here before you, I smell them.? You can't get rid of that Nigger smell."? Mrs. Bates looked apologetic and murmured that she had scrubbed the place down with soap and water.? The house looked clean and orderly to me.? I smelled nothing, but then I have only a northern nose.??? Out in front while we talked, the younger Bates children were playing with the neighboring Negro youngsters.? Here was another one of those ironic touches which life, oblivious of man's ways, gives so often.? If the nine youths on the freight car had been white, there would have been no Scottsboro case.? The issue at stake was that of the inviolable separation of black men from white women.? No chance to remind negroes in terrible fashion that white women are farther away from them than the stars must be allowed to slip past.? The challenge flung to the Negro race in the Scottsboro case was Ruby Bates, and another like her.? Ruby, a girl whom life had forced down to equality with Negroes in violation of all the upholders of white supremacy were shouting.? As a symbol of the Untouchable White Woman, the Whites held high - Ruby.? The Ruby who lived among the Negroes, whose family mixed with them; a daughter of what respectable Whites call "the lowest of the low,"? that is a White whom economic scarcity has forced across the great color barrier.? All the things made the respectable people of Scottsboro insist that the Negro boys must die, had meant nothing in the life of Ruby Bates.??? Yet here was Ruby saying earnestly, as she sat in a Negro house, surrounded by Negro families, while the younger members of her family played in the street with Negro children, that the Scottsboro authorities had promised her she could see the execution of the "Niggers" - the nine black lads who were to be killed merely for being Negroes.??? Ruby's mother, Mrs. Emma Bates, clean and neat in a cheap cotton dress, talked with a mixture of embarrassment and off-handed disregard for her visitors' attitude toward her.? She has worked in the mills for many years.? She was employed by the Lincoln textile mill, the largest one in Huntsville, some time before the trial.? When I saw her she was out of a job, but the neighbors reported that she had a "boarder" living with her, a man named Maynard.? They also gossiped that she frequently got drunk, and took men for money whenever she got the chance.??? Neither mother nor daughter showed signs of regarding the experience Ruby is alleged to have been through as anything to be deplored especially.? They both discussed the case quite matter-of-factly, with no notion apparently, that it had marred or blighted Ruby's life at all.? The publicity which the case has brought to them, however, has impressed them greatly.? They humbly accept the opinion of respectable white people; it never occurs to them, of course to analyze the inconsistencies it makes with their own way of life.? Accustomed to seeing Negroes all around them on equal status with themselves for all practical purposes, and looking upon sexual intercourse as part of the common and inescapable routine of life, they have no basis in their own lives for any intense feeling on the subject of intimate relations between whites and blacks.? They have just fallen in with "respectable" opinion because that seems to be what is expected of them, and they want to do the proper thing.? There are so few times when they can.??? The only strong feeling that Ruby showed about the case was not directed against the Negroes.? It was against Victoria Price that Ruby expressed deep and bitter resentment.? For Victoria captured the show for herself and pushed Ruby into the background, causing people at the trial to say that Victoria was a quick clever girl, but Ruby was slow and stupid.? It was easier for Victoria to talk than to breathe.? Words came hard to Ruby.? Victoria identified the six Negroes she claimed attacked her with a cock-sure, emphatic manner that much impressed the jurors and the trial spectators.? She caught on at once to what was wanted of her -- identifications without any confusing hesitations to slow up the death sentences.? Ruby, on the other hand, was annoying from the start because she could not say which ones attacked her.? So Victoria with pert, condescending manner, passing looks with the prosecuting officials at such stupidity, told Ruby which ones she must say attacked her, in order not to get mixed up and identify some of those Victoria had previously said were "her six Niggers," as she put it.Both Ruby and Victoria told me this, in their own words, when I interviewed them personally.? Neither one had the slightest notion of the seriousness of what they were saying.? The only opinion they had run across so far was that which said the "Niggers" must get the death sentence at once or be lynched.? Never having met any other attitude on the Negro question, they both assumed that this was my attitude, and therefore spoke to me as they thought all respectable white people speak.Victoria Price and Her Mother??? Victoria Price was born in Fayetteville, Tennessee.? She has been married but says she is separated from her husband.? She left him because he "lay around on me drunk with canned heat," she said.? She was known at the trial as Mrs. Price, though this is her mother's name, not her husband's.? Her age was variously reported in Scottsboro as 19, 20, and 21.? Her mother gave it as 24, and neighbors and social workers said she was 27.??? Victoria lives in a little, unpainted shack at 313 Arms Street, Huntsville, with her old, decrepit mother, Mrs. Ella Price, for whom she insistently professes such flamboyant devotion, that one immediately distrusts her sincerity.? This impression is strengthened by little side looks her mother gives her.? Mrs. Price fell down the steps while washing clothes, and injured her arm, which is now stiff and of little use.? Victoria says her mother is entirely dependent upon her for support.??? Miss Price is a lively, talkative young woman, cocky in manner and not bad to look at.? She appears to be in very good health.? The attention which has come to her from the case has clearly delighted her.? She talks of it with zest, slipping an many vivid and earthy phrases.? Details spoken of in the local press as "unprintable" or "unspeakable" she gives off-hand in her usual chatty manner, quite unabashed by their significance.? Like Ruby, Victoria spits snuff with wonderful aim.??? Victoria and her mother, after some warm argument on the subject, agreed finally to the number of years that Victoria had worked in the mills as being ten.? Eight of these years were spent doing night work, they said, on a twelve-hour shift.? Victoria is a spinner, and used to run from 12 to 14 sides, she said with pride.? "Yeh, I used to make good money.? I've made as high as $2.25 a day workin' the night shift before hard times come."? Now nobody is allowed to have more than 8 sides to run, and the average is 6, Victoria says.? She gets 18 cents a side now, where she used to get 22 cents.? "I make on an average of $1.20 a day now, workin' two, sometimes three days a week.? Every other week we are laid off altogether.? You know nobody can't live on wages like that."??? Although Victoria with a sly eye on me to see if I had heard of her record and would scoff, assured me that in spite of her low wage she never made a cent outside the wall of the mill, her reputation as a prostitute is widely established in Huntsville, and according to the investigation of the International Labor Defense, also in Chattanooga.? One of the social workers reported that Walter Sanders, chief deputy sheriff in Huntsville, said that he didn't bother Victoria, although he knew her trade, because she was a "quiet prostitute, and didn't go rarin' around cuttin' up in public and walkin' the streets solicitin' but just took men quiet-like."??? Sheriff Giles, of Huntsville, said he had information that she was running a speak-easy on the side with a married man named Teller, who lived in the Lincoln mill village and had several small children, but was now running around with Mrs. Price and leaving his wife.? The sheriff said he had been trying to catch them with liquor on them, but had not succeeded so far.? He said that he had caught the Teller man in her house, however, and had given both of them a warning.??? Mrs. Russell, a neighbor of the Prices, claims that Victoria is a "bad one" and has been in no end of scrapes with married men.? She was reported to be the cause of the separation of a Mr. and Mrs. Luther Bentrum, and was rumoured to have received the attentions of a man named George Whitworth, until his wife threatened to kill her, and Victoria hurriedly moved out of the neighborhood.? One morning after the Scottsboro trial, Mrs. Russell said she saw her lying drunk out in the back yard with a man asleep on her lap.? Mrs. Russell is also authority for the statement that Victoria's mother was as notorious for her promiscuity in her day as Victoria is now.??? These stories are typical of the sort that circulate continually among the mill workers of the group from which both Ruby and Victoria come.? Whether true or exaggerated, they give some idea of the social background of both the plaintiffs in the Scottsboro case.? Leaving out of consideration the matter of the conflicting and untested evidence upon which the Negro boys were convicted, and assuming what has by no means been proved, that the Negroes are guilty of the worst that has been charged against them, the question of whether a monstrous penalty has not been exacted for an offense which the girls themselves feel to be slight, can certainly be raised.Why the Boys Were Hated??? Scottsboro, the county seat of Jackson county in northern Alabama, is a charming southern village with some 2,000 inhabitants situated in the midst of pleasant rolling hills.? Neat, well-tended farms lie all around, the deep red of their soil making a striking contrast with the rich green of the hills.? The cottages of the town stand back on soft lawns, shaded with handsome trees.? A feeling of peace and leisure is in the air.? The people on the streets have easy kind faces and greet strangers as well as each other cordially.? In the Courthouse Square in the center of town, the village celebrities, such as the mayor, the sheriff, the lawyers, lounge and chat democratically with the town eccentrics and plain citizens.??? Strolling around observing these things, it is hard to conceive that anything but kindly feelings and gentle manners toward all mankind can stir the hearts of the citizens of Scottsboro.? It came as a shock, therefore, to see these pleasant faces stiffen, these laughing mouths grow narrow and sinister, those soft eyes become cold and heard because the question was mentioned of a fair trial for nine young Negroes terrified and quite alone.? Suddenly these kindly-looking mouths were saying the most frightful things.? To see people who ordinarily would be gentle and compassionate at the thought ot a child - a white one - in the least trouble, who would wince at the sight of a suffering dog - to see these men and women transformed by blind, unreasoning antipathy so that their lips parted and their eyes glowed with lust for the blood of black children, was a sight to make one untouched by the spell of violent prejudice shrink.??? The trial judge, A.E. Hawkins, a dignified, fine-looking, gray-haired Southern gentleman, who was absolutely convinced in his own mind that he had done everything to give the Negroes a fair trial, gave himself away so obviously at every other sentence he uttered, that any person with mind unclouded by the prejudice which infected him could have pointed it out.? The other officials and citizens with whom I discussed the case also made it disconcertingly clear that they regarded the trial of the Negroes and the testimony given at it, not as an honest attempt to get at the truth, but as a game where shrewd tricks were to be used to bring about a result already decided upon in the minds of every one of them.? They all wanted the Negroes killed as quickly as possible in a way that would not bring disrepute upon the town.? They therefore preferred a sentence of death by a judge, to a sentence of death by a mob, but they desired the same result, and were impatient with anything that slowed up the conviction and death sentence which they all knew was coming regardless of any testimony.??? They said that all negroes were brutes and had to be held down by stern repressive measures or the number of rapes on white women would be larger than it is.? Their point seemed to be that it was only by ruthless oppression of the Negro that any white woman was able to escape raping at Negro hands.? Starting with this notion, it followed that they could not conceive that two white girls found riding with? a crowd of Negroes could possibly have escaped raping.? A Negro will always, in their opinion, rape a white woman if he gets the chance.? These nine Negroes were riding alone with two white girls on a freight car.? Therefore, there was no question that they raped them, or wanted to rape them, or were present while the other Negroes raped them - all of which amounts to very much the same thing in southern eyes - and calls for the immediate death of the Negroes regardless of these shades of difference.? As one southerner in Scottsboro put it, "We white people just couldn't afford to let these Niggers get off because of the effect it would have on other Niggers."??? In answering the question then, of why ordinarily kind, mild people are aroused to such heartless cruelty against boys who have done them no harm, and if their case were fairly investigated quite likely would be found to have harmed nobody else either, one it brought up against the ugly fact that these pleasant people of the South, the Civil War notwithstanding, are still living on the enslavement of the Negro race.? And this brings one to a second ugly fact, that when this is so, the subjugating race cannot afford to have any regard for decency, honesty, kindness, or fairness in their treatment of the black race.? These traits are exclusively for relationships with their own people.? The thing that stands out above everything else in their minds is that the black race must be kept down; as they put it, "The Nigger must be kept in his place."? Repression, terror, and torture are the means that will do it.?Why Society Neglected the Boys??? The third question of why these nine young Negroes who have been sentenced to death after a hasty legal ritual has been said over their heads, have never been given a chance to be anything but the illiterate, jobless young itinerants they are, lies tied up with the whole problem of the denial of civil, social, and economic rights to the Negro in America.? It can be answered completely only by a study of the discriminations practiced against the Negro in all phases of his life - educational,? residential, economic segregation.?? We pride ourselves in this country upon having a free and compulsory educational system.? Why then did these young Negroes, all under age, not know how to read and write?? Because the subjugating? white race is not concerned to see that black children go to school.? It is not to their interest to educate the Negro.? They profit too much by having a race under their feet who will do the dirtiest, the hardest of their work.? It is not to their interest to see that the Negro has the same legal and social rights as the white man.? Southern whites feel to their marrow-bone only one thing about the Negro, and they say it over and over.? Hundreds of thousands of them have been saying it for generations.? They will continue to say it as long as anyone will listen.? It is their only answer to the Negro problem.? It is their reply to the questions of the Scottsboro case - the Nigger must be kept down.?Timeline Of The Case___________________CCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Working in groups, students will compare the timeline they created to the time provided on the Scottsboro Boys website. They will compare the events present in each document compose a list of the 10 most important events. Students will justify their answer with specific textual evidence from the two documents.This will be demonstrated as students re-create a new timeline the features the top 10 events and provides a justification for why those events are the most crucial. 1931right0March 25: In the depths of the Depression, a fight breaks out between white and black young men who are riding as hoboes on a Southern Railroad freight train. The train is stopped by an angry posse in Paint Rock, Alabama, and nine black youths are arrested for assault. Rape charges are added, following accusations from two white women who have also come off the train,?Victoria Price?and?Ruby Bates. The accused are taken to Scottsboro, Alabama, the Jackson County seat. The women are examined by Drs. R. R. Bridges and Marvin Lynch.News of the incident spreads quickly; the?Jackson County Sentinel, printed that evening, decries the "revolting crime." White outrage erupts over the allegations, and a lynch mob gathers at the Scottsboro jail, prompting the sheriff to call Alabama Governor Benjamin Meeks Miller. Governor Miller in turn calls in the National Guard to protect the jail and its prisoners.March 30: A grand jury indicts all nine "Scottsboro Boys."April 6-7: Before Judge A. E. Hawkins,?Clarence Norris?and?Charlie Weems?are tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.right0April 7-8:?Haywood Patterson?is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.April 8-9:?Olen Montgomery,?Ozie Powell,Willie Roberson,?Eugene Williams, andAndy Wright?are tried, convicted, and sentenced to death.April 9: The case against?Roy Wright, aged 13, ends in a hung jury when 11 jurors seek a death sentence, and one votes for life imprisonment.April-December: Shocked by the speedy trials, the extreme youth of the defendants, and the severity of the sentences, progressive national organizations take up the Scottsboro case and call for the country to reject the "Alabama frame-up." The?National Association for the Advancement of Colored People?(NAACP) and the?International Labor Defense?(I.L.D.) court the defendants, their parents, and public opinion for the right to represent the young men in an appeal, and raise money for their defense.June 22: The executions of the defendants are stayed pending appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court.1932January: The NAACP withdraws from the case.right0January 5: A letter from Ruby Bates to a boyfriend surfaces; in it, she denies having been raped.March 24: The Alabama Supreme Court, voting 6-1, upholds the convictions of seven of the defendants, granting Eugene Williams a new trial because he was a juvenile at the time of his conviction.May 27: The United States Supreme Court agrees to hear the case.November 7: In Powell v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the defendants were denied the right to counsel, which violated their right to due process under the?Fourteenth Amendment. The cases are remanded to the lower court.1933right0January: The I.L.D. asks?Samuel Leibowitz?to take the case while acknowledging its inability to pay any fees. He agrees.March 27: Haywood Patterson's second trial begins, this time in Decatur, Alabama, before?Judge James Horton.April 6: Ruby Bates appears as a surprise witness for the defense, denying that any rape occurred and testifying that she was with Victoria Price for the whole train ride. Her assertion that she and Price were with boyfriends the night before explains the presence of semen in their vaginas. On the stand,?Dr. Bridges admits?that the sperm found in his examination were non-motile, and indicates that Victoria Price showed few physical signs of having been forcibly raped by six men, as she claimed, but he refuses to say how old the semen could have been.April 9: Patterson is found guilty and sentenced to death by electric chair.right0April 18: Judge Horton sets the sentence of death for Patterson, and then suspends it on a motion for a new trial. Then, the judge postpones the trials of the other defendants because tensions in town are running too high to expect a "just and impartial verdict."June 22: Judge Horton sets aside Patterson's conviction and grants a new trial.October 20: The cases are removed from Judge Horton's court into?Judge William Callahan's?court.November 20: Seven of the defendants appear in Callahan's court. The youngest two, Roy Wright and Eugene Williams, have been transferred to a Juvenile 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.1934June 12: Judge Horton is defeated in his bid for re-election.right0June 28: 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.L.D. for allegedly intending to bribe Victoria Price with $1,500 to change her testimony. The lawyers were never convicted.1935February 15: Samuel Leibowitz makes his first appearance before the Supreme Court of the United States. 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.right0April 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.L.D. are considered liabilities to the defendants and the defense is reorganized. The?Scottsboro Defense Committee?(SDC) is formed with Allan Knight Chalmers as chairman, and a local attorney, Clarence Watts, is named co-counsel.1936right0January 23: Patterson is found guilty and sentenced to 75 years in prison. The sentence is a compromise between the foreman, who thought the defendant innocent, and the rest of the jury.January 24: While being transported back to Birmingham Jail, Ozie Powell pulls a knife and slashes Deputy Edgar Blalock's throat. Sheriff Jay Sandlin stops the car and shoots Powell in the head. Both Blalock and Powell survive.right0December: Prosecuting attorney Lieutenant Governor Thomas Knight meets Leibowitz in New York to negotiate a compromise.1937May: Thomas Knight dies.June 14: The Alabama Supreme Court upholds Patterson's conviction.July 12-16: The third trial of Clarence Norris ends in a death sentence. Pressure from his community, and his defeat in this case, causes Watts to fall ill, leaving Leibowitz to lead the defense.July 20-21: The trial of Andy Wright ends in conviction and a sentence of 99 years.July 22-23: The trial of Charley Weems ends in conviction and a sentence of 75 years.July 23-24: Ozie Powell pleads guilty to assaulting Blalock and is sentenced to 20 years. Rape charges are dropped.July 24: Rape charges against the last four defendants, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright, are dropped.October 26: The U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear the appeal of Haywood Patterson.December 21: Alabama Governor Bibb Graves meets with Allan Knight Chalmers to discuss granting clemency to the five convicted Scottsboro defendants.1938June: The Alabama Supreme Court affirms the sentences given Norris, Andy Wright and Weems.July: Governor Graves commutes Norris's death sentence to life imprisonment.August: An Alabama parole board recommends a denial of parole for Patterson and Powell.October: An Alabama parole board recommends a denial of parole for Norris, Weems and Andy Wright.October 29: Governor Graves meets with the convicted Scottsboro defendants in his office to consider parole.November 15: Governor Graves denies the pardon applications of all five Scottsboro defendants.November 17: Weems is released on parole.1944January: Andy Wright and Clarence Norris are released on parole.September: Wright and Norris leave Alabama, in violation of their parole. Chalmers persuades them to return to the South and, despite promises to be lenient, both are returned to jail, Norris in October 1944, Wright in October 1946.1946June: Ozie Powell is released on parole.September: Clarence Norris is paroled again.1948July: Haywood Patterson escapes from prison.1950June 9: Andy Wright is paroled. He finds a job in Albany, New York.June: Patterson is arrested by the FBI in Detroit; Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams refuses to sign the extradition papers to return him to Alabama. Alabama abandons attempts to return him to prison.December: Patterson is charged with murder after a barroom brawl.1951September: Patterson is convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 6 to 15 years.1952August: Patterson dies of cancer.1959August: Roy Wright dies.1976October: Clarence Norris is pardoned by Alabama Governor?George Wallace.1977July 12: Victoria Price files a lawsuit against NBC for defamation and invasion of privacy after the broadcast of?Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys; her claim is dismissed.1989January 23: Clarence Norris, the last of the Scottsboro Boys, dies.The Individuals Involved In The CaseCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Working in groups, students will read, annotate, and analyze the facts about the different individuals involved in the trail. Students will evaluate the facts about each person’s character to formulate an opinion about who should and should not be trusted.This will be demonstrated through the “Character Analysis” Chart that students complete and present. Students will justify their opinion with textual evidence presented in the following articles. Victoria PriceNo one deserves more blame for the long ordeal suffered by the Scottsboro Boys than does a lower class white woman from Huntsville named Victoria Price. It was her accusation of gang rape aboard a Chattanooga to Memphis freight train, repeated in trial after trial for six years, that led to one of the most protracted and tumultuous legal battles in American history. In 1931, when the alleged rape aboard the Southern Railroad occurred, Price was a twenty-one-year old spinner at the Margaret cotton mill in Huntsville making $1.20 a day.? The Margaret mill was old and dilapidated and fighting a losing battle against the Depression, leaving Price with only five or six days of work a month.? It was an unsuccessful job-hunting trip to Chattanooga that put Price and her co-worker Ruby Bates on the same March 25th train as nine black down-on-their-luck teens who would become known as the Scottsboro Boys. Price was the promiscuous, hard drinking, hard swearing daughter of a Huntsville widow who lived in a poor, racially mixed section of town.? She made love in box cars and fields, slept in hobo jungles, and rode the rails in a pair of beaten overalls.? A defense affidavit of a one-time neighbor of Price's described her as "a common street prostitute of the lowest type," a woman who would "be out at all hours of the night and curse and swear, and be a general nuisance to the negro population."? Another acquitance rounded up by the defense said he saw Price "drunk and in a fight with another woman and she had her clothes up around her body and she had on only two garments, and exposed her private parts."? A third acquaintance swore he had overheard Price asking "negro men" the size of their "private parts." Price's sensational story of being gang-raped by six pistol and knive-waving blacks was attacked by defense lawyer Samuel Leibowitz.? Price, however, proved to be a difficult witness to trap.? She was evasive,? sarcastic, and frequently used ignorance and bad memory to avoid answering difficult questions.? When asked about her conviction for adultery, she claimed not to know what adultery was.? When Leibowitz tried to use a thirty-four-foot long model? train that was a replica of the train on which the rape allegedly occurred, Price refused to admit that it resembled the real train: "That's much smaller....That's just a toy."? Her testimony was crudely inflammatory, as when she quoted her supposed attacker as saying, "When I put this in you and pull it out you will have a negro baby." To any dispassionate observer, the medical testimony provided adequate refutation of Price's charge.? Only a small amount of semen, and all of that non-motile, were found in her vagina.? Defense testimony indicated that Price had sexual intercourse with Jack Tiller in the Huntsville train yards less than two days before the alleged gang rape, which would account for the semen that was found. After using Price's testimony to secure convictions in sixteen trials over five years, the prosecution revealed its own doubts about Price's veracity.? In a closed door, two-hour plus session in 1936, prosecutors told Price that if she retracted her charges against four of the Scottsboro Boys, she would not be charged with perjury.? She refused. In 1976, after NBC showed a made-for-television movie called "Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys," Price emerged to file a defamation and invasion of privacy suit against the network.? The case was dismissed.? In 1982, Victoria Price died without ever having apoligized for her role in the injustice visited upon the Scottsboro Boys. Ruby BatesRuby Bates was, like Victoria Price, a poor Huntsville millworker who became one of the two accusers of the Scottsboro Boys. But, unlike Price, Bates later recanted her story of rape aboard a Chattanooga to Memphis freight train, and went on to actively campaign for the release of the jailed black defendants. Bates had a tough childhood.? Her mother was a prostitute. Her father was a shiftless drunk who would beat her, her mother, and her siblings.? When her father was jailed for horse-whipping her brother, the family left and began to move from one northern Alabama town to another before settling in Huntsville, where, at age fifteen, Ruby took a job in the Margaret cotton mill. Bates lived with her family in an unpainted wooden shack in worst part of Huntsville.? Her family was the only white family on the block.? Contrary to popular belief, segregation did not reach to the lower rungs of southern society, and Ruby lived, played, and slept with blacks. Bates was frequently described as a "notorious prostitute."? A defense affidavit of a resident of Chattanooga, where Bates rented a room for a time in a boarding house, stated that Bates often had "negro men in her room all night," and would sleep with as many as three men in an afternoon. As a prosecution witness in the first trials in Scottsboro, Bates proved to be much less effective that the brasher and more confidant Price.? Shy, inarticulate, and insecure, Bates was a poor liar.? Moreover, she could not identify any of her attackers and failed to corroborate Price on key points of her testimony. Less than nine months after the first trial, Bates wrote her then boyfriend, Earl Streetman, a letter in which she denied having been raped: "those Negroes did not touch me....i hope you will believe me the law dont....i wish those Negroes are not Burnt on account of me."? At the end of 1932, Bates left Huntsville for Montgomery, then Chattanooga, then New York City, where she landed a job in a tourist camp on the outskirts of the city.? The Scottsboro case was in the papers, and Bates decided to visit a prominent minister named Harry Emerson Fosdick and confess her lies.? Fosdick encouraged her to return to Alabama and tell the truth. Bates was a surprise witness for the defense in the second Haywood Patterson trial.? She recanted her story of the rape, saying she was encouraged by Price to make the false accusation as a way of deflecting attention from possible charges of vagrancy or Mann Act (crossing state lines for immoral purposes) that they otherwise may have faced when they were among those rounded up by the posse in Paint Rock.? Thomas Knight was merciless on cross-examination.? He shouted at her, pointed out every minor inconsistency in her story, and suggested she had been bought by the communists.? In his summation, Knight said that Bates "sold out for a gray coat and a gray hat."? Bates's performance at the trial made her an object of intense southern scorn, and she had to be whisked into hiding by heavily armed deputies. After the trial, Bates headed northeast and joined the International Labor Defense campaign for release of the Scottsboro Boys.? Her speeches mixed communist rhetoric and apologies.? She said "she was sorry for all the trouble that I caused them," and said she did so because she was "frightened by the? ruling class of Scottsboro."? She appeared in rallies, parades, and went to Washington where she met with the Speaker of the House and Vice President John Garner. In 1940, Bates moved to Washington state, where she married.? She returned to Alabama in the 1960's.? She died on October 27, 1976 at age sixty-three. Haywood Patterson Haywood Patterson was, as much as anyone, at the center of the contoversy surrounding the? Scottsboro Boys.? It was Patterson's hand that was stepped on by a white boy while he was hanging to the side of a tank car, leading to a fight, the train's interception by a posse, and the eventual arrest and prosecutions of the Scottsboro Boys.? It was Patterson, viewed as the most guilty and the most defiant of the Boys, who prosecutors chose as their first target after the initial convictions from the first trials were overturned.? It was Patterson who faced the most trials and convictions (four between 1931 and 1937), did the hardest time in Alabama prisons, managed the most prison escapes (two), and whose story was first told in the book Scottsboro Boy. Patterson was eighteen at the time he was accused of rape by Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. He was born in Georgia, the son of a sharecropper who later moved to Chattanooga to take work as a steelworker. Patterson left school after the third grade, working as a delivery boy for a time after he quit.? He was already a veteran of the rails when arrested in Paint Rock in 1931, having ridden trains from Ohio to Florida to Arkansas, looking for work, since he was fourteen. Patterson entered jail illiterate, but within eight months was writing letters home, reading, and challenging guards to name a state that he could not name the capitol of. His favorite prison reading, when he could get his hands on it, was the magazine True Detective. Patterson's smarts, his enterprising nature, and his defiance helped him tolerate the tough conditions of Alabama prison life better than most of the other Scottsboro Boys.? Patterson, however, was given to rapid mood swings; one letter might be hopeful and upbeat, while in the next he might be complaining of "nightmares and restless moments."? Throughout the early years of the Scottsboro cases, Patterson was recognized by the ILD as being the most loyal, most militant, and most spirited of the Boys. After being falsely accused of rape in 1931, Patterson spent the next sixteen years in? Alabama courtrooms and prisons.? Tried four times, Patterson was convicted and sentenced to death three times, before receiving a seventy-five year sentence from his fourth jury.? Patterson, either awaiting trial or serving time, spent time in jails and prisons in Scottsboro, Decatur, Birmingham, Kilby (the death house), and Atmore. Prison life in Alabama was never easy, but some times were especially tough. One night, the night originally set for his own execution, Patterson watched and listened from his own six-foot by nine-foot cell as another inmate was electrocuted in a nearby room at Kilby. Of the experience Patterson said, "If I live to be 100, I'll never forget it."? Atmore, a prison near Mobile, was the hell-hole of hell-holes. Atmore was filled with sadistic and even murderous guards, murderous inmates, rampant homosexual rape, and venemous snakes. Several times he was whipped. He was left without food for as long as a week at a time.? He was kept in solitary confinement.? He was surrounded by so many poisonous snakes that he was driven to tempting fate by draping them over his shoulders or putting them inside his shirt.? On one occasion the prison bookkeeper offered two other black inmates $50 each to kill Patterson, but instead they warned him.?? In February 1941, he was stabbed twenty times, puncturing his lungs, by an inmate paid by a guard to kill him. Deprived of normal outlets for sex, Patterson became an aggressive homosexual ("a wolf") with his own "gal-boy."? He attacked another prisoner with a switchblade for having sex with "his kid": "He didn't try to take my gal-boy away from me after that; nobody did." Patterson held a variety of jobs in prison.? He swept floors, worked rice and corn fields.? For some time he ran an unofficial general store out of his cell. At Kilby, Patterson was responsible for carrying dead inmates out of the execution chamber. Patterson managed two escapes.? The first? in April, 1943 gave Patterson five days of freedom before he was returned to Atmore to face even harsher treatment from prison guards.? The second escape occurred on July 17, 1947, when Patterson was working on a prison farm.? He and a number of other inmates began running through tall rows of corn, then out into woods, through snake-infested creeks.? Cornered by three dogs, Patterson drowned two before scaring off the third.? After a few close calls, Patterson made his way to Atlanta, then Chattanooga, then to the home of his sister in Detroit.? At age thirty-six, Patterson was able to enjoy his first beer. For the next three years, Patterson lived underground.? He rediscovered women.? He made contact with Scottsboro supporters.? He, at the urging of I.F. Stone told his story in a book published in 1950, The Scottsboro Boy. Shortly after publication of his book, Patterson was arrested by the F.B.I.?? Alabama asked that Patterson be returned to Alabama, but Michigan Governor G. Mennen Williams refused extradition after a nationwide letter-writing campaign was mounted on Patterson's behalf. In December, 1950, Patterson was arrested in connection with a barroom brawl that resulted in the death of another man.? Patterson was charged with murder.? Patterson claimed self-defense. His first trial resulted in a hung jury, a second ended in a mistrial, and a third resulted in a manslaughter conviction.? Less than a year after Patterson returned to prison, on August 24, 1952, he was dead of cancer at age thirty-nine. ? Charles Weems? Charles Weems, at age nineteen was the oldest of the Scottsboro Boys when he was arrested in March, 1931.? Weems, of Atlanta, was involved in the fight aboard the Southern Railroad freight.? He was convicted of rape first in 1931, then in a second trial in 1937.? He kept a clean prison record and was paroled in 1943. Weems had a hard childhood.? His mother died when he was four, and only one other of his seven siblings survived childhood.? Weems finished the fifth grade, then took a jobs in a pharmacy. Prison life was also difficult for Weems.? He complained about being "half fed" and said he spent a lot of time thinking about "the ladies out in the world and I'm shut in here."? In 1934, he was beaten and tear-gassed for reading Communist literature that had been sent to him.? The gassing caused permanent eye injuries.? In 1937, he contracted tuberculosis.? In 1938, he was stabbed by a prison guard who had mistaken him for his intended target, Andy Wright. After his release in 1943, Weems moved back to Atlanta where he married and took a job in a laundry. Calarence NorrisClarence Norris died in Bronx Community Hospital on Janurary 23, 1989 at the age of seventy-six.? He was, as the title of a book he helped write suggested, the last of the Scottsboro Boys. Norris was the second of eleven children born to Georgia sharecroppers.? He attended school only to second grade, then at age seven began working in the cotton fields.? Norris had a job in a Goodyear plant, working up to sixteen hours a day, when his girlfriend left and he decided to hit the railroad tracks. When Norris, who had been one of those involved in the train fight with white boys, was accused of rape he thought he "was as good as dead."? According to Norris, on the night before the first trial, he was removed from his cell, beaten and told to turn state's evidence if he wanted to save his life.? At the first trial in Scottsboro, Norris testified that theother blacks raped Price and Bates and that he alone was innocent: "They all raped her, everyone of them." Norris's second conviction was overturned by the U. S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Norris vs Alabama, which found Alabama's system of excluding blacks from jury rolls to violate the Fourteenth Amendment.? Norris was convicted a third time in 1937 (in what Norris termed "a Kangaroo Court"), and again sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison by Governor Graves.? Norris was bitter over developments which left him and four others in prison, while four boys were released.? He believed that he was paying the price for their freedom. Norris fought often in prison.? One incident in 1943 landed him ten days in the hole with only a blanket, bread, and water.? Another incident brought on a beating with a leather strap. Norris was first paroled in 1944.? He moved to New York in violation of his parole, and was returned to prison.? In 1946, he was a paroled a second time.? He got a job shoveling coal in Cleveland for three years, then moved to New York City.? Unemployed in 1956, Norris visited Samuel Liebowitz who arranged a job for him as a dishwasher. In the 1960's, Norris asked the help of the NAACP in obtaining a pardon from the State of Alabama.? Norris had violated parole when he left Alabama and was a fugitive subject to parole revocation and a return to prison.? A successful full-scale campaign was mounted, and in 1976 Norris received his pardon from Governor George Wallace.? ?Andy Wright? Andy Wright, nineteen at the time of his arrest, was the older brother of Scottsboro Boy Roy Wright.? Wright attended school, doing well,? in Chattanooga until the sixth grade, when his father died and he quit to help his mother support the family.? He started driving a truck for a produce distributor at age twelve, a job he kept up for seven years until the distributor's insurance company learned of his young age and raised rates.? In March of 1931, the two Wrights, Patterson, and Williams all boarded the Southern Railroad freight, planning to ride it to Memphis where they heard government jobs hauling logs on the Mississippi might be available.? Wright admitted to having fought with white boys on the train, but denied ever having seen Price or Bates until he got off the train. In prison, despite a 1937 Life Magazine piece which described him as "the best natured" of the Scottsboro Boys, Wright was frequently ill and depressed. He was also said to be mistrustful, something of a loner, and to have a mean streak.? Wright was beaten by both prison guards and other inmates, on more than one occassion severely enough to require hospitalization. He wrote that "It seems as though I've been in here for? century an century." Wright was first paroled in January, 1944.? He married a woman from Mobile later that year. He took a job, which he held for two years, driving a grocery delivery truck.? Wright left Alabama in violation of his parole in 1946, was arrested, and for the next four years was in and out of the Alabama prison system.? He left Kilby prison for good on June 6, 1950, the last Scottsboro Boy to be freed. Wright moved to New York, living for times in Albany and New York City.? In 1951, he was accused of raping a thirteen-year-old girl? (NAACP investigators viewed the charges as false; Wright had been dating the girl's mother and his accuser), but acquitted by an all-white jury. ? Ozie Powell? Ozie Powell, sixteen when arrested, was from Atlanta.? Powell was not involved in the train fight, but said that he witnessed it.? He did not know any of the other Scottsboro Boys prior to his arrest. Powell, whose IQ was measured at "64-plus," could write only his name.? Powell who was born in rural Georgia, had only one year of schooling.? He had spent most of the three years prior to his arrest working in lumber camps. He described himself as quiet, shy, and bashful. In February of 1936, after testifying at Haywood Patterson's fourth trial, Powell was loaded into a car with Clarence Norris and Roy Wright.? The three were handcuffed together in the backseat, while a sherrif and his deputy rode in front.? Powell and the deputy got into an argument.? The deputy hit Powell on his head.? With his one free hand, Powell took a pen knife that had escaped detection during a search out of his pants and slashed the deputy's throat, wounding him.? The sheriff stopped the car, got out, and fired a bullet at Powell (who, along with the others, had his hands in the air) which lodged in his brain. (The sheriff and deputy described the incident as an escape attempt). Powell survived, but suffered permanent brain damage.? He had trouble speaking and hearing, memory loss, and weakness in his right leg and arm. On the operating table Powell told his mother, "I done give up...cause everybody in Alabama is down on me and is mad at me." According to those who knew him, like Clarence Norris, Powell was never the same again.? In what was to be his pre-parole interview with Governor Graves in 1938, Powell refused to answer the Governor's questions saying, "I don't want to say nothing to you."? Graves decided not to parole Powell.? He was finally released from prison in June, 1946.? He moved to back to Georgia. ? ? Olen Montgomery? Olen Montgomery, seventeen at the time of his arrest, was born in Monroe, Georgia, where he attended school through the fifth grade.? Montgomery was riding alone in a tank car near the rear of the train when the fight and alleged rape took place on the Chattanooga to Memphis freight.? Montgomery stuck consistently to his story, and by 1937 every prosecutor connected with the Scottsboro cases agreed Montgomery was innocent.? Montgomery was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937. During his six years in jail, Montgomery, who was severely nearsighted in both eyes and nearly blind in one, wrote frequent letters to his supporters asking for such things as six-string guitars (Montgomery hoped to be "the Blues King" after his release) and money to buy a night with a woman. After his release in 1937, Montgomery said that he wanted to be a lawyer or musician.? Despite the assistance of the Scottsboro Defense Committee,? however, none of? his career dreams were realized.? Montgomery bought a saxophone, then a guitar, and practiced as much as possible.? Most of the job opportunities that came his way-- dishwasher, porter, laborer-- Montgomery despised, believing they just were getting in the way of his musical calling.? He did agree to tour the country with Roy Wright for the Defense Committee and spoke at a number of SDC-arranged meetings.? Montgomery bounced back and forth between New York City and Georgia, drinking heavily, and rarely holding a job for more than a few months.? Sometime after 1960, Montgomery settled for good in Georgia. Eugene Williams??Eugene Williams was thirteen when arrested along with his friends the Wright brothers and Haywood Patterson in March, 1931.? Prior to boarding the Southern Railroad freight,? Williams had worked as a dishwasher in a Chattanooga cafe.? At trial, Williams admitted that he fought with white boys on the train, but denied having seen Price or Bates until after his arrest. In prison, Williams said that "getting out is the main thing I think about."? A 1937 Life Magazine article described Williams as "a sullen, shifty mulatto" who "tries to impress interviewers with his piety." The state dropped charges against Williams in July, 1937, citing his youth at the time of the alleged incident.? After his release he told Samuel Liebowitz that he hoped to land a job someday in a jazz orchestra.? He moved to St. Louis where he had relatives, and where his sponsors hoped that he would enroll in a Baptist seminary. ? Willie Roberson? _____________________________________When Willie Roberson, age seventeen, allegedly raped Ruby Bates aboard the Chattanooga to Memphis freight we was suffering from a serious case of syphillis, with sores all over his genitals,? that would have made intercourse very painful. Moreover, Roberson was unable to walk without a cane, and clearly was in in no condition to leap from railroad car to railroad car, as his accusers alleged. Nonetheless, on the strength of Price's and Bate's allegations Roberson was prosecuted and convicted.? Price testified that Roberson held her legs apart while other boys yelled "pour it to her."? The prosecution even managed to use Roberson's syphillitic condition to its advantage, suggesting that the syphillis Ruby Bates contracted in 1931 was caused by his having had sex with her. In fact, Roberson was no where near the scene of the alleged rape, but alone in a boxcar near the caboose.? He had left his job as a hotel busboy in Georgia to go to Chattanooga in search of better work.? Finding none available, he boarded the freight for Memphis.? Throughout the several trials in which he testified, Roberson stuck to his story.? Finally, even prosecutors came to believe him, and Roberson was one of four Scottsboro Boys released in July, 1937.? After his release, Roberson lived in New York City where he found steady work. Roberson's six years in jail were difficult.? Roberson suffered from asthma, and the lack of fresh air available aggravated his condition.? He was diagnosed (as were four other Scottsboro Boys) with "prison neurosis."? He said of his situation, "If I don't get free I just rather they give me the electric chair and be dead out of my misery."? Roy Wright? Roy Wright, twelve or thirteen when arrested, was the youngest of the Scottsboro Boys.? He was the brother of Andy Wright, who was also arrested upon disembarking the Chattanooga to Memphis freight on March 25, 1931. Wright was on his first trip away from his home in Chattanooga, where he worked in a grocery store.? His only trial ended in a mistrial when eleven jurors held out for death, even though, in view of his age, the prosecution had only asked for a life sentence. At the first trials in Scottsboro, Wright testified that he saw other defendants rape the white girls.? He later said that he did so after having been threatened and severely beaten by authorities. Wright kept a Bible with him at all times in jail, where he was held six years without retrial. He needed whatever comfort he could find.? In a letter to his mother he wrote, "I am all lonely and thinking of you...I feel like I can eat some of your cooking Mom."? Wright went over a year without getting fresh air. Alabama dropped all charges against Wright in 1937.? After his release, he told Samuel Leibowitz that wanted to be a lawyer or a teacher.? After going on a national tour for the Scottsboro Defense Committee, Wright served in the army, got married, and took a job with the merchant marine. In 1959, after returning from an extended stay at sea, Wright became convinced that his wife had been unfaithful.? Wright shot and killed his wife, then killed himself. Samuel LeibowitzWhen New Your attorney Samuel Leibowitz received a call from the International Labor Defense asking him whether he would defend the Scottsboro Boys in their new trials, he was considered by many to be the “new Clarence Darrow,” the man to call if you were charged with a capital crime. In over fifteen years of criminal defense work, Liebowitz had represented seventy-eight persons charged with first-degree murder. His remarkable record over that period was seventy-seven acquittals, one hung jury, and no convictions. Leibowitz, born in 1893, immigrated to the United States from Romania when he was four, attended college and law school at Cornell, then embarked on a career as a criminal defense attorney, seeing it as one path relatively open to Jews at the time.? In the courtroom, Leibowitz was known for his meticulous preparation, knowledge of the law, vibrant voice, and flamboyant style.Many people expressed surprise that the communists would ask Liebowitz to lead the Scottsboro defense.? He was neither a communist or even a radical, but rather a mainstream Democrat who had never been associated with class-based causes.? The choice of Leibowitz convinced many that the communists were serious about achieving justice for the Alabama defendants, and not just interested in making political hay.? Leibowitz would be asked to accept as co-counsel, however, the ILD's chief attorney, Joseph Brodsky.After reading the record of the first trials and becoming convinced of the innocense of the Scottsboro Boys, Leibowitz accepted the ILD's offer. He did so against the urgings of his wife and many friends who told him that the skin color of the defendants gave them no chance in the Alabama of the 1930's. He would work for the next four years on the cases without pay or reimbursement for most of his expenses.Leibowitz quickly became an object of loathing around Decatur when he opened his defense of Haywood Patterson by challenging Alabama's exclusion of blacks from the jury rolls.? Local hatred of Liebowitz grew uglier, as death threats were made against him after his tough cross-examination of Victoria Price.? One national reporter overheard several people saying, "It'll be a wonder if he gets out of here alive."? Five uniformed members of the National Guard were assigned to protect him during the trial, with another 150 available to defend against a possible lynch mob.Leibowitz was stunned by the jury's guilty verdict in Patterson's 1933 trial.? He compared the verdict to "the act of spitting on the tomb of Abraham Lincoln."? Back in New York after the trial, Leibowitz vowed to defend the Boys "until hell freezes over."? Speaking before enthusiatic audiences sometimes numbering in the thousands, he promised to take guilty verdicts to the Supreme Court and back until Alabama finally gives up:? "It'll be a merry-go-round, and if some Klu Kluxer doesn't put a bullet through my head, I'll go right along until they let the passengers off."? Leibowitz's determined efforts won the affection of his clients.? Haywood Patterson said of Liebowitz, "I love him more than life itself."After Judge Horton ordered a new trial for Patterson and the state transferred the cases to the courtroom of Judge William Callahan, Leibowitz's frustration grew.? Virtually every motion or objection Leibowitz made was denied, virtually every motion or objection made by the prosecution was sustained.? His anger showed, and Leibowitz found himself mocked, scolded, and reprimanded by the Judge Callahan.? After guilty verdicts and death sentences were handed to Patterson and Norris, a battle for control of the case ensued between Leibowitz and the ILD.? Liebowitz's anger with the ILD exploded after two ILD attorneys were charged with attempting to bribe Victoria Price.Leibowitz appeared before the United States Supreme Court to participate in the appeal of Patterson's and Norris's convictions on the ground that blacks were systematically excluded from Alabama's juries.? When Leibowitz alleged that the names of blacks appearing on jury rolls were fraudulently added after Haywood's trial began, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes asked Leibowitz if he could prove that allegation.? Leibowitz called for a page to bring in the jury roll and a magnifying glass, which was passed from justice to justice.? Their facial reactions indicated disgust.? The Supreme Court reversed the convictions in a decision that Leibowitz called a "triumph for American justice."After the third set of trials, Leibowitz began to involve himself again in projects unrelated to Scottsboro.? He met on death row several times with Bruno Hauptmann, the German immigrant convicted of kidnapping Charles Lindbergh's baby, in the hopes of convincing him to reveal details of the crime.In early 1937, following a series of secret meetings with Thomas Knight, Leibowitz reluctantly agreed to a compromise which would result in the release of four of the Scottsboro Boys while allowing prosecutions to again go forward against the others.Of the compromise, Leibowitz said, "I say yes, but with a heavy heart, and I feel very badly about it."? In the next set of Scottsboro trials, Leibowitz allowed a local attorney to assume the more visible role, while he did the coaching.? Leibowitz and others concerned with the Scottsboro Boy's welfare feared that the trials might become a refendum on Leibowitz himself, who was by then more unpopular than ever in northern Alabama.After his? work on the Scottsboro Boys case was finished, Leibowitz returned to his New York practice, then was appointed to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court of New York.Leibowitz died in January, 1978.Thomas E. Knight, Jr.?Thomas Knight has often been portrayed as the bad guy (along with the bad woman, Victoria Prince) in retellings of the Scottsboro Boys story. In the movie “Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys,” the actor playing King is given inflammatory and anti-Semitic lines like “show them that Alabama justice can not be bought and sold with Jew money from New York” that were actually uttered by his co-prosecutor, Wade Wright. Although Knight himself was not above offering offensive and prejudicial remarks (for example, in his summation her referred to Haywood Patterson as “that thing”), in comparison to Wright he comes across as a voice of moderation as when he told the jury, “I do not want a verdict based on racial prejudice or religious creed.” Ruby Bates, in cross-examination by Knight, said, “Yes” when asked whether it was true that his initial interview he told her that he “did not want to burn any person that wasn’t guilty.”Knight was born in Greensboro in 1898, the son of Thomas E. Knight, Sr., who would later serve as a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court and write the majority opinion in 1932 upholding the verdicts and death sentences in the initial Scottsboro trials.? Thomas Knight, Jr. unsuccessfully defended his father's opinion in oral arguments before the United States Supreme Court.? The Court's decision in?Powell vs. Alabama?sent the cases back to Alabama for retrial.? Knight, having been elected? Attorney General of Alabama in 1930, chose to assume the role of lead prosecutor in the Patterson trial before Judge Horton in 1933.? He would also head up the prosecution team in the trials before Judge Callahan in late 1933 and early 1934.In the courtroom, Knight was brusque and aggressive, often standing within a few feet of defense witnesses, raising his voice to a near shout, sometimes even sticking a finger within a few inches of a witness's face.? Knight had numerous, heated encounters with defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz.? Knight viewed his attack on the Alabama jury system as "an attack on the sovereignty" of the state.? When asked by Liebowitz to address black witnesses as "Mr." rather than by first names, Knight replied, "I am not in the habit of doing that."? Knight effectively attacked the credibility of key defense witnesses Bates and Lester Carter by accusing them of having sold out for fancy clothes.? Bates, he said "sold out" for "a gray coat and a gray hat."After the Supreme Court again reversed the convictions of the Scottsboro Boys in 1936, Knight met secretly with Leibowitz in New York to discuss a possible compromise.? He told Leibowitz he was "sick of the cases," and that they were causing Alabama considerable political and economic harm.? According to Leibowitz, Knight by that time had come to believe that Price was lying and no rape had ever occurred.? Nonetheless, he thought jail time appropriate because at least some of the Scottsboro Boys were guilty of assault for having thrown the white boys off the train.? After several meeting between the two, a compromise was reached that would result in the release of four of the boys and a reduction of sought charges for the others.?? The compromise was never carried out in full by the state because Knight died in May, 1937, and the new acting attorney general feared "looking soft" on rape.Orville Gilley____________________________________________________Orville Gilley was the state's star witness in the 1933 trials of Patterson and Norris that followed Judge Horton's decision setting aside Patterson's earlier conviction.? Judge Horton based his decision primarily on the lack of any eyewitness testimony or physical evidence that provided substantial corroboration of Victoria Price's story of gang rape by pistol-waving blacks.? The day after Judge Horton's decision, prosecutor Thomas Knight announced that Orville Gilley, absent from Horton's courtroom, would be on hand at the next trials to provide the critical corroboration.Orville Gilley was one of eight whites involved in a fight with about ten blacks on the Chattanooga to Memphis freight train that resulted in seven of the whites, all except Gilley, being thrown off the train.? When Gilley attempted to leap off the moving train, he fell between two cars and was left hanging to the side of a gondola in danger of being swept off of the train which was steadily picking up speed.? Haywood Patterson pulled Gilley back onto the car.? Patterson said in his second trial, "I pulled this white boy back up in the train and saved his life."? When the train was stopped by the posse in Paint Rock, it was the presence of Gilley, a sexual partner of Price who had been travelling with her and Bates, that increased the girls' concerns that they might be charged with adultery or a Mann Act violation.? It is possible that the semen found in Victoria Price's vagina by examining doctors was that of Gilley, who had recently slept with Price in a Chattanooga freight yard.Before assuming a starring role in the late 1933 trials before Judge Callahan, Gilley played a bit role in the first Scottsboro trials, saying little other than that a fight had occurred.? If Gilley had actually witnessed the gang rape, as he said in 1933 that he did, why didn't he say so in 1931?? Ruby Bates said later it was because Gilley was initially reluctant to tell anything but the truth.? Between 1931 and 1933, however, prosecutor Knight sent "a rations check" weekly to Gilley's mother and spending money to Orville.? The defense believed that Gilley's testimony in late 1933 was the result of the prosecutor calling in his chips.? Leibowitz grilled Gilley during almost three hours of cross-examination, bringing out numerous contradictions between his testimony and that of Price.? But on the basic issue of whether the rape took place, Gilley confirmed her story. Gilley said that the rapes only stopped when he convinced one of the blacks that if they didn't get off Price they would soon kill her. Leibowitz called Gilley "a dirty, filthy liar." He argued that it was implausible that Gilley would sit by and witness the gang rape without making an effort to go forward in the train to notify the engineer or a conductor.? The papers called Gilley a stronger witness than Price.? The jurors may have found in Gilley's testimony another reason to convict.? Gilley said that during the fight with the whites the defendants shouted, "All you white sons-of-bitches unload!"? The statement hardly establishes rape, of course, but it may have been reason enough for white Alabama jurors to find the defendants guilty.Gilley was, by all accounts, a charming and entertaining witness.? Historian James Goodman, in his book?Stories of Scottsboro, described Gilley as "the smiling, blue-eyed, radar-eared, almost handsome twenty-year-old who insisted he was not (as the defense portrayed him) a bought witness and a bum, but rather a wandering entertainer, a poet of hotel lobbies, restaurants, and the streets."? Gilley even offered to share some of his poetry in the courtroom, but Judge Callahan dourly said "I don't like poetry." Dr. R. R. BridgesDr. R. R. Bridges, a Scottsboro physician since 1914,? was the prosecution witness who turned out be, in the minds of many, the best witness for the defense.? The testimony of Bridges in the Scottsboro trials of 1931 through 1933 cast grave doubt on the story of Victoria Price that she had been beaten and gang raped by six blacks on March 25, 1931 aboard a Southern Railroad freight train.Bridges and his assistant, Dr. John Lynch, examined Price and Bates less than two hours after the alleged rapes occurred.? While the two doctors found semen in the vaginas of both women (much more in the case of Bates than Price), they found little evidence to support their contention that they had been the victims of a violent assault.The prosecution used the testimony of Bridges in the first Scottsboro trials to prove that Bates and Price had intercourse in the two days before they were examined-- presumably, they hoped the jury would surmise, about two hours before their examination.? A "great amount" of semen was found in Bates, Bridges said, but in the case of Price there was barely enough sperm to produce a smear.In reading the record of the first trial, it was the testimony of Bridges that convinced Samuel Liebowitz that the Scottsboro Boys were innocent of rape and that he should take their cases.? When time came to cross-examine Bridges in the 1933 trial before Judge Horton, Liebowitz made the most of the opportunity.?? Bridges testified in cross-examination that the sperm he found in Bates and Price was non-motile, even though sperm generally remains motile for at least twelve hours after intercourse.? Bridges also described the girls as calm and composed, in contradiction to Price's story that she was crying and in shock.? Bridges reported finding none of the lacerations or blood one would expect to find after a violent gang rape, and no head injuries that would support Price's contention that she was hit there by a gun butt.? Finally, Bridges testified that one of the accused boys, Willie Roberson, was suffering from severe venereal disease and "would not have had any inclination to commit [rape]."Judge Horton relied primarily on the medical testimony of Bridges in his controversial decision setting aside the jury's guilty verdict in the Patterson trial of April, 1933.? Horton praised Bridges as fair, intelligent, honest, and unevasive.The testimony of Bridges was also crucial to the defense case in later 1933 trials before Judge Callahan.? By January 1936, Bridges was gravely ill and his testimony from the previous trial was read into the record at Patterson's fourth trial.? He died soon thereafter.Judge James E. Horton?If the tale of the Scottsboro Boys can be said to have heroes, there is no person more deserving of the label than James E. Horton, the judge who presided over Haywood Patterson’s second trail in Decatur. Judge Horton’s decision to set aside the verdict and death sentence of Haywood Paterson, make despite warnings that ordering a new trial of Patterson would end his career as an elected circuit judge, was a remarkable act of courage and principal. James Horton's father was an Alabama probate judge, planter, and former slaveholder; his mother was the daughter of a confederate general.? Horton gave up pursuit of a medical degree for a law degree, which he received from Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee in 1899.? He entered private practice, but left it in 1910 for a six-year career in the Alabama legislature.? In 1922, he was elected circuit judge.? When the Scottsboro cases were transferred to his Decatur courtroom in 1933, Horton was in the fifth year of his second six-year term.The announcement that the gracious and easygoing Horton would take on the controversial Scottsboro case was generally greeted with enthusiasm.? Alabama papers praised the judge's "unusually equable nature, great legal ability, and fairness."? Prosecutor Thomas Knight said that he thought Horton "would make an excellent judge."During the course of the contentious trial of Haywood Patterson, Horton rarely raised his soft, conversational voice.? Although his rulings neither consistently favored the prosecution or the defense, Horton made it abundantly clear thate he stood on the side of fair process and fair treatment for all, regardless of color.? That alone made Horton a liberal by Alabama standards.? Horton raised many local eyebrows when he warmly shook the hands of two black reporters who he had helped secure seats in his courtroom.? His full anger only showed once in the trial.? On the third day of the trial, after hearing reports of plans for a lynching, the judge raised his voice to a near shout and denounced would-be lynchers as "cowardly murderers."? Horton, saying that he had "absolutely no patience with the mob spirit," announced that he had ordered police guards to shoot to kill if necessary in defense of the black prisoners.Horton, along with virtually every other white person in Alabama, initially assumed that the Scottsboro defendants were probably guilty, but began to have doubts after listening to Price's contradiction-riddled testimony.? His doubts grew to a conviction that the defendants were innocent after hearing the? medical testimony of one examining physician, Dr. Bridges, and meeting privately with a second, Dr. John Lynch.? Dr. Lynch, initially on the state's witness list, was dropped at the last moment because, the prosecution said, his testimony would only be redundant.? Lynch approached Horton shortly thereafter, and the two talked in the men's room of the Decatur courthouse, with a bailiff guarding the door.? Lynch told Horton that he was convinced the girls were lying, and when he told them that directly, they merely laughed at him.? Horton urged Lynch to testify, but did not order him to do so, respectful of the young doctor's concern that testimony in favor of the defense would end any chance he might have to build a successful medical career in northern Alabama.On June 22, 1933, when Horton convened court in his hometown of Athens, Alabama, there was little optimism in the defense camp that their motion to set aside Patterson's guilty verdict would be granted.? Horton, however, shocked those assembled by announcing that he would grant the motion on the ground that the jury's verdict was not supported by substantial evidence.? In a careful, point-by-point review of the medical testimony and that offered by other prosecution witnesses, Horton found Price's testimony to be "not only uncorroborated, but it also bears on its face indications of improbabilty and is contradicted by other evidence."In May of 1934, Horton, who had been unopposed in his previous election to the bench, faced two primary opponents.? He finished second in the primary, then ran hard in the general election, but lost 9,416 to 6,856.? No one doubted but that his defeat was attributable entirely to his decision in the Scottsboro case.? Horton retired from politics, and devoted his remaining years to private practice and his plantation.? When asked about his decision in a 1966 interview, Horton quoted what he said was a phrase often-repeated in the Horton family, "fiat justicia ruat colelum"?-- let justice be done though the heavens may fall.? Horton died in 1973 at the age of ninety-five.William Callahan?The stated goal of William Callahan, the Alabama trial judge for the later Scottsboro trials (those from November, 1933 to July, 1937) was to "debunk" the Scottsboro case-- to cut it down to size, to take it off the front pages of America's newspapers.? To this end, Callahan imposed strict time limits on the trials, persuaded the Governor not to provide National Guard protection for the defense team, and made it as difficult as possible for reporters to cover the trial.An equally obvious, though unstated, goal of the seventy-year-old judge was to help secure the prompt convictions of the Scottsboro defendants.? Haywood Patterson said of Callahan, "He couldn't get us to the chair fast enough."? Callahan denied almost every motion of the defense, including a motion to quash the indictments because Negroes were excluded from jury rolls and a motion for a change of venue.? He sustained nearly every prosecution objection to a defense question of a witness, and often objected himself when the prosecution didn't.? He cut off any inquiry into the reputation of Victoria Price, and even refused to let the defense explain that the semen found in Price might have been caused by sexual relations she had with Jack Tiller less than two days before the alleged rape.? He refused to delay a trial for one day to allow a defense medical expert to testify.? Callahan's instructions to the jury were "a point-by-point refutation of the defense's case."? He told the jury it should very strongly presume that no white woman would voluntarily have sex with a black.? After finishing his instructions to the jury in the third Patterson trial, Callahan neglected to give the jury a form for acquittal until the prosecution, fearing reversible error, asked him to do so.Defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz found Callahna ignorant of the law, arrogant, intolerant, and prejudiced against the defense.? For his part, Callahan thought Leibowitz disrespectful.? Callahan interrupted the Norris trial to reprimand Leibowitz, and on another occasion with the jury present, called a Liebowitz question "viscious."? Often during trials Callahan either mocked, baited, scolded, or frowned at Leibowitz and other defense attorneys.Callahan was born on a farm in Lawrence County, Alabama on the eve of the battle of Gettysburg.? He attended neither college nor law school, but instead learned what law he did working in a Decatur law office.? Callahan served as the solicitor of Decatur and as a member of the Alabama legislature before being elected circuit judge in 1928.??Bibb Graves____________________________________________________?Bibb Graves was the popular two-term Democratic governor of Alabama who was expected to punch the tickets out of Alabama for five convicted Scottsboro Boys. The hoped-for pardons never materialized, however, because of disasterous pre-pardon interviews in November, 1938, just weeks before the sixty-five-year-old governor was to leave office.Graves was first elected as the Klan-backed Democratic candidate for governor in 1926.? He was replaced in 1931 by Governor Meeks Miller, a Klan-fighter who called out the militia to save the Scottsboro Boys from lynching in the days following their arrest in March, 1931.? In 1934, Graves was elected to a second-term, this time without the help of the Klan, whose political power had been greatly weakened by the efforts of the Miller Administration.? (Elected lieutenant governor on the Democratic ticket was Scottsboro prosecutor Thomas Knight.) Graves was a big-spending, New Deal-supporting governor, and by his second term considered a moderate on racial issues.? He was a smart, good humored, forgiving man with a genuine concern for the well-being of his constituents. Graves sent copies of the United States Supreme Court decision in Norris vs. Alabama, ruling unconstitutional the state's system of excluding blacks from juries, to every judge in the state, reminding each that the Court's decision were "the law of the Land." When Scottsboro Boy Ozie Powell was shot in the head by a guard, Graves told doctors to use "every effort known to medical science" to save his life.Samuel Leibowitz began a campaign for pardons in 1935, arguing to Graves that ending the cases would save thousands of dollars, prevent the South from becoming a fertile recruiting ground for Communists, and stop "the carousel of hate."? By September, 1937, Graves was expressing a desire to resolve the Scottsboro controversy in a meeting with the head of? the Scottsboro Defense Committee, Allan Chalmers.? Two months later, Graves promised privately to grant pardons to all convicted Scottsboro defendants as soon as their appeals were exhausted.Graves informed Chalmers that the five incarcerated Scottsboro Boys, with the possible exception of Ozie Powell who was serving time for his stabbing of a prison guard, would be released on October 28, 1938, a date that was later reset as November 14, 1938.? Three days before the planned pardons and release, Graves scheduled separate interviews with each of the five Scottsboro Boys.? He told them that he wanted to help them, that he hoped they would confide in him, and that they would not do anything after release to make him regret his decision.? As Graves described the interviews, the Scottsboro Boys turned in disasterously poor performances.? When searched on his way to the pre-pardon interview, Haywood Patterson was found to be carrying a knife, which Graves assumed Patterson intended to use to stab a guard and make an escape (Patterson said he always carried a knife for self-protection).? Ozie Powell was said to have "sneered" at the Governor and said "I don't want to say nothing to you."? Norris, who had been feuding with Patterson, was asked whether he planned to do anything to harm Patterson when he was released and said, "Yes, I'll kill him; I never forgets."? Wright and Weems did somewhat better, but Graves thought their answers seemed suspiciously similar and coached.? He also was upset to learn that Weems, upon his return to prison, told other prisoners he had been to see the Governor and would soon be kissing the pen goodbye.? Graves concluded that the Boys were bestial, stupid, and incapable of rehabilitation.? He decided to reverse his decision to grant the pardons.The Scottsboro Defense Committee and others who had been counting on the pardons mounted a full-court press to convince Graves to make good on his promised release of the five.? Supporters of the pardons generally conceded that the Scottsboro Boys were far from models of good citizenship, but blamed their pychological conditions on years in prison for crimes they did not commit.? On December 7, 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt wrote a letter to Graves urging that he go forward with the pardons and reminding him? that the five would soon be "at least a thousand miles from Alabama" and of no concern to the state.? Supreme Court Jusitce Hugo Black also urged Graves to grant the pardons.Despite the pressure, Graves refused to reconsider his decision.? The Scottsboro Defense Committee published a pamphlet attacking Graves called "A Record of Broken Promises." Graves left office without granting the pardons.?Additional Documents From the Trial_______________________________________CCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the following documents from the case. After analyzing these documents, they will evaluate the fairness of the trail that the Scottsboro Boys had.This will be demonstrated through a written paragraph, where students are asked to take the information they learned about each individual and the facts presented in the following documents to infer why the boys received the trial they did. Students will justify their reply with textual evidence from at least three different sources. Lack of EvidenceAs Described by Judge Horton When He Ordered a New Trial in the Case of Haywood Patterson on June 22, 1933When Judge Horton ordered a new trial in the case of Haywood Patterson on June 22, 1933, he discussed the lack of evidence corroborating Victoria Price and Ruby Bates' accusations of rape. The following is an excerpt from Judge Horton's opinion:With seven boys present at the beginning of this trouble, with one seeing the entire affair, with some fifty or sixty persons meeting them at Paint Rock and taking the women, the white boy Gilley, and the nine negroes in charge, with two physicians examining the women within one to one and one half hours, according to the tendency of all the evidence, after the occurrence of the alleged rape, and with the acts charged committed in broad daylight, we should expect from all this cloud of witnesses or from the mute but telling physical condition of the women or their clothes some one fact in corroboration of this story.Let us consider the rich field from which such corroboration [of evidence] may be gleaned.1. Seven boys on the gondola at the beginning of the fight, and Orville Gilley, the white boy, who remained on the train, and who saw the whole performance.2. The wound inflicted on the side of Victoria Price's head by the butt-end of a pistol from which the blood did flow.3. The lacerated and bleeding back of the body, a part of which was stripped of clothing and lay on jagged sharp rock, which body two physicians carefully examined for injuries shortly after the occurrence.4. Semen in the vagina and its drying and starchy appearance in the pubic hair and surrounding parts.5. Two doctors who could testify that they saw her coat all spattered over with semen; who could testify to the blood and semen on her clothes, and to the bleeding vagina.6. Two doctors who could testify to the wretched condition of the women, their wild eyes, dilated pupils, fast breathing, and rapid pulse.7. The semen which must have eventually appeared with increasing evidence in the pants of the rapists as each wallowed in its spreading ooze. The prosecutrix testified semen was being emitted by her rapists, and common sense tells us six discharges is a considerable quantity.8. Live spermatozoa, the active principle of semen, would be expected in the vagina of the female from so recent discharges.9. The washing before the first trial by Victoria Price of the very clothes which she claimed were stained with semen and blood.Taking up these points in order, what does the record show?None of the seven white boys was put on the stand, except Lester Carter, and he contradicted her.Returning to the pistol lick on the head. The doctor testifies: "I did not sew up any wound on this girl's head; I did not see any blood on her scalp. I don't remember my attention being called to any blood or blow on the scalp."Next was she thrown and abused, as she states she was, upon the chert--the sharp, jagged rock?Dr. Bridges states as to physical hurts-- we found some small scratches on the back part of the wrist; she had some blue places in the small of the back, low down in the soft part, three or four bruises about like the joint of your thumb, small as a pecan, and then on the shoulders a blue place about the same size--and we put them on the table, and an examination showed no lacerations.Victoria Price testified that as the negroes had repeated intercourse with her she became wetter and wetter around her private parts.Dr. Bridges and Dr. Lynch examined her; they looked for semen around her private parts; they found on the inside of her thighs some dirty places. The dirty places were dry and infiltrated with heavy dust and dirt. The vagina is examined to see whether or not any semen was in the vagina. He takes a cotton swab and with the aid of a speculum and headlight inserts the cotton mop into the woman's vagina and swabs around the cervix, which is the mouth of the uterus or womb. He extracts the substance adhering to the cotton and places this substance under a microscope. He finds that there are spermatozoa in the vagina. He finds this spermatozoa to be non-motile. He says that non-motile means the spermatozoa were dead.Was there any evidence of semen on the clothes of any of the negroes?Though these negroes were arrested just after the alleged acts, and though their clothes and pants were examined or looked over by the officers, not a witness testified as to seeing any semen or even any wet or damp spots on their clothes.What of the coat of the woman spattered with semen and the blood and semen on the clothes and the bleeding vagina?Dr. Bridges says he did not see any blood coming from her vagina; that Mrs. Price had on step-ins, but did not state they were torn or had blood or semen on them. Not a word from this doctor of the blood and semen on the dress; not a word of the semen all spattered over the coat.What of the physical appearance of these two women when the doctors saw them?Dr. Bridges says when the two women were broght to his office neither was hysterical, or nervous about it at all. He noticed nothing unusual about their respiration and their pulse was normal. Such a normal physical condition is not the natural accompaniment or result of so horrible an experience.Lastly, before leaving Dr. Bridges let us quote his summary of all that he observed:"Q. In other words the best you can say about the whole case is that both these women showed they had had intercourse?""A. Yes, sir."Is there corroboration in this? We think not, especially as the evidence points strongly to Victoria Price having intercourse with one Tiller on serveral occasions just before leaving Huntsville. That she slept in a hobo jungle in Chattanooga, side by side with a man. The dead spermatozoa and the dry dirty spots would be expected from those earlier acts.These materials were prepared as part of a class assignment for The Seminar in Famous Trials course at the University of Missouri-K.C. School of Law. The use of any sound or images in the trials sites is in furtherance of the educational mission of the Seminar.Judge Horton Orders a New Trial in the Case of Haywood PattersonJune 22, 1933Haywood Patterson was convicted of rape in his 1933 trial and was scheduled to die in the electric chair on June 16, 1933. His electricution was delayed by a motion for a new trial by the defense. On June 22, 1933, Judge Horton granted the defense's motion for a new trial on the grounds that his conviction was against the weight of the evidence. The following is Judge Horton's opinion in which he explains his reasons for granting a new trial:THE COURT'S COMMENTS ON THE STATE'S CASEThis is the State's evidence. It corroborates Victoria Price slightly, if at all, and her evidence is so contradictory to the evidence of the doctors who examined her that it has been impossible for the Court to reconcile their evidence with hers.Next, was the evidence of Victoria Price reasonable or probable? Were the facts stated reasonable? This is one of the tests the law applies.Rape is a crime usually committed in secrecy. A secluded place or a place where one ordinarily would not be observed is the natural selection for the scene of such a crime. The time and place and stage of this alleged act are such to make one wonder and question did such occur under such circumstances. The day is a sunshiny day the latter part in March; the time of day is shortly after the noon hour. The place is upon a gondola or car without a top. This gondola, according to the evidence of Mr. Turner, the conductor, was filled to within six inches to twelve or fourteen inches of the top with chert, and according to Victoria Price up to one and one half feet or two feet of the top. The whole performance necessarily being in plain view of any one observing the train as it passed. Open gondolas on each side.On top of this chert twelve negroes rape two white women; they undress them as they are standing up on this chert; the prosecuting witness then is thrown down and with one negro continuously kneeling over her with a knife at her throat, one or more holding her legs, six negroes successively have intercourse with her on top of that chert; as one arises off of her person, another lies down upon her; those not engaged are standing or sitting around; this continues without intermission although that freight train travels for some forty miles through the heart of Jackson County; through Fackler, Hollywood, Scottsboro, Larkinsville, Lin Rock, and Woodsville, slowing up in several of these places until it is halted at Paint Rock; Gilley, a white boy, pulled back on the train by the negroes, and sitting off, according to Victoria Price, in one end of the gondola, a witness to the whole scene; yet he stays on the train, and he does not attempt to get off of the car at any of the places it slows up to call for help; he does not go back to the caboose to report to the conductor or to the engineer in the engine, although no compulsion is being exercised on him, and instead of there being any threat of danger to him from the negroes, they themselves have pulled him back on the train to prevent his being injured from jumping from the train after it had increased its speed; and in the end by a fortuitous circumstance just before the train pulls into Paint Rock, the rapists cease and just in the nick of time the overalls are drawn up and fastened and the women appear clothed as the posse sights them. The natural inclination of the mind is to doubt and to seek further search.Her manner of testifying and demeanor on the stand militate against her. Her testimony was contradictory, often evasive, and time and again she refused to answer pertinent questions. The gravity of the offense and the importance of her testimony demanded candor and sincerity. In addition to this the proof tends strongly to show that she knowingly testified falsely in many material aspects of the case. All this requires the more careful scrutiny of her evidence.The Court has heretofore devoted itself particularly to the State's evidence; this evidence fails to corroborate Victoria Price in those physical facts; the condition of the woman raped necessarily speaking more powerfully than any witness can speak who did not view the performance MENT ON CREDIBILITY OF VICTORIA PRICE[Omitted]CONCLUSIONHistory, sacred and profane, and the common experience of mankind teach us that women of the character shown in this case are prone for selfish reasons to make false accusations both of rape and of insult upon the slightest provocation for ulterior purposes. These women are shown, by the great weight of the evidence, on this very day before leaving Chattanooga, to have falsely accused two negroes of insulting them, and of almost precipitating a fight between one of the white boys they were in company with and these two negroes. This tendency on the part of the women shows that they are predisposed to make false accusations upon any occasion whereby their selfish ends may be gained.The Court will not pursue the evidence any further.As heretofore stated the law declares that a defendant should not be convicted without corroboration where the testimony of the prosecutrix bears on its face indications of improbability or unreliability and particularly when it is contradicted by other evidence.The testimony of the prosecutrix in this case is not only uncorroborated, but it also bears on its face indications of improbability and is contradicted by other evidence, and in addition thereto the evidence greatly preponderates in favor of the defendant. It therefore becomes the duty of the Court under the law to grant the motion made in this case.It is therfore ordered and adjudged by the Court that the motion be granted; that the verdict of the jury in this case and the judgment of the Court sentencing this defendant to death be set aside and that a new trial be and the same is hereby ordered.Personal LettersCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the following personal letters written my key members of the case. Students will use their understanding of characterization to determine if they made the correct inferences about each character.This will be demonstrated as students refer back to their character analysis chart, and compare the information provided about each character in the biography to the information they inferred about them in their own written work. LETTER FROM OLEN MONTGOMERY TO MR. GEORGE CHAMBLEE?(typed)?May 25, 1931?From Olen Montgomery?Kilby Prison?Montgomery, Ala.My Dear Frind Mr. George??? Why sitting down warred nilly crazy i want you all to rite to me and tell me how is things going on a bout this case of us 9 boys bee cause i am in here for something i know id did not do my pore mother has no one to help hur to make a living but me she had a little girl luft unly 5 years old to take of and she has no job at all and i gest you all know how times is on the out side tims i had i did all i cud for my pore mother to help hur live and my little sister i was on my way to Memphis on a oil tank by my self a lone and i was not warred with any one un till i got to Pint Rock alabama and they just made a frame up on us boys just cause they cud any way them grond jurys come out of the room and said us five boys punishment shall bee like time in the Kilby Prison and the judge sent them back in the room and they come back out the next time and said their punishment shall bee death in the chair.Eugene Williams?Haywood Patterson?Charlie Weems?Clarence Norris?Ozie Powell?Andy Wright?Willie RobersonWe want you all to send us some money so we can bye us something that we can ear this food dont agree with me at all i supposed to be at home any way i did not do whay they gat me for i ant give no one any cause to mist treat me this way i know i ant and i hope you all is doin all you can for us boys please sur and we supposed to have a nother trial be cause it was not a fair trial i ant crazy no way either lost my mine.???LETTER FROM ROY WRIGHT TO HIS MOTHER???(typed)?June 19, 1931?Blair County JailDear Mother:??? While in my cell, lonely and thinking of you.? I am trying by some means to write you a few words.? I would like for you to come down here Thursday.? I feel like I can eat some of your cooking Mom.? Beatrice may like she was going to send me a chikcen but I haven't got on yet.? I would like for you to bring or send me a chicken.? If you please, send me some paper and stamps so I can write more often.??? Be sure to send me that chicken, if nothing else and don't forget that.??? Please don't write or tell me anything to make me feel good.? You cant send Andy anything to eat, but you can me.? Send or bring me a big bag of peanuts.? If you send me a box you dont have to come because I have your picture and I can look at it.? Or the cake slice it up when you send it.? Tell Sis I say hello.? Write back.? let me know if you send it or come down.? Either one.? Put in box or let it come on to me.? I have gone chicken crazy so I close for this time.Your devoted sonRoy Wrightwaiting.?LETTER FROM HAYWOOD PATTERSON TO MR. J. LOUIS ENGDAHL?Condemned Dept.?Kilby Prison?Montgomery, Ala.Dec. 10, 1931?Mr. J. Louis EngdahlDear Sir:??? While sitting all alone in prison I thought I'll express you a few lines to let you here from us boys.? We are all well and hoping to be free soon and also hoping you all will remain in fighting for us boys.??? Mr. Engdahl I am ask you a question and I would like for you to answer it in your write, and here it's are.? Have you all got Mr. Darrow fighting for us boys.? The reasons why I ask you that becost I heard that Mr. Clance Darrow was going to fighting for us boys, and I would like to know if possible becost I am innocent, as innocent as the tiny mite of life just beginning to stir beneath my heart.? Honest, Mr. Engdahl, I haven't did anything to be imprisonment like this.? And all of the boys send their best regards to you all and best wishes.? So I would appreciate an interview at your earliest convenience.Very truly yours,Haywood Patterson??????LETTER FROR RUBY BATES TO EARL STREETMAN??(handwritten)?Jan 5 1932?Huntsville, Ala?215 Connelly AlyDearest Earl??? I want to make a statment too you Mary Sanders is a goddam lie about those negroes jassing me those policement made me tell a lie that is my statement because I want too clear myself that is all too if you want to believe, ok.? If not that is ok.? You will be sorry someday? if you had to stay in jail with eight Negroes you would tell a lie two.? those Negroes did not touch me or those white boys.? i hope you will believe me the law don't.? i love you better than Mary does ore any body else in the world.? that is why i am telling you of this thing.? i was drunk at the time and did not know what i was doing.? I know it was wrong to let those Negrroes die on account of me.? i hope you will believe me.? I was jazed but those white boys jazed me.? i wish those Negores are not burnt on account of me.? it is these white boys fault.? that is my statement.? and that is all i know.? i hope you tell the law hope you will answer.Jan 5, 1932?Huntsville, Ala?215 Connelly allyRuby BatesP.S.??? this is the one time i might tell a lie but it is the truth so god help me.Ruby BatesLETTER FROM HAYWOOD PATTERSON TO HIS MOTHER???(typed)??May 4, 1934Haywood Patterson?Condemned Department?Kilby Prison?Montgomery, Ala.My dear, Darling Mother;??? This certainly is a great pleasure for me here trying to write you these lines in regards how I am.? Wellm darling, at this time I am getting along as best as I can under the circumstances.? Now mother, precious dear, I received yesterday a letter from Sebill.? She was well so far s i am concerned.? I have not heard from Lojise this week therefore, I can't give an account of how they are getting on.??? Mother dear, I hope that you will get to see all my dear good friends those of whom has been sure faithful to me, although I never heard from my friends on a certain account but yet, they should kno that does not discourage meas I know they carry the great struggle on and there will be no end to that until I am freed.??? Yes, there are at least two or three friends who are not members of the I.L.D. that I hear from.? Tell Wm. Patterson and also my many good friends that I am being held incommunicado.? If ther is anyone who wish to give me a help by sending me such; as cigarettes, magazines, money and stamps I will get it all right and will appreciate their kindness as if I were before where I could write them.? Just to-day I received one dollar from 80 E. 11th St., but received no letter with it that is the way it has been ever since I am here.??? I realize that you all know all about it and that it is why it does not worry me or discourage me therefore, it is necessary for you all not to fee discouragged anaway I am innocent of this mess and I will die with that word regardless to what may come or happen.? I am innocent and I will always say I am innocient so you all need not worry as I dont worry.??? Wish you are well, and enjoying a lot.? I hope you can read this as I have not anything to write with.??? Close for this time.???? Your loving Sun;??? Haywood Patterson?? P.S.??? I sincerely hope that it want be much longer before someone comes down to see me as I wish for a few things to be known.?????LETTERS FROM OLEN MONTGOMERY TO ANNA DAMON???(handwritten)?B'ham, Ala.?Jefferson County Jail?July 18, 1936Listen Anna??? This is a matter of business no fun.? Now listen you realize how long I have been cut off from my pleasure dont you?? And you realize it had on me don't you?? Especially me being a young man.? An you or any one else should have sympathy and feeling for me.? Now listen please dont get offended over what I am fixing to say in your present.? I am almost crazy in this place.? This is what I want to say its a new warden here at night and he will let me to a woman for all night for $5.00 which it is worth it.? I know its worth $5.00 of mine.? Because if I dont get to a woman it will soon run poor me crazy.? I really have stood it long as I can.? I just got to get to one.? I have been in jail over five years.? And its a shame.? Now Anna please send me $5.00 and take your out of my eight.? Now please send it rite away I am looking for it Friday.? And I will appreciate that the very highwst.? Now since I have explain the situation to you.? I am sure you will feel my sympathy.? Want you?? Sure you will!? I am looking for it Friday without a fail.? Please give my regard to all.Yours very truly?Olen Montgomery?Please answer soon?_____________________B'ham, Ala?Jefferson County Jail?Oct. 2nd 1936Dear Anna??? I rec'd today my money which I accepted and highly appreciated.? I also rec'd a letter from you Wensday telling me about the shoes.? Listen Anna I dont want any one old clothes and shoes.? And I really need soome shoes and I want them quick as I can get them.??? Anna, I am honest and you know that I am always willing and glad to help my own self as much as I can.? You already know that.? i cant get me no shoes out of the money I got today.? Because there is other things I need and must get.? Take $5.00 out of my next allowance and get me a pair of Friendly Five Shoes size 7-1/2 real keen toes with a plain cap across the toe and color real light tan.? And leather heels.? Now Anna get them just like I have told you and I will be satisfied with them.? Those are the kind shoes I usual wear.? They are conforable wearing shoes.? And just send me $3.00 when it falls due the 28th.? Now send them just as soion as you get this letter.? I need them.?? And I will appreciate it. I am well in health only my eye gives me a little trouble at time.? When is the case comeing up?? I would like to know I want to be tried.? I had a letter from my mother today.? She is all worried and upset about me.? I feel so sorry for my poor mother she needs my help and I know it.??? Oh well give my regard to all so I will close yours very truly.Olen Montgomery????????LETTER FROM ANDY WRIGHT TO MRS. HESTER G. HUNTINGTON???(handwritten)?Montgomery Ala?3/15/42?Mrs. Hester G. HuntingtonMy Dear Mrs. Huntington??? I takes the advantage of this golden opportunity in addressing you these few lines while sitting here by the window in my lettle cell inhaling the cool breezes as they slowly pass by and listening to the sweet music as it safely sing the song of you is my sunshine.? Frankly you is my sunshine of the kind deeds you have enlighten the days of my unhappy life.? You have encouraged me at the time I be discouraged. You have brought sunshine into my gloomy heart at the needy times.? you have been a God fairy to me of which makes you my Earthly Sunshine, (Smile)??? Now I must stop to write a line of informative of my present health of which is failing me very fast, though I truly hope you is well blessed with good health and is extremely enjoying life,??? Many - Many Thanks for the Extra $1.00 it was very kind of you to remember me at this time, and I highly appreciate your kindness.? Well I am certain you is growing tired of reading such horrible writing so I'll bring this letter to a conclusion by saying I am patiently waiting a few lines of pacification of the outside world concerning yourself and your favorite hobby (etc.)??? Extend my best regards to all.?I remain?Yours SincerelyAndy WrightP.S.??? Answer Soon???1931 ARTICLES FROM THE NEW YORK TIMESCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the following newspaper articles. As they do this, they will identify the different rhetorical devices that the author of each article used. They will use this to conclude how the trail was influenced.This will be demonstrated as students annotate each article, highlighting and identifying the different examples of ethos, pathos, and logos. It will also be demonstrated as students complete a “What it Says/What it Means” chart for each specific article.Students will also analyze the credibility of each article by comparing the information presented to the timelines they created. This will be demonstrated by students creating a discrepancy chart. StMarch 25, 1931JAIL HEAD ASKS TROOPS AS MOB SEEKS NEGROESRiot Feared in Scottsboro Ala., After Arrest of Nine, Held for Attacking GirlsSpecial to The New York TimesHUNTSVILLE, Ala.,? March 25??? Fearing a mob outbreak at Scottsboro, county seat of Jackson County, following the arrest of nine Negroes charged with attacking two white girls, a detachment of militia was ordered to the Jackson County jail tonight.??? Sheriff Waun at Scottsboro asked for troops when a crowd which had gathered about the jail became threatening.? The Sheriff wired to Montgomery that the crowd numbered 300.??? Later, however, the sheriff reported that the mob wa dispersing as the night was cold, and danger seemed averted.??? The girls, who gave their names as Ruby Bates, 23, and Victoria Price, 18, were in a box car with seven white men when the Negro tramps got in at a point between Stevenson and Scottsboro.? They threw six of the white men off the train.??? The seventh and the girls are said to have fought desperately until the white man was knocked unconscious.??? The men who had been thrown out of the car telegraphed ahead to Paint Rock.? When the train arrived there a Sheriff's posse surrounded the car and captured the Negroes after a short fight.??? The Negro prisoners and their white accusers were taken to Scottsboro where the Negroes were formally charged with criminal assault on a woman,? a capital offense in Alabama.? The white men who had been in the box car were held as material witnesses.???April 11, 1931CONDEMNED NEGROES RIOT IN ALABAMA JAILEight Sentenced to Die For Attack on White Girls Are Subdued and Manacled.GADSDEN, Ala.,? April 10? (AP)??? Protesting against their sentences, eight negroes condemned to death at Scottsboro yesterday for attacking two white girls rioted in the Etwah County jail today, but were subdued by guards, who placed them in irons.??? The Negroes, who were returned here under military escort after being sentenced for attacking the girls traveling as hoboes, aboard a freight train, shouted demands for special food, beat on the cell bars and tore up the bedding.??? Their shouts were heard some distance from the jail and Sheriff T. L. Griffin, who occupies an apartment on the lower floor of the jail, removed his family.??? Sheriff Griffin appealed to military authorities for aid, and colonel W. M Thompson and Captain C.C. Whitehead went to the jail.??? With sufficient guards to prevent an attempted break, the "Bull pen," in which the Negroes were confined, was opened and guards handcuffed the prisoners in pairs.??? Governor Miller at Montgomery today received protests in the case from the International Labor Defense in New York and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights of New York and the Anti-Imperialist League of the United States.? All charged the Negroes "were railroaded."? The governor declined to comment.???July 1, 1931FIGHT FOR DOOMED NEGROESGerman Communist Papers Play Up American Case---New Riots Occur.Special Cable to The New York TimesBERLIN,? June 30??? Communist newspapers, to which may be attributed responsibility for recent mob attacks on the American Consulates at Dresden and Leipzig, are making a capital of the Scottsboro convictions.??? They are fervently appealing to Reds everywhere to "save the victims of judicial murder," asserting that the Negroes are wholly innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced.??? A gang of young Communists smashed half a dozen windows of the American Consulate General in Bellevue Street late tonight.? Police captured five.??? Following communistic rioting in the East Side, in which one policeman was shot dead, Berlin's Chief of Police banned the huge International Communist Athletic Meet scheduled for next Sunday.??? Eight Negroes from Tennessee and Georgia were sentenced in Scottsboro, Ala., on April 9 to die in the electric chair for attacks on wo white girls of Huntsville Ala.July 18, 1931VOLLEYS DISPERSE ALABAMA NEGROESOne Is Killed, 3 Are Wounded and 17 Arrested at Death Sentence Protest Meeting.?_____________________________SHERIFF AND DEPUTY SHOT?_____________________________????House is Burned at Camp Hill in Battle With Posse-- "Reds" Are Blamed by Police Chief?_____________________________CAMP HILL, Ala., July 17 (AP)A meeting of Negro radicals near here last night at which Governor B.M. Miller was threatened with violence unless he liberated the eight Negroes sentenced to death for attacking two white girls led to clashes with posses today in which on Negro was killed, two white officers and three Negroes were wounded and seventeen Negroes were arrested.??? An armed posse was summoned late today from Tallapoosa and Lee Counties as reports spread that Negro radicals planned a second protest meeting tonight? in the woods near Waverly, Ala..??? A small house occupied by a Negro family near the place where the meeting was held? was destroyed by fire soon afterward.? It was reported at first that a church in which the Negroes had met was burned.??? A posse of eight men, reported from Notasulga, Ala., late today that they were still trailing a Negro from Chattanooga, Tenn., who for two months has been organizing Negroes in this section in what confiscated minute books described as "the Society for the Advancement of Colored People."Chief of Police J.M. Wilson said that last night's meeting was in protest against the death sentence imposed against the eight Negroes at Scottsboro, Ala., in April.Sentry Accused of Opening Fire??? The disorders, in which more than 200 shots were fired, began when Sheriff J. Kyle Young, Deputy Sheriff Jack Thompson and Chief Wilson approached the church where the meeting was in progress.??? Ralph Gray, a Negro, on picket duty near the church, was said to have fired on the officers as they sought to question him.??? Sheriff Young was struck in the side by a charge from a shotgun and Thompson was wounded in the wrist.? Gray dropped under a volley from the officers and was left for dead.? Later he was picked up by an unidentified motorist and taken home.??? A physician, called to treat him, notified a posse, and at the Gray home they met another volley.? In the exchange Gray was struck several times and died en route to jail with eight companions who had taken refuge in the house.??? The most prolonged battle between possemen, numbering 150, and members of the organization occurred near the church.? It was here that the three Negroes were wounded.??? Two of the wounded were taken to the Dadesville jail.? The other one, Chief Wilson said, "went to cut stovewood."? Asked when he would return, the chief said "He has lots to cut," and declined to comment further.Alleged "Demands" Recounted.??? The meeting was the second which officers have broken up, the first having been on Wednesday night at Dadeville, where a quantity of alleged inflammatory literature was seized.??? The literature, Chief Wilson said, urged members to demand social equality and intermarriage with the white race, to demand $2 a day for work and not to ask but "demand what you want and if you don't get it take it."??? Chief Wilson described the leaders as "Communist organizers" from Chattanooga.??? Several of the Negroes sentenced to death in Scottsboro were from Chattanooga.? They were charged with attacking two white girls who were riding on a freight train.?? The international Labor Defense, a Communist organization, has organized a world wide protest against the sentences on the grounds that the charges were a "frame up" and without factual basis.? The case is now before the Alabama Supreme Court.__________________________________Governor Silent on threatsMONTGOMERY, Ala., July 17 (AP)??? Governor R. M. Miller today said that he had no official reports of the disturbance and radical meetings of Negroes in Tallapoosa County, and that unless local authorities requested troops he would not send National Guardsmen into the country.??? He made no comments on reports that he was threatened with violence at the meeting last night unless he released the eight Negroes held in Kilby Prison here under death sentence for an attack on two white girls.??? The Negroes were sentenced in April to die on July 10, but an appeal to the Supreme Court acted as an automatic stay of execution.??? During the trial the International Labor Defense of New York demanded that the Governor immediately release them or 'be held personally responsible."? Since the conviction more than 1,700 protests have been received by Governor Miller from various branches of the Labor Defense in this and other countries.___________________________________Labor Defense Charges "Murder."??? J. Louis Engdahl, secretary of the International Labor Defense, in a statement here last night charged that Ralph Gray, the Negro killed in the Alabama affray, "was murdered by Sheriff Carl Young of Tallapoosa County."??? Declaring that Gray was "on his way to attend a meeting of a share croppers union, which has been in the process of organization over the past few months," the statement continued:??? "The Negroes of this county have been organizing against the miserable starvation wages.? The plantation owners planned to cut the share croppers off from all food advances, giving a small number of share croppers the alternative of working in the fields or saw mills at wages of sixty to ninety cents a day.? The lynchers were after the members and leaders of the union.??? "At these meetings the share croppers protested the Scottsboro death sentence against eight young Negroes.??? "The Sheriff's posse is now hunting and shooting down Negroes in several towns in that section, as well as raiding and shooting tenant farmers in their homes.? This is a deliberate slaughter.??? "The International Labor Defense protests the murder of this Negro share cropper by deputies and demands the immediate cessation of the terror let loose by the landowners' police against the share croppers who are organizing for better conditions and protesting the Scottsboro verdict."December 28, 1931DARROW IN ALABAMA TO AID EIGHT NEGROESHe and Hays Consult Counsel of Condemned Men on a Defense if New Trial is GrantedSpecial to The New York TimesBIRMINGHAM, Ala., Dec. 27??? Clarence Darrow and Arthur Garfield Hays of New York were here today preparing to take the defense of the eight Negroes convicted and sentenced to death at Scottsboro on a charge of attacking two white girls on March 25.??? Mr. Darrow said that he and Mr. Hays had been retained by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.? They will spend a day or two in Birmingham consulting local lawyers connected with the trial and then will return to New York.??? The Supreme Court has set Jan. 18 as the date for hearing the motion for a new trial, and Mr. Darrow and Mr. Hays will appear before the court then.? If a new trial is granted they will be in charge of the defense.? Among the other agencies that have interested themselves in the Negroes is the International Labor Defense League, which has retained George Chamblee of Chattanooga, for Attorney General of Tennessee.??? During the last nine months Governor Miller has received protests on their sentences from England, Germany, france, Switzerland, Canada, Cuba, several South American countries and many places in this country.1933ARTICLES FROM THE NEW YORK TIMESCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the following newspaper articles. As they do this, they will identify the different rhetorical devices that the author of each article used. They will use this to conclude how the trail was influenced.This will be demonstrated as students annotate each article, highlighting and identifying the different examples of ethos, pathos, and logos. It will also be demonstrated as students complete a “What it Says/What it Means” chart for each specific article.Students will also analyze the credibility of each article by comparing the information presented to the timelines they created. This will be demonstrated by students creating a discrepancy chart. St?November 20, 1933ROOSEVELT IS ASKED TO INTERVENE TO PROTECT SCOTTSBORO NEGROESWarning of 'Massacre' of Seven Prisoners and Their Lawyers at Decatur (Ala.) Court Today, Defense Counsel Wire President a Plea to Obtain State Troops.By F. Raymond Daniell?Special to The New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Nov. 19.??? President Roosevelt was urged today to intervene and avert the danger of mob violence tomorrow when seven of the nine Negro defendants in the Scottsboro case are to be arraigned here in the Morgan County Court House.??? Attorneys for the accused men, who have been in prison for nearly three years, telegraphed the President at Warm Springs, Ga., urging Governor Miller of Alabama to insure military protection for themselves and their clients.??? In the message sent from Birmingham and signed by Samuel S, Leibowitz, chief counsel; G.W. Chamlee and Joseph Brodsky, his associates, Mr. Roosevelt was informed that "the probability of a massacre of the defendants and their attorneys is extremely grave."??? The tentative decision of Circuit Judge W.W. Callahan, who is to preside at the third trial of Heywood Patterson, opening a week from tomorrow, to dispense with the militia, occasioned the dispatch of the telegram after a direct appeal to Governor Miller, who is ill, failed to bring the desired result.??? The telegram to the President, as made public by Mr. Leibowitz in Birmingham, where he is staying pending the opening of court tomorrow, was as follows:??? "We earnestly ask your good offices to persuade Governor Miller of Alabama to order out sufficient National Guardsmen to provide adequate protection for the nine Scottsboro boys and their attorneys who are to appear at Decatur tomorrow for arraignment of the defendants and for trial Nov. 27.??? "At the previous trial this Spring, Circuit Judge Horton, presiding, took judicial notice of incipient mob action to lynch defendants and attorneys by ordering soldiers in open court to shoot if necessary to preserve the peace.? Shortly after the trial, Judge Horton, who has since been supplanted, adjourned court on his own motion because of the temper of citizens.??? Since the last trial two Negroes in the custody of Sheriff were recently? lynched in Tuscaloosa cases; a Negro named Royal was lynched in the very city of Decatur in August and a mob visited the Decatur jail to lynch a Negro prisoner named Brown.? Only removal to Huntsville jail before mob arrived prevented his assassination.??? "Situation now infinitely more tense.? Have affidavits naming many persons in Decatur and neighboring towns who have openly voiced intention of 'getting the niggers and their attorneys.'??? "Editorials today in Birmingham Age Herald and Post show their appreciation of imminence of danger and urge official to call out militia.? Despite this situation, the Governor has rejected a plea for State troops to guard prisoners and attorneys.? The probability of massacre of defendants and attorneys is extremely grave.? We urge your intervention."??? Despite the concern of the defense attorneys, there were no indications here today that Judge Callahan contemplated the summoning of troops, and officials and townsfolk insisted that there was no need for his doing so.??? Attorney General Thomas E. Knight Jr., who is to prosecute the Negroes on charges of attacking two white girls in a freight car in March, 1931, indicated that he regarded the presence of militiamen at the last trial as a needless expense.??? Sheriff Bud Davis left here with one deputy this afternoon with an order on the Sheriff of Jefferson County for a transfer of the prisoners on the ninety-six mile automobile trip from Birmingham to Decatur.? The time of their arrival is being kept secret, but the arraignment is set for 9 A.M.??? Mr. Chamlee, the only Southern lawyer associated with the defense, which is financed by the International Labor Defense, visited the prisoners in the jail this afternoon and said he found them in a state of panic.??? Fearing they would be lynched en route to Decatur, they said at first that they would resist any attempt to remove them from the Birmingham jail and it took a great deal of persuasion by Mr. Chamlee to induce them to sign the motion papers for a change of venue.? Finally they agreed . . .??????November 23, 1998JUDGE WILL SPEED SCOTTSBORO TRIALAlabama Jurist Asserts That He Will 'Debunk' Case of Extraneous Matters?_____________________________GETS COMMUNIST THREATS?_________________________________Flood of Telegrams Assail the Prosecution and Demand Release of NegroesBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to The New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Nov. 19.??? With the hearing on defense motions in the Scottsboro cases in recess today, Circuit Judge W.W. Callahan let it be known that he hopes to try at least four of the seven Negroes before Christmas.??? Then if the Negroes accused of attacking two white girls on a freight train near Scottsboro in March, 1931, are convicted, Judge Callahan intends to recess his special term of court to await? the results of appeals by the defense.??? According to close friends of the jurist, he hopes in that time to "debunk the Scottsboro cases."??? The words are supposed to have been his.? He feels, it was said, that the simple question of the guilt or innocence of the defendants has become involved in a tangle of extraneous matters relative to Communist activities among the Negroes, interference of outsiders with Alabama justice and local pride.??? This motive was behind his ban upon photographers in the courtroom and his refusal to provide facilities for representatives of the press assigned to cover the the third trial of a case that has attracted international attention.??? While defense attorneys have been crying? out against dangers they face in trying the case here where public sentiment is alleged to be bitterly against them, it became known today that the prosecution and the judge himself have been threatened in letters and telegrams from Communist sympathizers.??? So many messages have been received? by Judge Callahan, according to his friends, that he thought seriously of instructing the Western Union and Postal Telegraph Companies to deliver no messages to him except in case of a death in his family.? He decided not to do so, however, adopting the policy of receiving and ignoring the telegraphed "demands" for the "unconditional release" of the prisoners.??? The "mass action" represented by? the sending of telegrams to Alabama officials has been one of the factors complicating the Scottsboro case.? Governor Miller, it was said, has received 25,000 messages, 8,000 of them since Patterson's conviction here last Spring.Court Officials Summoned.??? Tomorrow, when the hearing on a defense motion to quash the venire from which a jury will be chosen to try Patterson is resumed, Arthur J. Tidwell, a jury commissioner, is to be recalled to answer a question as to why a Negro was excluded from a jury roll, which Judge Horton, who presided at Patterson's last trial, refused to let him answer.??? As soon as the court has ruled upon this motion, another to quash the indictment against the Negroes will be argued.??? Among the officials subpoenaed as witnesses for the defense motion are Probate Judge J. M. Money and his clerk, J.M. McBride, Sheriff; C.A. Wann, clerk of? the Circuit Court; H.G. Bailey, Circuit Solicitor, and H.C. Thompson, County Solicitor.? Each will be asked whether he has ever seen a Negro on a jury in Jackson County.? The answer is expected to be "No."??? With the court in recess, Decatur spent a quiet and pleasant day.? Attorney General Knight, still limping from gunshot wounds he received accidentally while investigating a lynching at Tuscaloosa in the Summer, went quail shooting, while G. W. Chamlee and Joseph R. Brodsky, defense lawyers, conferred at Chattanooga.??? Although Samuel S. Leibowitz indicated when he left here Monday night that he might not return until the trial opened Monday, it was reported here tonight that he might be in court tomorrow.? With his return, the tension of the trial is expected to increase.????November 29, 1933PRICE GIRL'S STORY UPHELD BY 'HOBO'White Youth Who Was on Train Says Negroes Attacked Two Girls in Alabama.?_________________________________ANGERED BY LEIBOWITZ?_________________________________State Rests Case--Negro Defendant Charges Intimidation at Scottsboro.By F. Raymond Daniell?Special to The New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Nov. 19.??? Called to the witness stand today to corroborate the charge of Victoria Price that a band of Negroes attacked her on a Southern Railway freight train nearly three years ago, Orville Gilley, a roving young minstrel of the South, added new contradictions to the Scottsboro case.??? Upon his testimony, which Samuel S. Leibowitz, chief counsel for the defense, sought to show was bought and paid for by the State, Attorney General Thomas E. Knight Jr.? rested the case on which he will demand the death penalty for Heywood Patterson, the Negro now on trial for the third time.??? The defense opened at once, with Patterson, a coal black, six-foot Negro who has just turned 20, sitting in the witness chair before Judge W.W. Callahan and a jury of stern faced white farmers, and trying to make them believe that he and not his white accusers was telling the truth.??? Confronted by conflicting statements he made in his first trial at Scottsboro--a trial which the United States Supreme Court held was unfair -- Patterson "disremembered" saying things attributed to him including his testimony that all but he and two others attacked Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.? But he added:??? "We was scared and I don't know what I said.? They told us if we didn't confess they'd kill us-- give us to the mob outside."Negro Accuses First Prosecutor.??? Patterson declared these threats were made by guards and militiamen on duty in the Jackson County jail and in the court room in the presence of Judge A.E. Hawkins, who presided at the first trials a few days after the arrest of the Negroes by a posse at Paint Rock.? Then, pointing a finger at H.G. Bailey, circuit solicitor, who prosecuted him originally and is assisting in this trial, Patterson said:??? "And Mr. Bailey over there-- he said send all the niggers to the electric chair.? There's too many niggers in the world anyway."??? The testimony of Gilley, a tall, dark, almost handsome youth with a toothy smile and long, slender white fingers, was the high point of the day, and to catch every word of his story the court-room crowd leaned forward with hands cupped behind their ears.??? He explained to the court and jury in a low and pleasing voice that he was not a hobo but an "entertainer," and while he was on the witness stand he sought to demonstrate that he was a good one.??? For seven years, said Gilley, he had traveled about the country, sometimes on freight trains and sometimes on trucks and automobiles whose drivers would give him a lift.? He paid his way, he said, not by panhandling but by "collections taken up," after "reciting poetry on the street, in hotel lobbies, anywhere that I can get a crowd."??? His home, he said, was in Albertville, Ala.; but he was not there often.? Elsewhere, he said, he was known as "Carolina Slim."Gilley Heard No Shots, He Says.????Gilley supported the essential fact in the testimony of Victoria Price--that she and Ruby Bates were both attacked by Patterson and eight other Negroes-- but to the contradictions in her story, multiplied at the close of her cross-examination this morning, he added others.??? While she heard three shots fired when the fight began between the Negroes and seven white hoboes in a gondola car loaded with crushed stone, Gilley heard none and saw no revolver.? Nor did he see any of the Negroes strike her in the face as she had described.??? Gilley said that he had met Lester Carter with Victoria Price and Ruby Bates in the railroad yards in Chattanooga the night before they started back for Huntsville on the ill-fated freight train ride.??? Gilley was allowed to tell how he had struck up an acquaintance with Carter and the two girls, getting them coffee and sandwiches from a store that night and from an hospitable kitchen in the morning.??? Did you go somewhere with them that night?" asked Mr. Leibowitz, but before the witness could answer Judge Callahan had sustained an objection from the Attorney General.??? "But your Honor, won't you excuse the jury and allow me to inform you of what I am trying to prove?" pleaded the New York attorney.??? "I can imagine," snapped Judge Callahan, ordering Mr. Leibowitz to proceed to something else.??? Gilley denied that the Price woman had urged him to pose as her brother to avoid prosecution for violation of the Mann Act upon their arrival at the jail in Scottsboro.? In jail he testified she washed his shirt and did some mending for him.??? "Did you become friendly enough to want to help her do things she wanted to do?"? Mr. Leibowitz asked, fixing the boy with a stony stare.??? "Just what do you mean by that?" replied Gilley, his temper rising for the first time.??? "Don't you know?"??? "No."??? Patterson testified that the fight between blacks and whites aboard the train started after a "cussing out" that was provoked by Carter, who stepped on his hand in getting aboard an oil-tank car and then almost knocked the Negro off the train in getting past him.??? Patterson insisted that he had not seen the overalled white girls or any others on the train until it reached Paint Rock.? Nor had he heard any screams or pistol shots.??? Court was adjourned at 9:30 P.M. until tomorrow morning after four defendants who are now on trial had appeared upon the witness stand.? They were Willie Robinson, Ozie Powell, Olin Montgomery and Andy Wright.? All denied that they had "touched a white girl."??? In the afternoon, Joseph R. Brodsky, one of the defense attorneys, received a special delivery letter from Dr. Louis Drosin, 302 West Eighty-Sixth Street, New York, saying that the condition of Ruby Bates was such that she could not be questioned about the case before next Monday.? She underwent an operation recently.1936ARTICLES FROM THE NEW YORK TIMESCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the following newspaper articles. As they do this, they will identify the different rhetorical devices that the author of each article used. They will use this to conclude how the trail was influenced.This will be demonstrated as students annotate each article, highlighting and identifying the different examples of ethos, pathos, and logos. It will also be demonstrated as students complete a “What it Says/What it Means” chart for each specific article.Students will also analyze the credibility of each article by comparing the information presented to the timelines they created. This will be demonstrated by students creating a discrepancy chart. StJanuary 23, 1936SCOTTSBORO CASE GOES TO THE JURYAsking Chair for Negro, Prosecutor Demands Protection for Alabama Women?___________________________________MISTRIAL PLEAS DENIED?___________________________________Defense Takes Exception to Judge's Comments as He Reads Requested ChargesBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Jan. 22.??? Haywood Patterson's fourth trial for his life on a charge of rape ended today, as have all the other trials in the famous Scottsboro case, the an appeal to the passions of the jury.??? Summing up for the prosecution, Melvin C. Hutson, the local solicitor, told the jurors that the womanhood of Alabama was looking to them for "protection."? If Patterson were not made to pay with his life for a crime of which he was innocent, Mr. Hutson said, the women of the State would "have to go around with six-shooters" to protect themselves.??? "Don't go out and quibble over the evidence," roared the young successor to Wade Wright.? "Say to yourselves 'we're tired of this job and put it behind you.? Get it done quick and protect the fair womanhood of this great State.'"??? It was nearly 5:30 P.M. when the closing arguments by Mr. Hutson, Thomas E. Knight Jr., Lieutenant Governor and special prosecutor, and of Clarence L. Watts, a defense attorney, were completed.? Judge W.W. Callahan, whom the defense had charged with bias and prejudicial conduct repeatedly throughout the trial, left it to the jury to decide whether to return after dinner to hear his charge or wait until tomorrow morning.??? "Let's come back tonight and get it over with," one of the farmers on the jury shouted and his fellows indicated their approval.? Judge Callahan then declared a recess until 7:30 P.M.Defense Objections Overruled??? A panel of 100 talesmen has been drawn for the Norris trial and Judge Callahan yesterday interrupted Patterson's trial to draw venire men to sit in judgment of Charlie Williams and Andy Wright next week.? He did this in full view of the jury trying Patterson's case and this morning Mr. Watts asked Judge Callahan to declare a mistrial on the ground that bringing the Negroes manacled into court was prejudicial.??? Angrily denying the motion, Judge Callahan pointed out that the defense had registered no objection when he announced what he was going to do.? Mr. Watts quickly renewed his motion on the ground that the mere announcement was sufficient basis for a mistrial and Judge Callahan, with rising choler denied the motion.?? "I now move," began Mr. Watts, but Judge Callahan cut him short declaring that he "did not want to hear any further argument" and that the court would "not be tampered with."? Twice later in the day the defense moved unsuccessfully for mistrial because of the testimony of the Negro defendants.??? Before the closing arguments began, the defense succeeded in reading into the record the testimony of Dr. R.R. Bridges, a physician who examined Victoria Price, the complaining witness, within an hour after she was taken from the freight train on which she ways she was assaulted by a dozen negroes.Physician Contradicts Woman.????Dr. Bridges, a Scottsboro physician, was too ill to come to court, but he testified before Judge James E. Horton at one of Patterson's earlier trials that the woman's pulse and breathing were normal and that her body showed no sign of cuts and bruises with which she testified at this trial that she was covered.??? The doctor had testified also that he found physical indications which Judge Callahan refused to permit the defense to prove might have been accounted for by events which happened in a hobo jungle in Chattanooga the night before Ruby Bates and Mrs. Price hoboed their way home to Huntsville with their escorts.??? One of these, Lester Carter, testified today that he was with the girls aboard the freight train when a fight broke out between colored and white vagrants who were also on the train.? It was immaterial, Judge Callahan ruled, whether he and Orville Gilley had spent the night with Ruby and Mrs. Price.??? Later when Mr. Knight was extracting in detail from Carter the various stages of his wanderings from coast to coast, Samuel S. Leibowitz, chief defense counsel protested.? Judge Callahan held that the evidence was admissible.? Mr. Leibowitz inquired why he had not been permitted to trace the movements of Victoria Price prior to the alleged attack and Judge Callahan threatened to cite him for contempt.??? "I won't have insinuations that you were denied something that somebody else got," he shouted.??? Carter was permitted to testify, however, that he overheard one of the white hoboes while she was in jail at Scottsboro to pretend that he was her brother.? Carter said he had given up hobo life and was now a laborer for the Board of Education in New York.Patterson on the Stand.????Patterson next took the stand.? Over and over he denied that he had touched Mrs. Price or Ruby Bates, or that he had even seen any woman n the train.? The white hoboes had been throwing stones at him and the "other colored," he explained, and he had fought with them "to make them stop bothering us."??? Mr. Hutson, cross examining the defendant, blustered and stormed about the court room, repeating the Negro's answers to his questions with obvious scorn and disbelief in his voice and manner.? Sometimes he didn't wait for Patterson to answer one question before he asked another, and he frequently attributed words to the witness that the Negro had not uttered.??? At last the local prosecutor fell back upon the Record of the original trials at Scottsboro, although Mr. Leibowitz protested that the record was inadmissible on the ground that the Supreme Court of the United States had declared the whole proceeding illegal because the defendants were not adequately represented there by counsel . . . .Hutson Addresses Jury.??? It was then that (Mr. Hutson) made his appeal for the protection of womanhood, and he warned the jurors that when they had rendered their verdict and gone home they would have to face their neighbors.? his voice rose to a crescendo as he choked back a sob evoked by his own eloquence in lauding the martyrdom of Victoria Price.??? "She fights for the rights of the womanhood of Alabama," he shouted.??? "Mr. Watts, a prominent attorney in the home town of Mrs. Price, made a calm and detailed analysis of the evidence submitted, asserting that the story told by Mrs. Price had been refuted by the State's own witnesses "and contradicted by the physical facts of the case."? Rape was a crime of secrecy, not one committed in broad daylight in full view of the public highway by a dozen men strangers to each other . . . .??? He too urged the jurors to weigh the evidence with common sense and in answer to Mr. Hutson's plea for the protection of womanhood appealed for "protection of the innocent."??? "It takes courage to do the right thing in the face of public clamor for the wrong thing, but when justice is not administered fairly, governments disintegrate and there is no protection for any one, man or woman, black or white."??? "Mr. Knight, who had the last word for the prosecution, summed up briefly and with restraint, confining himself to the evidence and arguing that all the testimony submitted, save that of Patterson himself, tended to bear out the complainant's story . . . .????January 24, 1936LATEST SCOTTSBORO CASE JURY VARIES DEATH SENTENCE HE HAS HEARD THREE TIMES?___________________________________HE WOULD RATHER DIE?___________________________________Alabama Court Lets Verdict Wait Until the Selection of Norris Jury is OverBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Jan. 23.??? The first break in the succession of death verdicts returned against Haywood Patterson, one of nine Negro Defendants in the Scottsboro case, came today when a Morgan County jury found him "guilty as charged," and fixed his punishment at seventy-five years in the penitentiary.??? To persons unfamiliar with the bitterness with which the case has been surrounded the verdict may seem a Pyrrhic victory, but to Samuel S. Leibowitz, chief of the defense counsel, it was a real one.? Nevertheless, he declared, he would fight on and appeal each conviction until each of the accused Negroes is freed.??? The jury reached its verdict after exactly eight hours and reported to Judge William Callahan in a tense and crowded court room less than two minutes after twelve other men - all white -? had been sworn to pass on the fate of Clarence Norris, another of the defendants.? The two juries filed past each other in the court room, the one with a verdict found and the other supposedly with open minds.Patterson Is Disappointed.When the jurors in his case sent word to Judge Callahan that they were ready to report, Patterson heard the news with a sidelong glance of contempt.? Three times he has heard jury foremen decree his death in the electric chair on a charge of attacking a woman.? This time he was sure the verdict would be death and told his lawyers so.? Later he expressed displeasure with the finding.??? "I'd rather die," he said, "than spend another day in jail for something I didn't do."??? His accuser, Victoria Price, a mill hand from the neighboring county of Huntsville, likewise was disappointed.??? "'Twant fair," she repeated over and over, as she came from the witness room, as she came from the witness room, where a few minutes before, while the crowd was waiting to hear the verdict, she had been heard laughing.? Tomorrow morning she is scheduled to take the witness stand again and testify against Norris, who twice before has been condemned to death.??? At 4:35, when the jury sent word that it was ready to report, Judge Callahan was selecting a jury for the Norris trial, and the court room was filled with prospective jurors whose minds, the law presumes, might be influenced by hearing a verdict in the case of a co-defendant of the man whose life is in their hands.Jury Waits to Report Verdict.??? Judge Callahan explained to John Burleson, foreman of the Patterson jury, that he was in the midst of something that could not be postponed and hustled the jury into a vacant witness room.? There they waited while the selection of the Norris jury was completed at 5:10.??? The Patterson jury lined up before Judge Callahan in silence while the new jury got up from the box and shuffled out to the witness room.? One of the jurors stumbled a little over Patterson's legs.? The judge called for the verdict and the foreman handed him a folded slip of paper.??? "We, the jury find the defendant Haywood Patterson guilty as charged and fix his punishment at seventy-five years in prison," read the clerk.??? The judge took the paper back and studied it with wrinkled brow.??? "The proper form of the verdict should be 'penitentiary" where the word 'prison' is used," he said.? "Of course it is merely a technicality but if the defense does not object I will ask the jury if they intended to say penitentiary . . . ."DEFENSE WILL FIGHT ON.Scottsboro Committee Attacks Verdict as Challenge to the Nation.????Declaring that the verdict of guilty against Haywood Patterson was a "challenge to the conscience of the nation," representing six organizations, declared last night that it will continue to aid the defense in a "fight to the finish."??? The organizations represented on the committee are the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League for Industrial Democracy, the Church League for Industrial Democracy (Episcopal), the International Labor Defense and the Methodist Federation for Social Service.??? "The conviction is an outrage," said the committee in a statement, "but does not come as a surprise to those persons who have watched the proceedings in Decatur.? The atmosphere in which the trial was conducted was dominated by a cold and deliberate effort toward but one conclusion, the condemnation of innocent boys regardless of all evidence.? It is an injury and must be of grave concern to the people of Alabama, no less than to those of all America.??? :the sentence of seventy-five years is no more lenient than a death sentence.? It seems to use that this conviction is a challenge to the conscience of the nation.??? "Needless to say, this committee and the people who are supporting it will continue to conduct the defense with redoubled vigor and all the resources we can command.? We invite every one who has been stirred by the shame and blot of these cases on our country to join with us in a determined fight to the finish."??? The Rev. Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers, pastor of Broadway Tabernacle Church, is chairman of the committee.????January 25, 1936SCOTTSBORO NEGRO SHOT TRYING BREAK AS HE STABS GUARDOzie Powell, Armed With Knife Smuggled to Him in Jail, Attacks Deputy in Car?___________________________________TRIAL HAD BEEN DEFERRED?___________________________________Prisoner 'Feared Murder' on Way Back to Birmingham-- Governor Orders Inquiry.By F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Jan. 24??? Ozie Powell, one of the nine Negro defendants in the Scottsboro case, was shot in the head and critically wounded this afternoon in an apparent attempt to escape, after Judge W.W. Callahan had sentenced Haywood Patterson to seventy-five years' imprisonment and adjourned the rest of the trials indefinitely.??? Powell was shot while handcuffed to two other prisoners, Roy Wright and Clarence Norris, in an automobile driven by Sheriff J. Street Sadlin of Morgan County, who was taking them back to the Jefferson County jail in Birmingham.? The shooting occurred after Powell allegedly slashed the neck of Edgar Blalock, a deputy sheriff, with a knife which was smuggled to him during his stay in the local jail.? The attempted escape was staged on the downgrade of Lacon Mountain, about twelve miles this side of Cullman, about 2 P.M., less than an hour after the nine Negroes left Decatur in three automobiles escorted by two carloads of State highway patrolmen.? According to Highway Patrolman J.T. Bryant, both the Negroes with Powell joined in the attempt to escape.Prisoners Searched on Road.??? Lieutenant Governor Thomas E, Knight Jr., former Attorney General, who is the special prosecutor of the Scottsboro cases, was driving behind the motorcade of prisoners and their escorts when the shooting of Powell occurred.? He left his car and ordered his Negro chauffeur to take Blalock to the hospital in Cullman while he supervised a search of the Negroes on the roadside.??? The deputy sheriff was bleeding badly from a wound in his neck, but Dr. R.A. Culpepper of Cullman, whop treated the injured man, said that he was not critically wounded.? Powell, with a bullet in his brain, was taken on to Birmingham, a distance of seventy-odd miles, still handcuffed to Wright, one of the juvenile defendants, and Norris, whose trial ws postponed indefinitely today because of the failure of opposing lawyers to agree upon the manner of introducing the testimony of a witness who was too ill to come to court.??? At Birmingham, Powell, still conscious, ws taken to Hillman Hospital, a Jefferson County institution, for an emergency operation to remove the bullet, which had penetrated the upper part of his skull and buried itself an inch deep in his brain.? The operation was performed by Dr. Wilmot Littlejohn, a Birmingham brain specialist.??? The bullet was successfully removed from Powell's head and late tonight he was reported to be "sleeping comfortably."??? Dr. Culpepper said that Deputy Blalock's wound was about six inches long and that it required twelve sutures to close it.? Unless the wound became infected, he said, it should cause no trouble.??? Sheriff Sandlin returned here tonight and declared that if he and Blalock had "not been men enough to take care" of themselves they would have been killed.? The Sheriff said that both Wright and Powell had knives although officials earlier had said that only Powell was armed.??? The authorities said they had the name of the Negro delivery boy who smuggled the weapons into the jail, but had been unable to find him in town.??? The scuffle which resulted in Powell's shooting occurred in the middle car of the motorcade of three.? Sheriff Sandlin was driving and Deputy Blalock was on the front seat with him.??? The Negroes rode behind them.? suddenly, just before the cars passed over the Morgan County line into Cullman, Powell, whose right hand was free, whipped out a knife and drew it across Blalock's throat, according to Patrolman Bryant, who saw the scuffle from the car behind.??? The doors of the Sheriff's car were locked from the inside and before Sheriff Sandlin could stop the machine, according to the patrolman, the three manacled Negroes were upon the Sheriff and his deputy.? The policemen said that Powell seized Blalock's gun with his free had but lost hold of it before he could do any harm.? In the ensuing scuffle, Patrolman Bryant said "the gun went off" and Powell was shot.??? By this time Patrolman Bryant had succeeded in opening up the auto doors with the aid of Thomas E. Lawson, a Deputy Attorney General, and Jack, the latter's Negro chauffeur, a trusty from Kilby prison.? There on the road a few feet from G.F. Anderson's filling station at the top of Lacon Mountain, the Negro prisoners were taken from the three cars and searched for weapons.Paid Knife Smuggler 35 Cents.????The knife which Powell had used was found o the back seat of the car in which he had been riding.? It was a "Switz knife," with a blade about four inches long and a handle of about the same length, according to Patrolman Bryant.? Powell said later that he had paid the Decatur Negro thirty-five cents to smuggle the weapon to him in the Morgan County jail??? He assaulted Deputy Sheriff Blalock, he said, in a desperate attempt to escape because he believed that the authorities were plotting to murder him and his fellow defendants on the way back to Birmingham.??? None of the other Negroes was injured when they arrived at the jail in Birmingham,, Mr. Blalock returned to his home in Decatur after treatment.??? News of the shooting spread rapidly over the whole countryside between here and Birmingham and there were little clusters of overalled farmers around the telephones of the general stores along the Montgomery highway, all seeking information.? The report most generally credited at first was that a sniper had killed Haywood Patterson, but this proved baseless . . . .New Jury Had Been Chosen.??? The trial of Norris, for which a jury was chosen yesterday, was postponed after a brief court session this morning.? Victoria Price, the woman who says that she and Ruby Bates were attacked by all nine of the Negro defendants, held up the proceedings by arriving half an hour late, dressed in faded calico and a shabby overcoat.??? Lawyers for the State explained that she was suffering from the grippe.? Her face, usually made up liberally with cosmetics, was pale.? She made no secret of her disappointment that Patterson had not been condemned to death as he had been by the three earlier juries which found him guilty of her charges.??? It became apparent that the Norris trial had struck a snag which would postpone it indefinitely when Mr. Leibowitz and Lieut. Gov. Knight were unable to agree upon the form of a "showing" of the testimony of Dr. R.R. Bridges, who is near death in Scottsboro.? Neither the State nor the defense wanted to take the responsibility for bringing the doctor to court and Mr. Leibowitz said that in the absence of a "showing," or narrative abstract of his testimony at an earlier trial, he could not go on . . . .??? Patterson was brought into the court after the Norris jury was dismissed to have sentence pronounced upon him.? He stood erect before the bench as Judge Callahan said:??? "Haywood, a jury has found you guilty of the crime of rape and sentenced you to the penitentiary for seventy-five years.? Have you anything to say before I formally pronounce this sentence upon you?"??? "Yes, sir, Your Honor," said Patterson, "I am not guilty and I don't think justice has been done me in my case."?????ARTICLES FROM THE NEW YORK TIMESJanuary 23, 1936SCOTTSBORO CASE GOES TO THE JURYAsking Chair for Negro, Prosecutor Demands Protection for Alabama Women?___________________________________MISTRIAL PLEAS DENIED?___________________________________Defense Takes Exception to Judge's Comments as He Reads Requested ChargesBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Jan. 22.??? Haywood Patterson's fourth trial for his life on a charge of rape ended today, as have all the other trials in the famous Scottsboro case, the an appeal to the passions of the jury.??? Summing up for the prosecution, Melvin C. Hutson, the local solicitor, told the jurors that the womanhood of Alabama was looking to them for "protection."? If Patterson were not made to pay with his life for a crime of which he was innocent, Mr. Hutson said, the women of the State would "have to go around with six-shooters" to protect themselves.??? "Don't go out and quibble over the evidence," roared the young successor to Wade Wright.? "Say to yourselves 'we're tired of this job and put it behind you.? Get it done quick and protect the fair womanhood of this great State.'"??? It was nearly 5:30 P.M. when the closing arguments by Mr. Hutson, Thomas E. Knight Jr., Lieutenant Governor and special prosecutor, and of Clarence L. Watts, a defense attorney, were completed.? Judge W.W. Callahan, whom the defense had charged with bias and prejudicial conduct repeatedly throughout the trial, left it to the jury to decide whether to return after dinner to hear his charge or wait until tomorrow morning.??? "Let's come back tonight and get it over with," one of the farmers on the jury shouted and his fellows indicated their approval.? Judge Callahan then declared a recess until 7:30 P.M.Defense Objections Overruled??? A panel of 100 talesmen has been drawn for the Norris trial and Judge Callahan yesterday interrupted Patterson's trial to draw venire men to sit in judgment of Charlie Williams and Andy Wright next week.? He did this in full view of the jury trying Patterson's case and this morning Mr. Watts asked Judge Callahan to declare a mistrial on the ground that bringing the Negroes manacled into court was prejudicial.??? Angrily denying the motion, Judge Callahan pointed out that the defense had registered no objection when he announced what he was going to do.? Mr. Watts quickly renewed his motion on the ground that the mere announcement was sufficient basis for a mistrial and Judge Callahan, with rising choler denied the motion.?? "I now move," began Mr. Watts, but Judge Callahan cut him short declaring that he "did not want to hear any further argument" and that the court would "not be tampered with."? Twice later in the day the defense moved unsuccessfully for mistrial because of the testimony of the Negro defendants.??? Before the closing arguments began, the defense succeeded in reading into the record the testimony of Dr. R.R. Bridges, a physician who examined Victoria Price, the complaining witness, within an hour after she was taken from the freight train on which she ways she was assaulted by a dozen negroes.Physician Contradicts Woman.????Dr. Bridges, a Scottsboro physician, was too ill to come to court, but he testified before Judge James E. Horton at one of Patterson's earlier trials that the woman's pulse and breathing were normal and that her body showed no sign of cuts and bruises with which she testified at this trial that she was covered.??? The doctor had testified also that he found physical indications which Judge Callahan refused to permit the defense to prove might have been accounted for by events which happened in a hobo jungle in Chattanooga the night before Ruby Bates and Mrs. Price hoboed their way home to Huntsville with their escorts.??? One of these, Lester Carter, testified today that he was with the girls aboard the freight train when a fight broke out between colored and white vagrants who were also on the train.? It was immaterial, Judge Callahan ruled, whether he and Orville Gilley had spent the night with Ruby and Mrs. Price.??? Later when Mr. Knight was extracting in detail from Carter the various stages of his wanderings from coast to coast, Samuel S. Leibowitz, chief defense counsel protested.? Judge Callahan held that the evidence was admissible.? Mr. Leibowitz inquired why he had not been permitted to trace the movements of Victoria Price prior to the alleged attack and Judge Callahan threatened to cite him for contempt.??? "I won't have insinuations that you were denied something that somebody else got," he shouted.??? Carter was permitted to testify, however, that he overheard one of the white hoboes while she was in jail at Scottsboro to pretend that he was her brother.? Carter said he had given up hobo life and was now a laborer for the Board of Education in New York.Patterson on the Stand.????Patterson next took the stand.? Over and over he denied that he had touched Mrs. Price or Ruby Bates, or that he had even seen any woman n the train.? The white hoboes had been throwing stones at him and the "other colored," he explained, and he had fought with them "to make them stop bothering us."??? Mr. Hutson, cross examining the defendant, blustered and stormed about the court room, repeating the Negro's answers to his questions with obvious scorn and disbelief in his voice and manner.? Sometimes he didn't wait for Patterson to answer one question before he asked another, and he frequently attributed words to the witness that the Negro had not uttered.??? At last the local prosecutor fell back upon the Record of the original trials at Scottsboro, although Mr. Leibowitz protested that the record was inadmissible on the ground that the Supreme Court of the United States had declared the whole proceeding illegal because the defendants were not adequately represented there by counsel . . . .Hutson Addresses Jury.??? It was then that (Mr. Hutson) made his appeal for the protection of womanhood, and he warned the jurors that when they had rendered their verdict and gone home they would have to face their neighbors.? his voice rose to a crescendo as he choked back a sob evoked by his own eloquence in lauding the martyrdom of Victoria Price.??? "She fights for the rights of the womanhood of Alabama," he shouted.??? "Mr. Watts, a prominent attorney in the home town of Mrs. Price, made a calm and detailed analysis of the evidence submitted, asserting that the story told by Mrs. Price had been refuted by the State's own witnesses "and contradicted by the physical facts of the case."? Rape was a crime of secrecy, not one committed in broad daylight in full view of the public highway by a dozen men strangers to each other . . . .??? He too urged the jurors to weigh the evidence with common sense and in answer to Mr. Hutson's plea for the protection of womanhood appealed for "protection of the innocent."??? "It takes courage to do the right thing in the face of public clamor for the wrong thing, but when justice is not administered fairly, governments disintegrate and there is no protection for any one, man or woman, black or white."??? "Mr. Knight, who had the last word for the prosecution, summed up briefly and with restraint, confining himself to the evidence and arguing that all the testimony submitted, save that of Patterson himself, tended to bear out the complainant's story . . . .????January 24, 1936LATEST SCOTTSBORO CASE JURY VARIES DEATH SENTENCE HE HAS HEARD THREE TIMES?___________________________________HE WOULD RATHER DIE?___________________________________Alabama Court Lets Verdict Wait Until the Selection of Norris Jury is OverBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Jan. 23.??? The first break in the succession of death verdicts returned against Haywood Patterson, one of nine Negro Defendants in the Scottsboro case, came today when a Morgan County jury found him "guilty as charged," and fixed his punishment at seventy-five years in the penitentiary.??? To persons unfamiliar with the bitterness with which the case has been surrounded the verdict may seem a Pyrrhic victory, but to Samuel S. Leibowitz, chief of the defense counsel, it was a real one.? Nevertheless, he declared, he would fight on and appeal each conviction until each of the accused Negroes is freed.??? The jury reached its verdict after exactly eight hours and reported to Judge William Callahan in a tense and crowded court room less than two minutes after twelve other men - all white -? had been sworn to pass on the fate of Clarence Norris, another of the defendants.? The two juries filed past each other in the court room, the one with a verdict found and the other supposedly with open minds.Patterson Is Disappointed.When the jurors in his case sent word to Judge Callahan that they were ready to report, Patterson heard the news with a sidelong glance of contempt.? Three times he has heard jury foremen decree his death in the electric chair on a charge of attacking a woman.? This time he was sure the verdict would be death and told his lawyers so.? Later he expressed displeasure with the finding.??? "I'd rather die," he said, "than spend another day in jail for something I didn't do."??? His accuser, Victoria Price, a mill hand from the neighboring county of Huntsville, likewise was disappointed.??? "'Twant fair," she repeated over and over, as she came from the witness room, as she came from the witness room, where a few minutes before, while the crowd was waiting to hear the verdict, she had been heard laughing.? Tomorrow morning she is scheduled to take the witness stand again and testify against Norris, who twice before has been condemned to death.??? At 4:35, when the jury sent word that it was ready to report, Judge Callahan was selecting a jury for the Norris trial, and the court room was filled with prospective jurors whose minds, the law presumes, might be influenced by hearing a verdict in the case of a co-defendant of the man whose life is in their hands.Jury Waits to Report Verdict.??? Judge Callahan explained to John Burleson, foreman of the Patterson jury, that he was in the midst of something that could not be postponed and hustled the jury into a vacant witness room.? There they waited while the selection of the Norris jury was completed at 5:10.??? The Patterson jury lined up before Judge Callahan in silence while the new jury got up from the box and shuffled out to the witness room.? One of the jurors stumbled a little over Patterson's legs.? The judge called for the verdict and the foreman handed him a folded slip of paper.??? "We, the jury find the defendant Haywood Patterson guilty as charged and fix his punishment at seventy-five years in prison," read the clerk.??? The judge took the paper back and studied it with wrinkled brow.??? "The proper form of the verdict should be 'penitentiary" where the word 'prison' is used," he said.? "Of course it is merely a technicality but if the defense does not object I will ask the jury if they intended to say penitentiary . . . ."DEFENSE WILL FIGHT ON.Scottsboro Committee Attacks Verdict as Challenge to the Nation.????Declaring that the verdict of guilty against Haywood Patterson was a "challenge to the conscience of the nation," representing six organizations, declared last night that it will continue to aid the defense in a "fight to the finish."??? The organizations represented on the committee are the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League for Industrial Democracy, the Church League for Industrial Democracy (Episcopal), the International Labor Defense and the Methodist Federation for Social Service.??? "The conviction is an outrage," said the committee in a statement, "but does not come as a surprise to those persons who have watched the proceedings in Decatur.? The atmosphere in which the trial was conducted was dominated by a cold and deliberate effort toward but one conclusion, the condemnation of innocent boys regardless of all evidence.? It is an injury and must be of grave concern to the people of Alabama, no less than to those of all America.??? :the sentence of seventy-five years is no more lenient than a death sentence.? It seems to use that this conviction is a challenge to the conscience of the nation.??? "Needless to say, this committee and the people who are supporting it will continue to conduct the defense with redoubled vigor and all the resources we can command.? We invite every one who has been stirred by the shame and blot of these cases on our country to join with us in a determined fight to the finish."??? The Rev. Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers, pastor of Broadway Tabernacle Church, is chairman of the committee.????January 25, 1936SCOTTSBORO NEGRO SHOT TRYING BREAK AS HE STABS GUARDOzie Powell, Armed With Knife Smuggled to Him in Jail, Attacks Deputy in Car?___________________________________TRIAL HAD BEEN DEFERRED?___________________________________Prisoner 'Feared Murder' on Way Back to Birmingham-- Governor Orders Inquiry.By F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., Jan. 24??? Ozie Powell, one of the nine Negro defendants in the Scottsboro case, was shot in the head and critically wounded this afternoon in an apparent attempt to escape, after Judge W.W. Callahan had sentenced Haywood Patterson to seventy-five years' imprisonment and adjourned the rest of the trials indefinitely.??? Powell was shot while handcuffed to two other prisoners, Roy Wright and Clarence Norris, in an automobile driven by Sheriff J. Street Sadlin of Morgan County, who was taking them back to the Jefferson County jail in Birmingham.? The shooting occurred after Powell allegedly slashed the neck of Edgar Blalock, a deputy sheriff, with a knife which was smuggled to him during his stay in the local jail.? The attempted escape was staged on the downgrade of Lacon Mountain, about twelve miles this side of Cullman, about 2 P.M., less than an hour after the nine Negroes left Decatur in three automobiles escorted by two carloads of State highway patrolmen.? According to Highway Patrolman J.T. Bryant, both the Negroes with Powell joined in the attempt to escape.Prisoners Searched on Road.??? Lieutenant Governor Thomas E, Knight Jr., former Attorney General, who is the special prosecutor of the Scottsboro cases, was driving behind the motorcade of prisoners and their escorts when the shooting of Powell occurred.? He left his car and ordered his Negro chauffeur to take Blalock to the hospital in Cullman while he supervised a search of the Negroes on the roadside.??? The deputy sheriff was bleeding badly from a wound in his neck, but Dr. R.A. Culpepper of Cullman, whop treated the injured man, said that he was not critically wounded.? Powell, with a bullet in his brain, was taken on to Birmingham, a distance of seventy-odd miles, still handcuffed to Wright, one of the juvenile defendants, and Norris, whose trial ws postponed indefinitely today because of the failure of opposing lawyers to agree upon the manner of introducing the testimony of a witness who was too ill to come to court.??? At Birmingham, Powell, still conscious, ws taken to Hillman Hospital, a Jefferson County institution, for an emergency operation to remove the bullet, which had penetrated the upper part of his skull and buried itself an inch deep in his brain.? The operation was performed by Dr. Wilmot Littlejohn, a Birmingham brain specialist.??? The bullet was successfully removed from Powell's head and late tonight he was reported to be "sleeping comfortably."??? Dr. Culpepper said that Deputy Blalock's wound was about six inches long and that it required twelve sutures to close it.? Unless the wound became infected, he said, it should cause no trouble.??? Sheriff Sandlin returned here tonight and declared that if he and Blalock had "not been men enough to take care" of themselves they would have been killed.? The Sheriff said that both Wright and Powell had knives although officials earlier had said that only Powell was armed.??? The authorities said they had the name of the Negro delivery boy who smuggled the weapons into the jail, but had been unable to find him in town.??? The scuffle which resulted in Powell's shooting occurred in the middle car of the motorcade of three.? Sheriff Sandlin was driving and Deputy Blalock was on the front seat with him.??? The Negroes rode behind them.? suddenly, just before the cars passed over the Morgan County line into Cullman, Powell, whose right hand was free, whipped out a knife and drew it across Blalock's throat, according to Patrolman Bryant, who saw the scuffle from the car behind.??? The doors of the Sheriff's car were locked from the inside and before Sheriff Sandlin could stop the machine, according to the patrolman, the three manacled Negroes were upon the Sheriff and his deputy.? The policemen said that Powell seized Blalock's gun with his free had but lost hold of it before he could do any harm.? In the ensuing scuffle, Patrolman Bryant said "the gun went off" and Powell was shot.??? By this time Patrolman Bryant had succeeded in opening up the auto doors with the aid of Thomas E. Lawson, a Deputy Attorney General, and Jack, the latter's Negro chauffeur, a trusty from Kilby prison.? There on the road a few feet from G.F. Anderson's filling station at the top of Lacon Mountain, the Negro prisoners were taken from the three cars and searched for weapons.Paid Knife Smuggler 35 Cents.????The knife which Powell had used was found o the back seat of the car in which he had been riding.? It was a "Switz knife," with a blade about four inches long and a handle of about the same length, according to Patrolman Bryant.? Powell said later that he had paid the Decatur Negro thirty-five cents to smuggle the weapon to him in the Morgan County jail??? He assaulted Deputy Sheriff Blalock, he said, in a desperate attempt to escape because he believed that the authorities were plotting to murder him and his fellow defendants on the way back to Birmingham.??? None of the other Negroes was injured when they arrived at the jail in Birmingham,, Mr. Blalock returned to his home in Decatur after treatment.??? News of the shooting spread rapidly over the whole countryside between here and Birmingham and there were little clusters of overalled farmers around the telephones of the general stores along the Montgomery highway, all seeking information.? The report most generally credited at first was that a sniper had killed Haywood Patterson, but this proved baseless . . . .New Jury Had Been Chosen.??? The trial of Norris, for which a jury was chosen yesterday, was postponed after a brief court session this morning.? Victoria Price, the woman who says that she and Ruby Bates were attacked by all nine of the Negro defendants, held up the proceedings by arriving half an hour late, dressed in faded calico and a shabby overcoat.??? Lawyers for the State explained that she was suffering from the grippe.? Her face, usually made up liberally with cosmetics, was pale.? She made no secret of her disappointment that Patterson had not been condemned to death as he had been by the three earlier juries which found him guilty of her charges.??? It became apparent that the Norris trial had struck a snag which would postpone it indefinitely when Mr. Leibowitz and Lieut. Gov. Knight were unable to agree upon the form of a "showing" of the testimony of Dr. R.R. Bridges, who is near death in Scottsboro.? Neither the State nor the defense wanted to take the responsibility for bringing the doctor to court and Mr. Leibowitz said that in the absence of a "showing," or narrative abstract of his testimony at an earlier trial, he could not go on . . . .??? Patterson was brought into the court after the Norris jury was dismissed to have sentence pronounced upon him.? He stood erect before the bench as Judge Callahan said:??? "Haywood, a jury has found you guilty of the crime of rape and sentenced you to the penitentiary for seventy-five years.? Have you anything to say before I formally pronounce this sentence upon you?"??? "Yes, sir, Your Honor," said Patterson, "I am not guilty and I don't think justice has been done me in my case."?????1937 News Paper ArticlesCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the following newspaper articles. As they do this, they will identify the different rhetorical devices that the author of each article used. They will use this to conclude how the trail was influenced.This will be demonstrated as students annotate each article, highlighting and identifying the different examples of ethos, pathos, and logos. It will also be demonstrated as students complete a “What it Says/What it Means” chart for each specific article.Students will also analyze the credibility of each article by comparing the information presented to the timelines they created. This will be demonstrated by students creating a discrepancy chart. StJuly 23, 1937SCOTTSBORO JUDGE WARNS LEIBOWITZCourt Angered by Attorney's Manner in Cross-Examining Mrs. Victoria Price.?_______________________________REJECTS PERJURY MOTION?_______________________________Inconsistencies Brought Out in Witness' Testimony at Trial of WeemsBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., July 22.??? Victoria Price, telling her sordid story of a mass attack by nine Negroes before the eleventh jury to sit in judgment in the Scottsboro cases, spent an uncomfortable morning on the witness stand today under a cross-examination by Samuel Leibowtiz, defense attorney.??? The duel of wits between the New York criminal lawyer and the defiant mill worker was the highlight of a long court day in which the trial of Charlie Weems began and ended with the State and the defense submitting evidence with record-breaking speed.??? This jury, like the one which condemned Andy Wright yesterday to a ninety-nine year sentence in the penitentiary, is barred by law from sentencing Weems to death.? There is no limit, however, to the length of the prison sentence it may impose.??? Delivering one of the closing arguments for the State, H.G. Bailey, Jackson County solicitor, who wa prosecutor of the original trials at Scottsboro, pressed the thought that this was a case in which a white woman accused a Negro of a crime worse than murder.? He declared that when Weems and his companions told Mrs. Price that they were going to "take her North and make her their woman" they hurled a challenge against the laws of alabama, the sovereignty of the State and the?sanctity of white womanhood."Mrs. Price Is First Witness??? When Mr. Leibowitz undertook to cross-examine Mrs. Price she shouted defiant answers.??? Within three minutes after her cross-examination started, Mr. Leibowitz had her contradicting herself about when she counted the Negroes who attacked her.? Today she said it was after they had piled into the gondola car.??? At Scottsboro, the record showed, she swore she counted them one by one as they swarmed into the car.? Mrs. Price said she did not remember anything of the kind at Scottsboro and when Mr. Leibowitz insisted that she tell which version of her story she wanted the jury to believe, Mr. Lawson arose to demand that the court instruct counsel to show some respect for the complaining witness.??? Then Mr. Leibowitz asked her to take a good look at the defendant, whom she said she had not seen for the past six years. He asked if she could identify him positively as one of the men who attacked her.? She said she certainly could.? Mr. Leibowitz then asked if she noted any change in his physical appearance since she last saw him.? Mrs. Price studied the features of Weems for several minutes and then said:??? "He's looking bigger like all over."??? "Anything else?" demanded Mr. Leibowitz.??? "He's lighter," she said, "a little lighter and ashier looking."??? "Take a good look now and see if you can't see any other change in his appearance," ordered Mr. Leibowitz.Questioned About Mustache??? "I won't say," said Mrs. Price, settling back in her chair.??? "Do you notice his mustache?" asked the defense attorney, "he asked the defense attorney, "he didn't have that in Scottsboro did he?"??? "I don't remember that he did," said Mrs. Price.??? Mr. Leibowitz asked Mrs. Price then if she knew Lester Carter, who according to testimony in earlier trials, accompanied her and Ruby Bates on an overnight hobo trip to Chattanooga the day before she says the negroes attacked her.??? "If I did I don't remember," said Mrs. Price.??? All subsequent efforts of Mr. Leibowitz to probe that phase of the story were blocked by objections from the State which were sustained by the court.??? When Mr. Leibowitz pressed her aggressively on her testimony at other trials on injuries suffered in the attack and other points at which she contradicted herself, Judge W.W. Callahan took a hand in the proceedings without waiting for objections from the State.? Finally, when Mr. Leibowitz persisted his attack upon the complaining witness's credibility, the court warned him to desist.??? It is not too late," said the judge, who is 77 years old, "for the court to enforce its orders.? your manner is going to lead to trouble, Mr. Leibowitz, and you might as well get ready for it."??? "Isn't it a fact that you decided to accuse these Negroes falsely to save yourself from arrest for hoboing?" asked Mr. Leibowitz in the afternoon session.??? "No sir," said Mrs. Price.Leibowitz Motion Is Denied??? Mr. Leibowitz then asked Judge Callahan to excuse the jury in order that he might make a motion.? When the door closed behind the jury, Mr. Leibowitz rose and said:??? "I move that the testimony of Victoria Price be stricken from the record on the ground that her testimony is so rampant with perjury that the court is constrained---"??? Judge Callahan did not let him finish.? He denied the motion and ordered the Sheriff to bring back the jurors.??? After Mrs. Price had told her story several farmers who saw Negroes and white men fighting on the freight train took the stand as they have at all the other trials. . . .??July 24, 1937WEEMS CASE GIVEN TO ALABAMA JURYAnother Scottsboro Trial Ends After Leibowitz Charges a Mockery of Justice?_______________________________HITS COURT 'HYPOCRISY'?_______________________________Prosecutor, in Reply, Accuses New Yorker of Jeopardizing Own Plea for PublicityBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., July 23.??? A jury which heard Samuel Leibowitz of New York attack the State's case in the Scottsboro trials as a frame-up, and ridicule the proceedings before Judge W.W. Callahan as a mockery of justice, retired this afternoon to weight the guilt or innocence of? Charlie Weems, one of nine Negroes accused of attacking Victoria Price, a white woman.??? The jury, drawn from a regular panel after a special venire of sixty five was waived by the defense in consideration of a waiver of capital punishment by the State, was barred from ordering death for the Negro, who is being tried now for the first time since his original conviction at Scottsboro was set aside by the United States Supreme Court.? Another jury condemned Clarence Norris to die after a trial last week.??? The Weems case jurymen were ordered to their hotel for the night when they failed to reach a verdict after three and a half hours of deliberation.Answers Leibowitz's Attack.??? Melvin C. Hutson, Morgan County solicitor, in summing up the State's case against Weems before it went to the jury, declared that Mr. Leibowitz had insulted not only the members of the jury but the citizenry of this county and declared that Mr. Leibowitz's talk was aimed not at the jury box but at the press row behind it.??? Mr. Hutson accused the New York attorney of deliberately seeking a conviction for publicity purposes, and told the jurors that they could give Weems up to 1,000 years.??? In his address, Mr. Leibowitz declared his belief that it was hopeless even to try to convince a white jury here that a Negro accused by a white woman might be innocent of the charge.Says He Is Tired of Hypocrisy.??? "I'm sick and tired of this sanctimonious hypocrisy," he shouted.? "It isn't Charlie Weems on trial in this case.? It's a Jew lawyer and New York State put on trial here by the inflammatory remarks of Mr. Bailey."??? H. G. Bailey of Jackson County who prosecuted the original trials at Scottsboro, in summing up for the State yesterday afternoon, dwelt at length on the fact that counsel in this case came from New York.??? Mr. Leibowitz referred to the string of farmers called by the State to bolster up the testimony of Mrs. Price as "trained seals" and "performers in a flea circus."? He accused Mr. Bailey flatly of supporting evidence favorable to the defense, declaring that this was a further reason to suspect that the whole case against the Negroes was manufactured in Mrs. Price's head to save herself and her hobo companions from vagrancy arrests.??? The assertions of lawyers for the State that Negroes fare the same as white men in the courts of Northern Alabama was so much "poppycock," said Mr. Leibowitz, calling the formalities of the trial a mere travesty of justice.??? Since taking charge of the defense he had examined more than 1,000 prospective jurors from Morgan County without yet finding one who would admit that he harbored the least bit of prejudice against the Negroes or would treat them any differently than he would white defendants in a court of law, said Mr. Leibowitz.??? Yet, he continued, outside the court room on the streets or Decatur white men had told him privately that a Negro did not have a chance and that his life was s worthless as a burned matchstick.??? Judge Callahan strode back and forth on the bench, while Mr. Leibowitz continued his accusations against Alabama courts and juries.? Mr. Lawson left the courtroom, but Mr. Hutson, the local solicitor, busily took notes and bided his time to have the final word.Plan to Inflame Jury Charged.??? When that time came Mr. Hutson, in a booming voice, charged that for some reason best known to Mr. Leibowitz the defense lawyer was seeking deliberately to inflame the jury against his client to make acquittal impossible.??? Once, during Mr. Hutson's closing argument, he asked the jurors how they would liked to have their own daughters or womenfolk upon the freight train with the Negroes.? At this point Mr. Leibowitz asked for a mistrial but Judge Callahan denied his motion.??? When the oratory of the Lawyers ended Judge Callahan recessed court for lunch and began charging the jury when court reconvened.??? Judge Callahan charged, as he has done before, that where a white woman accused a Negro of rape the jury should regard that as presumptive evidence that there was no consent.?July 25, 1937SCOTTSBORO CASE ENDS AS 4 GO FREE; 2 MORE GET PRISONNegroes, Released Quietly, Leave Decatur Under Guard, Bound for New York?_______________________________75-YEAR TERM FOR WEEMS?_______________________________Powell, Cleared on Woman's Charge, Admits a Stabbing?? ---Leibowitz is ElatedBy F. Raymond Daniell?Special to the New York TimesDECATUR, Ala., July 24.??? Four Negro youths, who for six an one half years have lived in the shadow of the electric chair, were set free here today in a dramatic finale of the famous Scottsboro case.??? The State, in the person of Thomas S. Lawson, Assistant Attorney General, nolle prossed all the indictments against five of the nine Negroes accused of attacking Victoria Price and Ruby Bates on a freight train bound from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931.??? Four of the Negro youths, three of whom were convicted and sentenced to death in the original trials at Scottsboro which the Federal Supreme Court reversed, were set free immediately to start for New York under guard with Samuel Leibowitz, their attorney.??? The fifth Negro saved from trial by the State's action was sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years by Judge W.W. Callahan after he had pleaded guilty to a charge of assault with intent to murder.? It was he who, a year and a half ago, drew a knife and attacked Edgar Blalock, a Morgan County deputy who was taking him to Birmingham . . . .Release Made in Secret??? Mr. Leibowitz regarded the day's developments as a great victory for the defense, and said that it marked the end of Alabama's efforts to send the Negroes to the electric chair.??? The whole proceeding of the release of the four Negroes was carried out swiftly and without advance publicity.??? As it was, Judge Callahan ordered State policemen to escort Mr. Leibowitz, William Richter, his associate, and the four Negroes to the State line.? In two cars provided by Dr. Newman Sykes, a Negro who testified at the hearing which resulted in the order from the Federal Supreme Court for Alabama to include Negroes on her jury panels, Mr. Leibowitz and his four clients raced out of town for Chattanooga by way of Pulaski.??? "It is nothing short of a miracle that the boys were saved from the chair, and it's God's wonder that they are actually free," said the New York lawyer.? "I can hardly believe it.? We'll keep up the fight until all of these innocent boys are saved."??? The party was gone before news of the release of the four Negroes spread among Decatur's 17,000 citizens.? Victoria Price, peering from a court house window, saw them go.??? As the four Negroes ran out of the opened jail doors with their hands above their heads and ducked into one of the waiting cars, Sheriff J. Street Sandlin said to to Mr. Leibowitz:??? "Why don't you get in there with your clients you"----Sheriff Not Told in Advance??? Neither the Sheriff nor the prisoners had been told in advance of the State's plan to nolle prosse the indictments against them.??? The Negroes did not know that they were free until Mr. Leibowitz told them so.? The had thought that they were being taken back to the Jefferson County jail, where they had been kept for the last four years awaiting trial.? On said:??? "Gee, I haven't been so happy since I was 2 years old." . . . .Weems Charges Injustice??? Thanking the jurors and dismissing them, Judge Callahan remarked that "this ends the business of the court for this week."??? Weems was brought around before the bench.? Before sentence was pronounced by Judge Callahan, who pointed out that he had "nothing to do with the jury's verdict," Weems said he had not had "a fair and impartial trial."??? "I didn't get justice here," he declared.??? Mr. Leibowitz moved for an arrest of judgment, charging that the court had no jurisdiction.? This was a technical move to protect the record for future appeal from the conviction.??? Ozie Powell then brought into court.? Mr. Leibowitz talked briefly with him.? Then Powell was marched before the bench to hear the indictment charging him with assaulting Deputy Blalock read by the court clerk.? Judge Callahan explained that he could plead guilty or not as he chose.??? "Don't plead guilty unless you are guilty," said Mr. Leibowitz.??? "I'm guilty of cutting the deputy," the Negro said.??? In consideration of the fact that the State had consented to nolle prosse the attack indictment against Powell in the Victoria Price case, Melvin C. Hutson, the Circuit Solicitor of Morgan County, told the court that the prosecution would insist on the maximum penalty for Powell.? Mr. Leibowitz pleaded with the judge to take into consideration the six and a half years that the Negro has been in jail awaiting trial, but Judge Callahan said:??? "If it had not been that the State had dropped the other charge of rape against him I would have given him fifteen years.? As it is, I will have to sentence him to twenty years in the penitentiary.? The State insists upon it."??? The other four Negroes were not brought into court.? Mr. Lawson stepped before the bench and in a quiet voice moved to nolle prosse all the indictments charging them with attacking the two white women.??? Thus, in a tangle of inconsistencies, ended the famous Scottsboro case.________________________Group Reaches NashvilleNASHVILLE, Tenn., July 24 (AP)??? Samuel Leibowitz said here tonight that he and the four Scottsboro defendants freed today would try to make connections by train and plane to arrive in New York late tomorrow afternoon.??? "Our plans aren't definite," he added, "but the boys ought to be placed in a vocational school where they can be trained in some trade."_________________________PROSECUTORS' STATEMENTThe Explanation of the Freeing of Four DefendantsBy the Associated PressDECATUR, ALA., July 24??? The text of the statement issued by the "Scottsboro case prosecution staff" was as follows:??? The prosecution is convinced beyond any question of a doubt, after going through eleven trials of the Scottsboro cases, that the defendants have been tried are guilty of raping Mrs. Victoria Price in the gondola car as she has recited upon the witness stand.? Her testimony is corroborated by reputable witnesses so as, in our opinion, to convince any fair-minded man that these defendants did participate in throwing these white boys off of the gondola car and raping Mrs. Victoria Price.??? But after careful consideration of all the testimony, every lawyer connected with the prosecution is convinced that the defendants Willie Roberson and Olen Montgomery are not guilty.??? The doctor that examined Willie Roberson the day after the commission of the crime states that he was sick, suffering with a severe venereal disease and that in his condition it would have been very painful to have committed that crime, and that he would not have had any inclination to commit it.? He has told a very plausible story from the beginning:? that he was in a box car and knew nothing about the crime.??? Olen Montgomery was practically blind and has also told a plausible story, which has been unshaken all through the litigation, which put him at some distance from the commission of the crime.? The State is without proof other than the prosecutrix as to his being in the gondola car, and we feel that it is a case of mistaken identity.??? Mr. Bailey, Mr. Lawson and Mr. Hutson all entertain the same view as to these two Negroes, and in view of the doubt generated by the fact that their physical condition was as stated above, the fact that two men were seen in a box car by a disinterested witness, which tends to corroborate Willie Roberson, we feel that the policy of the law and the ends of justice would not justify us in asking a conviction of these two cases.??? Two of the defendants were juveniles at the time this crime was committed.? According to a careful investigation by the Attorney General's office, we are convinced that at the time of the actual commission of this crime one of these juveniles was 12 years old and the other one was 13, and while they were in the gondola car; when the rape was committed, counsel for the State think that in view of the fact they have been in jail for six and a half years the ends of justice would not be met at this time by releasing these two juveniles, on condition that they leave the State, never to return.??ADDITIONAL ARTICLESCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the following additional articles. They will use this information to infer how the trail was affected by this information.This will be demonstrated as students annotate each article, highlighting key events, information, and factors that either acted in favor or against the Scottsboro Boys. Students will write a paragraph response, explaining their position and justifying their answer with textual evidence from multiple sources. GIRL REPEATS STORY IN SCOTTSBORO CASEThe New York Times, Tuesday April 4, 1933. Page 10.By F. Raymond Daniell.______________________States Witness at Decatur Trial Screams Denial of 'Framing" Negro Defendants______________________Moral Attack Ruled Out_______________________Judge Rejects Court Records as Not Affecting the Credibility of Her Testimony.______________________DECATUR, Ala., April 3. ---Victoria Price, whose testimony two years ago at Scottsboro led Jackson County juries to condemn eight of nine Negro defendants to death, repeated her charges today before Judge James E. Horton and a jury in the Morgan County Court House at the first of the retrials ordered by the United States Supreme Court. Called to the witness stand by Attorney General Thomas E. Knight Jr. as the main witness against Haywood Patterson, the first of the nine prisoners placed on trial, she identified him unhesitatingly as one of six Negroes who, she testified, had attacked her on a freight train between Stevenson and Paint Rock. Her direct examination took just twelve minutes of the court's time. When it was finished she settled back in her chair, crossed her silk-stockinged legs and met a day-long attack upon her character and credibility with angry defiance. At times when Samuel S. Leibowitz, chief of defense counsel, pressed searching questions regarding her past, her lip curled and she snapped her answers in the colloquialisms of the "poor white." Mrs. Price entered an angry denial when Mr. Leibowitz asked if she had not concocted the whole story of the mass attack by the Negroes and forced Ruby Bates, the other victim of the alleged crime, to corroborate her in order to forestall the danger of her own arrest for vagrancy or a more serious offense. She joined the Attorney General in challenging Mr. Leibowitz to produce the missing Bates girl to "ask her about it." Shouts Answers to Questions. "That's some of that Ruby Bates' dope, " she shouted in a voice that shook with anger. "You can't prove it,'" sh shouted another time when Mr. Leibowitz promised to show the court that the condition in which doctors found here when she was examined at Scottsboro after an armed posse had taken the girls and the Negroes off the train on which the attack supposedly took place, was the result of her misconduct the night before in a hobo jungle on the outskirts of Chattanooga. Certified copies of court records from Huntsville where Mrs. Price lived with her widowed mother were offered by Mr. Leibowitz to show that prior to March 25, 1931, she had been arrested for offenses against the moral code. Judge Horton rejected one of the copies on the ground that an offense under the prohibition law is not a refection on the credibility of a witness and barred the others on the ground that they charged violations of city ordinances rather than State laws. Mrs. Price came to court wearing a black dress with a fichu of white lace at the throat. The little blue straw hat on her head was enlivened by a mall red feather sticking above the crown. A string of glass beads adorned her neck and on three fingers of her left hand were large and showy rings. She defended the testimony she had given with as much fires as she defended her reputation, heatedly denying at one moment that she had wrecked the home of a married woman with two babies, and in the next breath thrusting aside seeming inconsistencies in her testimony with apologies for her lack of education and faulty memory.Doctor Describes Injuries.Although Mrs. Price insisted that she had fought the Negroes off until her strength gave out, and declared that her head was cut open by a blow from the butt of a pistol wielded by Patterson, Dr. R. R. Bridges, the Scottsboro, physician, who testified just before adjournment, said he had found only superficial bruises and scratches when he examined her. While the doctor was on the stand Judge Horton took a hand in the examination, showing particular interest in the physician's statement that neither Mrs. Price nor her companion, the Bates girl, were hysterical or nervous when they were brought to his office,. Not until the next day, he said, did either of them show any signs of nervousness and then, after a night in jail, it manifested itself in tears. The star witness for the State told the sordid details of the crime before a crowded court with unabashed frankness and plain-speaking. She repeated the lewd remarks she said the Negroes made to her without the flutter of an eyelash and in a voice that carried to the furthest corner of the court room. The only women in the crowd which heard her story and the very clinical medical testimony which followed it were two visitors from New York. At times they looked as though they wished they had not come. There was little that was new in the testimony Mrs. Price gave under direct examination by Mr. Knight. She and the Bates girl, a mill worker like herself, decided she said to go to Chattanooga in search of employment. Wearing overalls over three dresses they wore to avoid carrying hand luggage, she said, they hopped a freight train and arrived in Chattanooga on the evening of March 24, 1931.Sought Work in ChattanoogaThere, Mrs. Price said, she was directed to the home of Mrs. Calli Brace, where she and Miss Bates spent the night. In the morning upon finding that jobs were as scarce in Chattanooga as in Huntsville she and her companion retrieved their overalls from the corner of the station where they had hidden them and started homeward on an outgoing freight train. They were in a gondola car with seven white boys, Mrs. Price declared when Patterson, with the other Negroes at his heals, jumped in from the top of a box car waving a pistol and ordering the white boys to "unload." Mrs. Price related all the rest of the conversation that she could remember without sparing any of the details. One of the printable remarks she attributed to the Negroes follows: "We're going to take you girls up North and make you our women." There was a fight in which all the white boys except one named Orville Gilley were thrown off the train soon after it left Stevenson, a way-station between Chattanooga and Scottsboro. Gilley, according to Mrs. Price, was afraid to jump off the train and said he would "rather stay in the car and die with these girls." Mrs. Price said that she too told the Negroes that she was "going to get off at Huntsville or die." The seven white men were rounded up and held in the jail at Scottsboro until the first trial of the Negroes was over. Only one of them, Gilley, was called upon to testify in the first trial, but it was indicated today that Lester Carter, another of the white hoboes, would be a surprise witness for the defense, if the State does not locate and call him first.Refuses to Go Over Crime Again.Mr. Leibowitz opened his examination of Mrs. Price, who had testified that she was 21 when the attack occurred, by asking if she was now 27 years old. "I ain't that educated that I can figure it out," she replied. The New York lawyer asked her to describe in detail how she resisted the Negroes. "Judge, you Honor, I've answered four times and I ain't going to say no more," she said as she turned to face Judge Horton. Once she protested that she could not understand the questions of Mr. Leibowitz. "Do I use words you don't understand?" he asked. "You speak them too fast," she said. The witness refused to identify a miniature train of box cars, gondolas and tank cars as similar to the freight train and the identification was made later by R. S. Turner, conductor of the train the girls had boarded at Chattanooga. He also testified that he had heard no shots or screams as he rode in the caboose, twenty-six cars behind the gondolas in which the attack is alleged to have occurred. Several times Mr. Leibowitz, angered at what he termed Mrs. Price's "speech-making," asked the judge to warn her to confine her remarks to answering questions. Twice Mr. Knight warned her to "be calm." When she leaned forward and screamed that Patterson had attacked her, Mr. Leibowitz said: "You're a little bit of an actress, aren't you?" "You're a pretty good actor yourself," she retorted. Mr. Leibowitz asked how may mills she visited in Chattanooga in search of work. "Its been two years ago and I disremember," she answered.Denies Accompanying White BoysMr. Leibowitz sought vainly to get Mrs. Price to admit that she and Miss Bates left Chattanooga with Gilley and Carter, but the witness insisted that she and her "friend girl" were "the onliest ones on the oil car" in which they started out. Denying intimations that the whole case was a frame-up, Mrs. Price declared she had urged Miss Bates to "tell nothing but the truth," and she denied that she had quarreled with Gilley and Carter in jail because "they wouldn't commit perjury." Mr. Leibowitz asked the witness if she had not known Negroes and spent considerable time with them in Chattanooga. This she strongly denied. Before Mrs. Price left the witness stand she identified photographs of herself and Ruby Bates, produced by Mr. Leibowitz and offered in evidence. One, showing one of the girls with a Negro, was marked for identification and will be introduced in evidence later. When Attorney General Knight objected to introduction of the pictures, Mr. Leibowitz replied that he would use them to show that Mrs. Price was on friendly terms with Negroes. Court adjourned until tomorrow after the testimony of Dr. Bridges.??The New York TimesMonday, April 3, 1933Page 34?OBSERVERS' LEAVE SCOTTSBORO TRIALLeibowitz Threatened to Quit Case if Radical Group Remained in Decatur.DECATUR, Ala., April 2.--The jury which will begin hearing evidence tomorrow in the Scottboro case prepared for the task ahead today by attending the services at St. John's Episcopal Church in a body.There they heard a sermon on tolerance delivered by the Rev. Peter M. Dennis, the rector, who avoided any direct reference to the trial which has agitated this North Alabama community much less, in many respects, than other sections of the country.Most of the members of the jury, chosen from a venire of white men after the lawyers defending the nine accused Negroes had waged an unsuccessful fight against exclusion of Negro talesmen, are Methodists or Baptists, but they attended the Episcopal Church at the suggestion of Eugene E. Graves, the banker member of the jury, who is a vestryman of St. John's."We must enlarge our vision, we must banish hatred and hypocrisy," the Rev. Mr. Dennis told the congregation of which the jury, seated in the last two pews, was a part.Most of the rector's sermon dealt with the "inconsistency" of American policy in protesting the Japanese invasion of Manchuria and forgetting the sending of marines to Nicaragua. But he added:Appeals for Open Hearts."We, all of us, and I am speaking particularly to ourselves right here in Decatur, need to open our hearts to the heavenly spirit and to put away the things that led well-fed bodies and starved souls to nail the Lamb of God to the Cross on Calvary."After church the jurors, three farmers and nine townsmen, went for a stroll. One member sent home for his radio set and had it installed in the jury's suite at the Hotel Lyons, where they are quartered. Another, who is a barber by trade, had a busman's holiday by shaving some of his fellow jurors.Meanwhile the nine prisoners, charged with attacking Ruby Bates and Mrs. Victoria Price on a freight train near Scottsboro two years ago amused themselves in the Morgan County jail by singing work songs in their cells, from which they can see the timbers of a gallows no longer used.Of the group, the only one actually on trial is Haywood Patterson, who, according to the evidence the State plans to present to the jury beginning tomorrow morning, was the ringleader of the gang. He was indicted jointly with the others, but the State obtained a severance in order to try him alone.Patterson is charged with attacking the twice-married Price woman, who will be the main witness for the State. The other white girl alleged to have been attacked by the Negroes has been missing from her Huntsville home for a month and, so far as has been learned, remains unfound.Severe Cross-Examination ExpectedSamuel S. Leibowitz, the New York criminal lawyer defending the Negroes, whose original conviction and sentence of death were reversed by the United States Supreme Court in a decision which received little publicity in Alabama, expects the cross-examination of the State's star witness to consume the better part of a full court session.That he intends to delve deeply into her past was indicated during his examination of prospective jurymen, when asked if they would take into consideration in weighing the credibility of a witness the kind of life that witness had led, even if it happened to be a woman.Attorney General Knight also expects Mr. Leibowitz to use all his skill as a cross-examiner in questioning Mrs. Price.The lawyer's questioning of talesmen on Friday also brought to light the significant but hitherto scarcely known fact that Ruby Bates formerly lived here. One of the veniremen, in responding to the New York lawyer's questions said he had known the Bates girl when she lived here nine years ago."Make a note of that," Mr. Leibowitz said to one of his assistants with an expression of surprise.Demand Release of Miss Rukeyser.Chief of Police Rigsby received a telegram today demanding the "unconditional release" of Muriel Rukeyser and the two men taken into custody yesterday for investigation and released.The telegram was signed by the National Students League, of which Miss Rukeyser said she was a member. No charges of any kind were made against the three New Yorkers and they were detained only a few hours. They were ordered to appear before Judge James E. Horton tomorrow when the trial is resumed.By the time the telegram was received the visitors from New York had left town along with several others who came here in the capacity of "obvserver" in the trial of a case which the International Labor Defense and its Communist affiliates have been used as propaganda for organizaiton work among the Negroes. It was understood that the exodus was ordered by Mr. Leibowitz as a condition of his continuing as trial counsel.Explaining his attitude, Mr. Leibowitz said:"I am not interested in the affairs of the Republican party, the Democratic party, the Socialist party, the Communist party or any other group in the conduct of this case. I am interested solely in saving these innocent boys from the electric chair, and I will do my best to see that their case is not endangered by propaganda or agitation from any quarter. I have ordered the irresponsibles away and they must stay away."?????New York Times. Tuesday, April 11, 1933. Page 1?NEGROES IN RIOTOUS MARCH ON BROADWAY WELCOME DEFENDER IN THE SCOTTSBORO CASEA peaceful meeting of Negroes at Union Square yesterday, called to protest the verdict in the Scottsboro case, developed into a running fight along Broadway for miles with policemen thrown to the ground and trampled and Negroes becoming acquainted with scores of nightsticks before it was over.George Northcroft, a Negro house painter, was arrested at Forty-sixth Street and Broadway, where the brawl reached its zenith, by Patrolman William Griffin of the West Forty-seventh street station. According to Griffin, Northcroft kicked him in the mouth.At Union Square shortly after noon the meeting started with perhaps a thousand Negroes in attendance to listen to speakers protesting against the verdict in the trial at Decatur, Ala. When it was over many journeyed to the Pennsylvania Station to meet the 4:23 train from the South bearing Samuel S. Leibowitz, who defended Haywood Patterson, the first of the Negroes to be tried at Decatur.There they were joined by others, until when the train pulled in there were close to 3,000 milling about the concourse.When Mr. Leibowitz came up the stairs there was a rush and enthusiastic cheering. A team of four husky Negroes picked up the attorney and carried him on their shoulders through the cheering throng to his taxicab in the south drive.Extra police called for the occasion persuaded the crowd to break up and leave the station, warning them not to parade without permission. Five hundred did not heed the warning and formed outside the station. They marched, singing and cheering, to Broadway and then turned north.Traffic policemen along the route attempted to break up the procession, but they were either pushed or tosssed aside. The West Forty-seventh Street station sent out a squad to reinforce the traffic men. They made contact with the marchers, who had set Harlem as their objective, at Forty-sixth Street, and here at battle royal started. Griffin said later that when he ordered the parade stopped he was shoved aside and knocked down.Other policemen joined but the Negroes would not give in and proceeded north, with others joining as fast as they could. A hurry call for more police brought radio cars, an emergency truck squad and all the reserves that could be mustered in the West Forty-seventh Street station. The police joined battle again with the Negroes between Fifty-second and Fifty-third Streets on Broadway. After several minutes of brisk work the parade split up and the marchers slipped away on side streets, not before, however, they pulled a mounted policeman from his horse.As the police drew breath they were informed that they were needed at Columbus Circle for a fresh demonstration. There they found close to 1,000 Negroes, including some of the paraders. There was another melee. The Negroes apparently had learned a new strategy, and after breaking up as quickly as possible re-formed further uptown.After a short fight at Sixty-eighth Street and Broadway, the final meeting took place at Eighty-sixth Street and Broadway.Arraigned in Night Court, Northcroft pleaded not guilty to a charge of third-degree assault. Magistrate Leonard A. McGee adjorned the case until this morning in West Side Court to enable both Northcroft and police to present witnesses.???PLAN NATIONAL AID AT NEGROES' TRIALThe New York Times, Wednesday, April 12, 1933____________________Leaders of Race Here Move to Raise Funds and Stir a Country-Wide Protest.____________________Confer With Leibowitz___________________Defense Attorney Will Speak Tonight at Labor Defense Meeting in Union Square.__________________Nationally organized Negro defense of the nine Negroes involved in the Scottsboro case is being planned by New York leaders of the race.Bill Robinson, Negro dancer, visited Samuel Leibowitz, counsel for the Scottsboro defendants yesterday and submitted a proposal that funds be raised with several benefit performances. Delegations representing various Negro organizations also called on the attorney."It now become apparent," Mr. Leibowitz said last night, "that irrespective of any small differences that may have arisen in the past between different organizations seeking to lead this fight, the race has reached the conclusion that this case marks a turning point in the life of the American Negro, who has been kept shackled by intolerance of the bigots. They are going through with the fight."Mr. Leibowitz was announced as one of the principal speakers for a demonstration in Union square at 6 o'clock tonight by the International Labor Defense. Mrs. Janie Patterson, mother of the Negro reconvicted in Decatur this week, is due in New York this afternoon and will attend the meeting.Hays Listed as Speaker.Others scheduled to speak are Joseph R. Brodsky, chief counsel for the International Labor Defense; John Haynes Holmes, Arthur Garfield hays and Roger Baldwin.The International Labor Defense, through William L. Patterson, its national secretary, assailed the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People yesterday for its statement of Monday to the effect that the injection of communism into the trial affected the verdict in the Patterson case."The directors of the N.A.A.C.P. have seen fit to gloat over the death verdict against Heywood Patterson," said the defense secretary. "They take the occasion of this verdict to bring forward a ridiculous claim that had they been in the case the verdict would have been different."They say that 'racial prejudice closed the eyes of the jurors' and at the same time that the injection of communism into the case brought about the death verdict.""Aside from the completely gratuitous confusion of the International Labor Defense, a non-partisan organization, with the Communist party, which is brought for ward merely to hide the existence of a workers' organization of defense, this statement is in itself a contradiction.Statement Declared Untrue."This statement that the N.A.A.C.P. went to the aid of the Scottsboro boys at the trial is another. The records prove this conclusively."Harlem Negroes, led by several ministers of their race and by W. H. Davis, owner of The New Amsterdam, a Negro publication, plan to hold a number of mass meetings in Negro churches and at various outdoor points in Manhattan as well as in the other boroughs, Davis announced last night.A.J. Muste, chairman of the conference for Progressive labor Action, sent a letter yesterday to President Roosevelt asking that he use his influence to obtain a new trial for Patterson.The conference, in a letter to The Amsterdam News, suggested yesterday that 50,000 Negroes be enlisted to march to Washington to protest against the Patterson verdict and that 50,000 white workers be asked to join the march.??The New York Times, Friday, April 14, 1933 Page 5?LEIBOWITZ IN HARLEM STIRS 4,000 BY PLEA: Promises to "Fight With Every Drop of Blood" in the Scottsboro Case.Stirred to a frenzy by the eloquence of Samuel S. Leibowitz, who promised he would not give up his legal battle in defense of the nine Negroes in the Scottsboro case even if he had to "sell his house and home," a congregation of more than 4,000 persons hailed the lawyer as "our leader" and "a new Moses" yesterday afternoon at a meeting in the Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, 129th street and Sevcnth Avenue.Many of those at the meeting, which was held under the auspices of the Interdenominational Colored Ministers Alliance of New York, almost carried Mr. Leibowitz from the church pulpit at the conclusion of his speech. Hundreds crowded around him to shake his hands as he made his way down the aisle and out to a waiting automobile.Mr. Leibowitz reviewed the testimony and other aspects of the recent trial of Haywood Patterson, one of the nine defendants, whose mother was at the meeting."I promise you citizens of Harlem," he said, "that I will fight with every drop of blood in my body and with the help of God that those Scottsboro boys shall be free."The Rev. Frederick A. Cullen, father of Countee Cullen, the Negro poet, and Pastor of the church, announced last night that $250 had been collected at the meeting as a contribution to the $25,000 being raised to fight the case.??Alabama Pardons 3 ‘Scottsboro Boys’ After 80 YearsNew York TimesNovember 22, 2013Bettman/CorbisSamuel Leibowitz, the chief defense attorney, spoke with Haywood Patterson, one of the nine men charged with the rape of two white women on a train, in 1933 in Decatur, Ala.By?ALAN BLINDERDuring an appeal trial, Ruby Bates recanted her accusation of rape against the teenagers.A demonstration included the mothers of the group.The Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously during a hearing in Montgomery to issue the pardons to Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems and Andy Wright, all of whom were repeatedly convicted of the rapes in the 1930s.“The Scottsboro Boys have finally received justice,” Gov. Robert J. Bentley said in a statement.Thursday’s vote brought to an end to a case that yielded two landmark Supreme Court opinions — one about theinclusion of blacks on juries?and another about the need foradequate legal representation?at trial — but continued to hang over Alabama as an enduring mark of its tainted past.“It’s certainly something that when people hear it, they automatically associate it with the state in a negative manner,” said John Miller, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama who helped to prepare the pardon petition. “Alabama has worked as hard as anybody has to make sure that, to the extent that we can amend a legacy that is not flattering, we are trying to do the right things now.”Others applauded the pardons but said they wanted to see the state consider the lessons of the flawed prosecutions in an era when Alabama has the nation’s third-highest incarceration rate.“I’d like to see my state do more proactive things and get to a point where we don’t have to be correcting mistakes,” said?Fred Gray, a civil rights lawyer who represented Rosa Parks in the 1950s and submitted an affidavit endorsing the pardon petition. “We should set up a procedure to prevent it from occurring in the first place, and we just haven’t really done that.”The men were among the group of nine teenagers who were first tried in April 1931 after a fight between blacks and whites aboard a train passing through Jackson County, in Alabama’s northeastern corner, led to allegations of sexual assault. Within weeks of the reported rapes, an Alabama judge had sentenced eight of them to death following their convictions by all-white juries. The trial of the youngest defendant, Roy Wright, ended in a hung jury amid a dispute about whether he should be executed, and he was never retried.The United States Supreme Court intervened the following year, setting off a long stretch of additional appeals and trials, including one in 1933 where Ruby Bates, one of the accusers, recanted her story.Prosecutors dropped the rape charges against five of the men in July 1937, but four others — including those pardoned on Thursday — were convicted again and initially sentenced to death or decades in prison.State officials ultimately agreed to release three of them on parole, including Clarence Norris, who was pardoned by Gov. George Wallace in 1976. Mr. Patterson escaped from prison and fled to Michigan.The legal wrangling became a cultural mainstay, the subject of books, songs,?television documentaries?and even a?Broadway production.But Sheila Washington’s interest in the Scottsboro Boys was born of a less prominent moment: She came across a copy of?Mr. Patterson’s memoir?in a bedroom when she was 17 years old and vowed to help the men get justice. She later founded the?Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center?and, in 2009, began a campaign to seek pardons for the men, with the backing of researchers and lawyers throughout the state.“I think we all realized that the convictions had been a terrible injustice,” said Judge Steven Haddock, who became a supporter.But Ms. Washington quickly learned that while Alabama officials were willing to consider pardons, they lacked the legal mechanism to grant them posthumously.Ms. Washington’s efforts led her to State Senator Arthur Orr, a white lawmaker from Decatur, a city about an hour from Scottsboro. He and other legislators agreed to sponsora measure, unanimously approved this year, that created a process by which the Alabama authorities could issue pardons in select felony cases “to remedy social injustice associated with racial discrimination.”On Thursday, Mr. Orr said that the legislation and the hearing it prompted had amounted to a moment of catharsis for Alabama.“Today is a reminder that it is never too late to right a wrong. We cannot go back in time and change the course of history, but we can change how we respond to history,” Mr. Orr said. “The passage of time and doing nothing is no excuse. This hearing marks a significant milestone for these young men, their families and for our great state by officially recognizing and correcting a tremendous wrong.”IN THEIR OWN WORDSCCSS Reading Information Text R 9.7: Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediumsObjective: Students will read, annotate, and analyze the quotes from the trial, poem, and song and explain their significance. This will be demonstrated as students complete the “In Their Own Words” Chart, where they identify who said the quote, explain how it connects to the trial, and explain the overall implication the quote had on the case by connecting it back to events in the timeline. It will also be demonstrated as students annotate the poem and song lyrics and make connections between the literature and the court case. Court Cast QuotesVictoria Price on the witness stand"There were six to me and three to her....It took three of them to hold me.? One was holding my legs and the other had a knife to my throat while the other one ravished me."? --Victoria Price (Carter, 58)"When I put this in you and pull it out you will have a negro baby."? --Victoria Price quoting her alleged attacker (Alabama v Patterson, Record)"I? was scared before, but it wasn't nothing to how I felt now.? I knew if a white woman accused a black man of rape, he was as good as dead."? --Clarence Norris? (Goodman, 5)"The courtroom was one big smiling white face."?? --Haywood Patterson (Goodman, 6)"I saw all of them have intercourse; I saw all that with my own eyes."? --Scottsboro boy Roy Wright, age 13, testifying in the first trial"I was sitting in a chair and one of those girls was testifying.? One of the deputy sheriffs leaned over to me and asked if I was going to turn state's evidence, and I said no, because I didn't know anything about this case.? Then the trial stopped awile and the deputy sheriff beckoned to me to come out into another room-- the room back of the place where the judge was sitting-- and I went.? They whipped me and it seemed like they were going to kill me.? All the time they kept saying, "Now will you tell?" and finally it seemed to me like I couldn't stand it no more and I said yes."??? --Roy Wright? (NY Times, 3/10/33)"I am speaking with feeling, and I know it, because I am feeling it. I absolutely have no patience with the mob spirit, and that spirit that would charge the guilt or innocense of any being without knowing of their guilt or innocense."? --Judge James Horton addressing court after hearing reports of plans for a lynching? (Alabama v Patterson, Record, 3/31/33)"Now the question in this case is this: Is justice in the case going to be bought and sold in Alabama with Jew money from New York?"? --Prosecutor Wade Wright addressing the jury in Alabama v Patterson (NY Times, 4/8/33)"You are not trying lawyers.? You are not trying state lines." -- Judge Horton addressing the jury (NY Times, 4/9/33)"The whole damnable thing was a frame-up of two irresponsible women."? --Samuel Leibowitz addressing the jury (NY Times, 4/9/33)"If you ever saw those creatures, those bigots whose mouths are slits in their faces, whose eyes popped out?at you like frogs, whose chins dripped tobacco juice, bewhiskered and filthy, you would not ask how they could do it." -- Defense Attoney Samuel Leibowitz commenting on the jury verdict in Alabama v Patterson (NY Times, 4/11/33)"The testimony of the prosecutrix in this case is not only uncorroborated, but it also bears on its face indications of improbability and is contradicted by other evidence, and in addition thereto the evidence greatly preponderates in favor of the defendant.? It therefore becomes the duty of the Court under the law to grant the motion made in this case."? --Judge Horton granting the defense motion to set aside the death sentence and verdict in Alabama v Patterson? (Record, 6/22/33)"There shouldn't be any trial for them damn niggers-- thirty cents worth of rope would do the work and it wouldn't cost the county much." --Decatur lunchroom proprietor (Goodman, 211)"We all have a passion, all the men in this courtroom, and that is to protect the womanhood of the state of Alabama." -- Prosecutor Knight addressing the jury in the third Patterson trial, Nov. 30, 1933"He couldn't get us to the chair fast enough." -- Haywood Patterson commenting on Judge Callahan (NY Times, 1/22/36)"Do not quibble over the evidence: Say to yourselves we're tired of this job and put it behind you.? Get it done quick and protect the fair womanhood of this state."-- Prosecutor Hutson addressing the jury in the fourth Patterson trial? (NY Times, 1/23/36)Scottsboro8 BLACK BOYS IN A SOUTHERN JAILWORLD, TURN PALE!8 black boys and one white lie.Is it much to die?Is it much to die when immortal feetMarch with you down Time's street,When beyond steel bars sound the deathless drumsLike a mighty heart-beat as they come?Who comes?Christ,Who fought aloneJohn Broan.That mad mobThat tore the Bastile downStone by stone.Moses.Jeanne d'Arc.Dessalines.Nat Turner.Fighters for the free.Lenin with the flag blood red.(Not dead! Not dead!None of those is dead.)Gandhi.Sandino.Evangelista, too.To walk with you --8 BLACK BOYS IN A SOUTHERN JAILWORLD, TURN PALE!Primary Sources: Langston Hughes on Scottsboro?Langston Hughes was one of the most important literary voices to emerge from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. His prolific output included poetry, novels, short stories, and plays. Hughes' work frequently focused on the lives and experiences of his fellow African Americans; at age thirty, he penned a volume inspired by the Scottsboro case.JusticeThat Justice is a blind goddessIs a thing to which we black are wise.Her bandage hides two festering soresThat once perhaps were eyes.The Town of ScottsboroScottsboro's just a little place:No shame is write across its face --Its courts too weak to stand against a mob,Its people's heart, too small to hold a sob.Christ in AlabamaChrist is a Nigger,Beaten and black --O, bare your back...Most holy bastardOf the bleeding mouth:Nigger ChristOn the cross of the South.“Strange Fruit” Song LyricsPerformed by Billie HolidaySongwriters: FROST,DAMON/PHIRI,AARON /Southern trees bear a strange fruit,Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Pastoral scene of the gallant south,The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,Here is a strange and bitter crop.,Circuit Judge ................
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