The ‘Scottsboro Boys’ is a reference to one of the most famous series of trials in 1930’s. The story surrounding the Scottsboro cases involves nine young African American boys and their alleged gang rape of two white women: Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. This highly questionable rape accusation would spark unprecedented amounts of trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials. Because of these trials, celebrities were made from anonymities, careers were launched and ended, lives were wasted, heroes were created, and America’s political left was divided.
During the great depression of 1929-1939, hopping on trains to find work, also known as ‘hoboing’ was a common pastime. Around two dozen mainly male young whites and blacks, were riding on a freight train headed from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931 (“Scottsboro Boys”). Among them were four black Chattanooga teenagers hoping to land a job in Memphis, and five other African American teenagers from various parts of Georgia. Four young whites were aboard the train as well, two of them being male, and the other two being female.
The men were returning to Huntsville after unsuccessfully finding work. The two women on the train, were Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, were crossing state lines for prostitution, which was a direct violation of the Mann Act which made it illegal to cross state lines for “immoral purposes” (PBS). Soon after the train crossed the border of Alabama, a white man walked across the top of a train car. He stepped on the hand of a young African American by the name Haywood Patterson, who was hanging on to the side of the car.
Patterson, who was accompanied by eight other African American with ages ranging from thirteen to twenty on the train engaged in a stone-throwing fight with the other young whites and aboard the freight train (Linder). Eventually, the blacks forced all but one of the members of the white men off the train. Patterson pulled the remaining white man, Orville Gilley, back onto the train after it had accelerated to a life-threatening speed.
The whites that were forced off the train went to the stationmaster in Stevenson to report what they described as an assault by a gang of blacks and the stationmaster sent the message ahead to the train stop in Paint Rock Alabama. When the train arrived in at 1:30 PM, a posse of local whites had formed, and were waiting for the African Americans to come off of the train (Congdon, 170). When the train arrived, the armed white locals rounded up every African American that they could find on the train.
The nine young blacks, soon to be known as the “Scottsboro Boys”, were tied up, put on the back of a truck, and taken to a jail located in Scottsboro (“Scottsboro Boys, Trial and Defense Campaign”). The two white women on the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, also greeted the men. One of women, it is not known who, told one of the white men in the posse that they have been brutally raped with both pistols in knives by the nine African American teenagers on the train. When the Scottsboro boys heard of the rape accusation, one of them, Clarence Norris accused the women of lying, as a result he was stabbed with a bayonet (PBS).
A group of several hundred men surrounded the Scottsboro jail the night of the African American teenagers’ arrest in hopes of a mass lynching, since rape in the 1930’s was an executable offense. However, this did not occur because the governor of Alabama at the time, B. M. Miller, sent orders to the National Guard to protect the suspects in the Scottsboro prison until it was time for the nine African American teenagers to be put on trial. (“Scottsboro Boys”).
Trials of the Scottsboro Boys were held twelve days after their arrest in the courtroom of judge A. E. Hawkins. The two attorneys who represented the Scottsboro boys in the trial were Stephen Roddy, and Milo Moody. Both defense attorneys were incompetent and simply unprepared to defend the Scottsboro boys against the rape accusations made upon them. Stephen Roddy was an unpaid and ill-prepared real estate attorney who on the first day of the trial was “so stewed he could barely walk straight” (Linder). Milo Moody on the other hand, was a local seventy-year-old defense attorney who was not only losing his memory, but he also hadn’t tried a case for many years.
The incompetence of the defense attorneys was evident throughout the trial in many instances. For example, both defense attorneys decided that all nine of the defendants will be tried together at the same time, despite the inevitable prejudice that such a trial would cause for the defendants, especially Roy Wright who was thirteen years old and the youngest of all the Scottsboro boys. Moody and Roddy also made a feeble threeminute cross examination on Victoria Price, and didn’t even cross examine doctors R.
R Bridges and John Lynch, who were the doctors that evaluated the two women after they claimed that they have been raped (“Scottsboro Boys, Trial and Defense Campaign”). Roddy and Moody also failed to ask Ruby Bates about contradictions and inconsistencies with her testimony in comparison to the testimony that Victoria Price gave. Another example of the two defense attorney’s incompetence is how they only used the defendants themselves as witnesses. The nine teenage defendants made an inconsistent and incoherent testimony that was filled with obvious contradictory statements.
In the end of the defense, Andy Wright, Willie Roberson, Charles Weems, Ozie Powell, Olen Montgomery, and Eugene Williams all denied that the rape occurred, and claimed that they were not even aware of the two white women aboard the train (PBS). However, the other three Scottsboro boys claimed that a gang rape by the other defendants did occur. The defense ended with Clarence Norris claiming that “They all raped her, every single one of them” (“Scottsboro Boys”). Neither of the defense attorneys made further closing arguments and guilty verdicts were announced at the beginning of the second trial by an allwhite male jury.
A roar of approval from the crowd outside the courthouse was let out and could clearly be heard by the second jury (Linder). After the four trials were completed, all nine of the Scottsboro boys were convicted, eight out of nine were sentenced to death in the electric chair. The youngest of the Scottsboro boys, twelve-year-old Roy Wright, was sentenced to life in prison due to his young age. After the guilty verdicts were announced, many Americans anticipated that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) would come to defend the Scottsboro boys.
However, they did not because a rape conviction was a serious political charge in the south and they were concerned that if any of the Scottsboro boys were in fact guilty, it would damage the NAACP’s reputation and make them a less effective organization (“Scottsboro Boys, Trial and Defense Campaign”). The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) actually rushed to make the Scottsboro case their own because they saw it as an opportunity to recruit both northern liberals, and southern African Americans.
The International Labor Defense was the Communist Party’s legal arm and claimed that the case of the Scottsboro boys was a “Murderous Frame-up” (Linder). In the meantime, the NAACP came to the slow realization that the Scottsboro boys were actually innocent, and they made attempts to compete with the Communist party to make the case their own, however, they were too late because the CPUSA had claimed the case and the mothers of Haywood Patterson and Ozie Powell had placed their trust in them to bring freedom to the Scottsboro boys.
The Communist party brought the Scottsboro Case to the attention of the Supreme Court in the supreme court case Powell v. Alabama. The issues being discussed in this case was whether the Scottsboro defendants were provided with adequate legal counsel in the initial trial and whether or not the defendants’ fourteenth amendment of right to due process was being violated.
The Supreme Court made their decision on November 7th, 1932 in a 7-2 vote that the trial courts denied the Scottsboro defendants due process because they were not given reasonable time and opportunity to secure counsel in their defense (“Powell v. Alabama”). The supreme court ordered that the Scottsboro defendants would have to be afforded new trials. The supreme court case of Powell v Alabama case was a landmark case in the sense that it was an early example of constitutional protection in the field of criminal justice (Congdon, 172).
