Girls Will Be Girls

Protest for Scottsboro Boys in Washington, D.C. 1933

The Scottsboro Boys were nine black teenagers, Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Andrew and Leroy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson and Eugene Williams, who were falsely accused of raping two white women aboard a train near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. Scottsboro Boys sparked an international uproar and produced two landmark U.S. Supreme Court verdicts, even as the defendants were forced to spend years battling the courts and enduring the harsh conditions of the Alabama prison system. In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, after a fight broke out on a Southern Railroad freight train in Jackson County, Alabama, police arrested nine black youths, ranging in age from 13 to 19, on a minor charge. There were deputies questioned two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, they accused the boys of raping them while onboard the train. An angry white mob surrounded the jail, leading the local sheriff to call in the Alabama National Guard to prevent a lynching. The first set of trials, all-white, all-male jury quickly convicted the Scottsboro Boys and sentenced eight of them to death. As of Leroy Wright, 13-year-old, one juror favored life imprisonment rather than death and imprisoned.

Ruby Bates and Victoria Price Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Andrew and Leroy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson and Eugene Williams