THE CHICAGO
A ND THE G ARY
AN AMERICAN LEGAL TRAGEDY
THE 80-YEAR SAGA OF THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS
By Charlene M. Crowell
In 2013, the tragic Trayvon Martin death signaled once again how the American justice system often fails to serve and protect Black males. Even in the 21st Century criminal justice eluded the Martin family with the acquittal of George Zimmerman. Yet the saga of Black males became a series of trials including appeals before the U.S. Supreme Court that attracted worldwide interest. The case of the Scottsboro Boys also illustrates how jus-
tice is an elusive and difficult journey that can take as long as 80 years. From the moment of arrest, all insisted they were innocent. During one of the re-trials, one accuser admit-
ted lying about the crime. Even so, one of the accused nine spent 19 years in Alabama prisons for crimes he and the other eight defendants never committed. During the 1930s, person-
BLACK HISTORY 2014 EDITION
al automobile transportation was even more limited than jobs. And for the Great Depression’s poor, hopping freight trains was a convenient, free and often-used mode of travel. Transients of
all races, often termed ‘hobos’, relied on freight trains to travel and seek available work anywhere. The era’s economic forces that devastated many lives Continued on page 2
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2014
AN AMERICAN LEGAL TRAGEDY
THE 80-YEAR SAGA OF THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS Continued from page 1 did not, however, diminish segregation and Jim Crow practices. That unfortunate truth was vividly depicted in the plight of nine young Black boys who came to be known as the Scottsboro Boys. On March 25, 1931, a southbound Chattanooga, Tennessee freight train, headed for Alabama had one particular boxcar of pas-
“… If you don’t bring them out, we’ll come in and get ‘em,’ That’s all you could hear, all over that little town.” sengers who were mostly unknown to one another. Some were white; most were Black males. When a fight broke out among the male passengers, the Blacks forced the white males off the train. Two remaining whites in the boxcar were coworkers at a Huntsville, Alabama textile mill. In reaction, the white male youths reported the incident to the nearest train stationmaster. In turn, the stationmaster wired the next stop, Scottsboro, requesting that all Blacks on board be arrested. As a result, the train was soon stopped in Paint Rock, Alabama near Scottsboro.
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THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS, nine teenagers who were convicted of raping two white women were given posthumous pardons in November2013. The nine were: Haywood Patterson, Olin Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andrew Wright, Ozie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems and Roy Wright.
THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS, with parents
VICTORIA PRICE was one of two white females – both of whom with questionable moral reputations – who accused the six of the nine Scottsboro Boys of raping her. As the boxcars emptied, All were driven by truck to eleven passengers got out: Scottsboro. two young white women Recalling the incident, and nine Black male youths. Clarence Norris said years
later in an interview, “The iron, everything. The crowd place was surrounded with commenced to hollera mob. They had shotguns, ing’ let’s take these son of a pistols, sticks, pieces an’ Continued on page 3
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SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2014
Continued from page 2 bitches up here and put ‘em to a tree. I just thought I was gonna die… Cars, trucks, they was comin’ in all kinds of ways, the mob was. ‘Bring them niggers outta there. If you don’t bring them out, we’ll come in and get ‘em.’ That’s all you could hear, all over that little town.” Fearing their own arrest by the local sheriff, the two
Patterson. Ozie Powell was the last of the nine charged. On the opening day of the trial, Monday, April 6, 1931, Scottsboro’s county courthouse square was filled with thousands of visitors throughout Alabama as well as from the neighboring states of Tennessee and Georgia. While a brass band played “Dixie,” some 200 national guardsmen
“Organizers believed they needed a striking example of what they called ‘Southern lynch justice’ to rouse Blacks to action. The mass arrests in Scottsboro were just what they were waiting for.” white women — 21-year old Victoria Price and 17-year old Ruby Bates — accused the nine Black boys of rape at knifepoint. At the time of the accusation, authorities had yet learned that both women lived in Huntsville’s Black neighborhood. The two were known to trade sex for food and clothing from men of both races. Additionally, the twice-divorced Price had served time for vagrancy and adultery. The Scottsboro Boys were largely unacquainted with one another. Two were brothers from Chattanooga; Andy Wright, aged 19, was taking his 13-year old brother, Roy, on his first trip away from home. The two oldest were 19 years of age — Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems. The two youngest, only 13 — were Roy Wright and Eugene Williams. Of the remaining five, Willie Robertson suffered from syphilis and as a result was sexually dysfunctional. Nearly blind Olin Montgomery was riding the train in hopes of finding a job that would allow him to get glasses. The only long-time freight rider was 18-year old Haywood
surrounded the courthouse. The accused boys’ parents could not get an Alabama lawyer to represent them. Finally, a real estate attorney from Chattanooga, Stephen Roddy agreed to take the case and charged the parents a $60.00 legal fee, at the time, a sizable fee. But the only pre-trial services provided was a 20-minute meeting only minutes before the start of the trial. Roddy’s advice: plead guilty. When the prosecution’s case began, Victoria Price was the first accuser to testify. She alleged that six of the nine had intercourse with her. According to the court transcript, Price told the court, “There were six to me and three to her. One was holding my legs and the other had a knife to my throat while another ravished me.” When Ruby Bates testified, she could not identify any of the nine. Under oath, however, she did repeat Price’s details of the alleged incident. After three days, the trial’s all-white jury convicted the Scottsboro Boys of rape. With the exception of 13-
year old Roy Wright, the other eight were sentenced to death. In its deliberations, the jury was unable to decide whether Roy should be given life imprisonment or the death penalty. In 1930s Alabama, a death sentence meant the electric chair. Judge Alfred Hawkins ordered the boys taken to Alabama’s Kilby Prison, near Montgomery. Among those attending the Scottsboro trial were two members of the Communist Party. Recalling the group’s political motivation, former Communist Lloyd Brown said in an interview, “Organizers believed they needed a striking example of what they called ‘Southern lynch justice’ to rouse Blacks to action. The mass arrests in Scottsboro were just what they were waiting for.” Three weeks following the 1931 trial, Communists staged a demonstration in New York’s Harlem. In covering the event, The New York Times reported that police officers and nightsticks met the 200 marchers walking down Lenox Avenue. Although Chattanooga’s NAACP branch and the state organization in Alabama prepared and forwarded appeal briefs to the Alabama Supreme Court, the national NAACP did not want to be associated with any Communist activities. The International Labor Defense (ILD), spawned from the Community Party of the USA, eventually won the support of the boys’ parents to lead the legal appeals. That support followed a visit from a Communist organizer to the parents of Haywood Patterson and Ozie Powell’s mother. However, after four years of legal delays and the defendants still in prison, an ad hoc group was formed in December 1935 as the Scottsboro Defense Committee. The progressive co-
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“I made the whole story up because Victoria told me to make it up. If I didn’t make up the story, then we would have to go to jail.”
In the second trial, Ruby Bates admitted under oath that she had lied about the alleged rapes.
alition included the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP, the League for Industrial Democracy and the ILD. Alabama court decisions involving the Scottsboro Boys and upheld by the Alabama Supreme Court were overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 1932’s Powell v. Alabama and 1935’s Norris v. Alabama. In a 7-2 decision, the nation’s highest court held in Powell v. Alabama that the quality of the legal defense violated the boys’ right to due process. As a result, a second trial moved to Decatur, Alabama where the chief judge of the circuit court, Judge James E. Horton would preside. At that trial, 34-year-old Alabama Attorney General Thomas Knight represented the state, while Samuel Leibowitz represented the Scottsboro Boys before another all-white jury. Lebowitz’s motion for the defendants to be tried separately was granted. But as the first trial began, Victoria Price proved how
effective she could be in only 16 minutes. “I hollered for help until they stopped me, until some of them knocked me in the head with the butt-end of a gun. They unfastened my overalls while I was standing up and then they threw me down on the gravel and finished pulling them off my feet. This Negro grabbed me by the legs and pulled them open and then one of them put a knife on my throat, and one got on top of me … He [Patterson] raped me.” On Leibowitz’s cross-examination, Price’s frequent reply was “I don’t remember” or “I don’t know.” Instead of placing doubts in her testimony, the jury and courtroom perceived the questioning as an attack on a Southern woman by a Jewish carpetbagger. The state’s next witness was the physician who examined Price and Bates following their allegations of rape. Dr. R. R. Bridges confirmed he had found semen in both women’s bodies. Yet, his testimony actually strengthened the defense’s Continued on page 4
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80-YEAR SAGA CONTINUES Continued from page 3 arguments. Dr. Bridges admitted he found no bruises or scratches and even more importantly, that the spermatozoa were dead. When the defense presented its case, Leibowitz paraded each defendant one by one before the court and each repeated that he had not touched either woman. Those claims did not surprise the court or the gallery. But gasps of surprise were heard as Ruby Bates testimony declared, “I made the whole story up because Victoria told me to make it up. If I didn’t make up the story, then we would have to go to jail.” Unlike Price, Bates cracked under cross-examination. Attorney General Knight linked Bates with Communist support for her travel expenses to New York as well as her stylish new clothes. During the next day’s closing arguments, Knight’s cocounsel, Wade Wright asked the jury, “Show them that Alabama justice can’t be bought and sold with Jew money from New York!” The all-white, male jury delivered a guilty verdict the next day. In response, Leibowitz asked Judge Horton to overturn the verdict and order a new trial. On June 22, 1933, the Scottsboro Boys originally arrested in 1931 faced a third trial. The State of Alabama forwarded the nownotorious case to 70-yearold Judge William Callahan. In Judge Callahan’s court, Haywood Patterson, then 20 years of age, was the first defendant to be tried again, followed by Clarence Norris, age 21. Following jury verdicts against both, Leibowitz unsuccessfully tried to delay the trials of the other seven.
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All nine were sent back to death row in the state’s Kilby Prison. Back in prison, conditions worsened. Charlie Weems, then also 21, was brutally beaten after guards found him reading Communist literature. After Ozie Powell, another Scottsboro defendant, was accused of slashing a deputy sheriff’s throat with a hand-made knife, another guard shot him in the head. In the meantime, defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz worked on their appeal. In his view, their right to equal protection under the law could not prevail with an all-white jury. In Decatur, Alabama, the jury pool was all white. The only Black names that appeared were hand-written and noticeably added to the bottom of typed pages. In February 1935, the question as to whether Alabama could exclude Blacks from jury service was the crux of the argument before the United States Supreme Court in Norris v. Alabama. The high court again overturned Alabama’s court decisions, finding that the state deliberately practiced racial exclusion of Blacks from its juries. With a second court reversal, even native Alabamians began publicly expressing conciliatory actions. In the state’s capitol newspaper, The Montgomery Advertiser, editor Grover Hall wrote, “Scottsboro has stigmatized Alabama throughout the civilized world. We herewith suggest that the State now move for a decent, dignified compromise. Nothing can be gained by demanding the final pound of flesh. Throw this body of death away from Alabama.” The resulting compromise led to Leibowitz’s departure
from the case and charges dropped against four defendants: the two youngest, Eugene Williams and Roy Wright; the blind defendant, Olin Montgomery, and syphilitic Willie Roberson. The remaining five defendants were convicted again: Haywood Patterson, Clarence Norris, Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell and Andy Wright. After six years in prison, the four who gained their freedom in July 1937 immediately departed Alabama for New York and a reunion with Leibowitz. While in New York, some speaking engagements occurred as well as an entertainment booking at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. A re-enactment of the famous trials included singing and dancing. In reaction, NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall issued a written advisory to the organization’s chapters: No NAACP chapter was to work with a booking agent to secure vaudeville appearances of the cleared youth. Concern still remained for the incarcerated five Scottsboro Boys. By 1941, Alabama’s parole board had refused three times to release them. On the fourth parole attempt, Charlie Weems, arrested at the age of 19 was released at age 31; it was November 1943 and 12 years after the original allegations. Two months later, Andy Wright, was freed and followed by Clarence Norris. Both, originally arrested at age 19, were then 31 and were sent back to prison for leaving the state to seek work. Norris’ final release came in 1946. Also in 1946, Ozie Powell was freed at the age of 33; almost half of his life had been spent behind bars. The ninth Scottsboro Boy,
Haywood Patterson, was transferred from Kilby to Atmore Prison Farm near Tuskegee. There, he worked 12-hour days on a prison chain gang. In July 1948, he gave himself what the Alabama Parole Board would not — his freedom. Escaping with eight other prisoners, he rode yet another freight train. His final destination was Detroit, Michigan where he was reunited with his sister and her family. When Patterson’s whereabouts became known to Alabama corrections officials, Michigan’s Governor G. Mennen Williams refused to extradite him. When Andrew Wright’s 1950-parole release came, he had spent 19 years and two months behind bars for a crime he never committed. In October 1976, Alabama Governor George Wallace officially pardoned Clarence Norris. It was a pardon Norris had sought since 1946. In commenting on the
governor’s actions, Norris said, “I have no hate toward any creed or color. I like all people, and I think all people accused of things which they didn’t commit should be free. I wish those other eight boys were around…” The tragedy of the Scottsboro Boys had a development that was as unlikely as it was late. It took 80 years before the Alabama legislature voted to give posthumous pardons to all of the nine Black youth on April 3, 2013. None of the convicted was alive at the time. The last living Scottsboro Boy died in 1989. But the eight-decade long journey for justice is clear evidence of the unfair burden that Black males have suffered in the nation’s criminal justice system. Charlene Crowell is a freelance journalist based in Durham, NC. She is also a two-time honoree of the National Newspaper Publishers Association.
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