Scottsboro case

Scottsboro case, major U.S. civil rights controversy of the 1930s surrounding the prosecution in Scottsboro, Alabama, of nine Black youths falsely accused of raping two white women. The nine, after nearly being lynched, were brought to trial in Scottsboro in April 1931, just three weeks after their arrests. All were originally convicted, but after years of legal wranglings, five convictions were overturned and the other four defendants received pardons. The case gained national attention and was part of the inspiration for Harper Lee’s seminal novel, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Wrongfully accused: Read about other times when we got it all wrong

On March 25, 1931, a group of migrant workers were riding a freight train in the South. At some point a fight erupted, and the Black riders forced the white travelers off the train. The ejected riders then claimed that they had been attacked by the African Americans. At Paint Rock, Alabama, the train was greeted by an angry mob, and police arrested the nine Black riders. Two of the female white riders then claimed that they had been raped.

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Five stories of the wrongfully accused: The Scottsboro Boys

Three trials were held and lasted just days. Despite testimony by doctors who had examined the women that no rape had occurred, the all-white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old, were sentenced to death. The announcement of the verdict and sentences brought a storm of charges from outside the South that a gross miscarriage of justice had occurred in Scottsboro. The cause of the “Scottsboro Boys” was championed, and in some cases exploited, by Northern liberal and radical groups, notably the Communist Party of the U.S.A.

In 1932 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the convictions (Powell v. Alabama) on the grounds that the defendants had not received adequate legal counsel in a capital case. Notably, not until the first day of the trial were the defendants provided with the services of two volunteer lawyers, one of whom was a real estate attorney. The state of Alabama then retried Clarence Norris, one of the accused, and again convicted him. Two 1935 Supreme Court decisions – Norris v. Alabama and Patterson v. Alabama – provided groundbreaking rulings that said intentionally excluding Black jurors resulted in unfair trials.

Alabama again tried and convicted another of the group, Haywood Patterson, this time sentencing him to 75 years in prison. Further trials of the rest of the defendants resulted in more reconvictions and successful appeals until, after persistent pressure from citizens’ groups, the state freed the four youngest (who had already served six years in jail) and later paroled Charles Weems, Andy Wright, and Clarence Norris. Patterson, however, had escaped in 1948 and fled to Michigan, where, three years later, he was convicted of manslaughter in the stabbing death of a Black man. He died in prison.

The last known surviving member of the group, Norris, who moved to the North after his parole in 1946, was granted a full pardon by the governor of Alabama in 1976. Patterson, Weems, and Wright were pardoned by the state in 2013. Before all was said and done, the nine “Scottsboro Boys” spent more than 100 years in prison for a crime there was never clear evidence that they committed.

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