By John Limbaugh
“That justice is a blind goddess is a thing to which we black are wise: Her bandage hides two festering sores that once perhaps were eyes.”
This is one of many quotes that line the walls of the Scottsboro Boys Museum. Housed in what was formerly the Joyce Chapel United Methodist Church, the museum is fittingly located near the railroad station where the story of the Scottsboro Nine (and in part, the story of the Civil Rights Movement) began.
The Scottsboro boys were nine young African American men accused of raping two white women in the 1930s. The 80 year long case of of Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, and Andrew and Leroy Wright sparked international protests, highlighting racial flaws in the American legal system and producing two landmark U.S. Supreme Court verdicts.
The Nine
On March 25, 1931 nine African Americans between the ages of 13 and 20 boarded a Southern Freight train looking for work.
“The country was mired by the great depression around this time. It became a normal occurrence for people to illegally hop aboard freight trains and ride across the country to try and find a job.” Carla Santibenez, a historian and board leader of the museum explained.
While riding in one of the freight cars, a fight broke out between the nine and a group of young white passengers. It’s said the fight started when one of the white passengers stepped on the hand of one of the young black men. The white passengers were forced to exit the train. Enraged, the young men fabricated a story about how the black men were at fault for the incident. By the time the train reached Paint Rock, Alabama, the Scottsboro Boys were met with an angry mob and charged with assault.
At the same time, two women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates emerged from the train. Facing charges of vagrancy and illegal sexual activity, they accused six of the black men of raping them.
Early trials and appeals
The original cases were tried in Scottsboro Alabama. Only four of the young men knew each other prior to the incident on the freight train, but as their case drew regional and national attention they became known as the Scottsboro boys. On April 9, 1931, eight of the nine young men were convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white, all-male jury.
The trial of the youngest, 13 year old Leroy wright ended in a hung jury when one juror suggested life imprisonment rather than death. The court declared a mistrial and imprisoned Wright, where he would remain until 1937 waiting for the final verdict on his co-defendants.
“Justice was skewed from the start because of the Jim Crow Laws.” said Carla Santibenez.
The Jim Crow Laws, enacted after the Civil War, were state and local statutes that legalized segregation.
Between April and December of 1931, two progressive national organizations, shocked by the speediness of the trials and the extreme youth of the defendants, took up the Scottsboro case and called for the County to reject the “Alabama frame-up.”
The Movement
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the International Labor Defense, which was the legal wing for the American Communist party, began to court the defendants and their families for the right to represent the young men in an appeal and to raise money for their defense.
Of the two organizations, the ILD won the right to spearhead the national campaign to help free the nine young men. The campaign included rallies across the country, speeches, parades and demonstrations. letters streamed in from people- communist and non-communist, white and black- protesting the guilty verdicts.
despite the nationwide protests, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions of seven of the defendants. Williams, who was a minor at the time of the convictions, was granted a new trial.
Powell v. Alabama
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Alabama verdicts after ruling that the Scottsboro defendants had been denied their right to counsel, which violated their right to due process under the 14th Amendment.
The second round of trials began in the circuit court in Decatur under Judge James Horton. Ruby Bates, one of the two women who had accused the boys of rape, recanted her testimony and agreed to testify for the defense.
Even with Ruby’s testimony and a medical examination of the two women’s body that refuted the rape charges, the first of the defendants, Patterson was convicted by another all-white jury and recommended the death penalty.
After meeting with one of the medical examiners and reviewing the evidence, Judge Horton suspended the death sentence and granted Patterson a new trial. (This decision would lose him his bid for reelection the following year.)
Norris v. Alabama
In January 1935, the Supreme court overturned the guilty verdicts a second time. The court ruled that the systematic exclusion of blacks on Jackson County jury rolls denied denied the defendants a fair trial. The second landmark decision in the Scottsboro boys case would would help integrate future juries across the nation.
The NAACP and other emerging civil rights organizations joined the ILD that year to form the Scottsboro Defense Committee. Which helped organize the defense effort for the next set of retrials.
In 1936, Patterson was convicted again, but for the first time, he was sentenced to 75 years imprisonment rather than death. The day after Patterson’s sentence, Ozie Powell was shot in the head after attacking a deputy while being transported to Birmingham jail. both men survived.
After extended negotiations with the defense, prosecutors agreed to drop the rape charges against Powell, but he was sentenced to 20 years for assaulting a police officer.
After the Alabama Supreme Court upheld Patterson’s conviction in June, and Norris’s third trial ended in another death sentence, Andy Wright and Weems were both convicted of rape and sentenced to long prison terms as well.
The rape charges against the remaining defendants- Montgomery, Roberson, Williams and Leroy Wright—and all four were released. Alabama governor Bibb Graves commuted Norris’ sentence to life imprisonment.
Alabama official eventually agreed to let four of the convicted Scottsboro boys- Weems, Andy Wright, Norris and Powell- out on parole.
80 years later.
Of the nine convicted, only four would truly gain their freedom during their lifetimes. The last of the Scottsboro boys would not be pardoned until 1976. In July of 1977, Victoria Wright filed a lawsuit against NBC for defamation and invasion of privacy after the broadcast of Judge Horton and the Scottsboro boys; her claim was dismissed.
On January 23, 12 years after being pardoned, Clarence Norris, the last of the Scottsboro boys died.
The trials of the Scottsboro boys and the international uproar their treatment produced helped fuel the rise of the Civil Rights Movement later in the 20th century. The two landmark Supreme Court verdicts that were produced left an imprint on the nation’s legal and cultural landscape.
While the Scottsboro boys museum is open to the public, it remains an obscured and lesser known tourist attraction, often overshadowed by the more prominent landmarks that came about during the height of the Civil Rights era.
Vallo Vision News 