Almost 80 years ago, a fight broke out between whites and blacks who were riding a freight train that ran from Chattanooga to Memphis, crossing through Alabama. That fight resulted in years of criminal trials and appeals which ignited the civil rights movement of the 20th century, led to Supreme Court decisions which elucidated for the first time the constitutional requirements of competent counsel in criminal litigation and representation of minorities in jury pools, explained why so many liberals of the early and mid-century supported the Communist Party, and showcased both the best and the worst of American jurisprudence. No other case has had such an impact on both national recognition of racism and judicial recognition of the connection between Constitutional protections and fair outcomes of criminal litigation. The fate of nine poor, illiterate, uneducated children ultimately changed the way this nation perceived the relationship between white and black people, and the way that relationship played out in criminal courts.
This is the story of the Scottsboro boys.
On March 25, 1931, nine African-American youths were riding a freight train headed for Memphis, Tennessee. They ranged in age from the 12-year-old Roy Wright to the 19-year-old Clarence Norris, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright. Several white men were on the train as well. There were also two women from Huntsville, Alabama - Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. A fight broke out between the black kids and the white ones which ended with most of the white men being forced off of the train. These men reported to the stationmaster that they had been assaulted by a gang of African-Americans. The stationmaster had the train stopped in Scottsboro, and an armed posse arrested all of the black men that they could find.
Victoria Price and Ruby Bates tried to run from the posse, but were caught. When asked whether any of the black men had bothered them, Ruby claimed that the men had raped them both.
A lynch mob soon gathered outside of the jail in which the men from the train were held. The mob cut the wires to the headlights of the police cars, and then demanded that the sheriff turn over the prisoners. Ultimately, the National Guard had to be called in to protect the accused from the enraged citizenry.
That citizenry did not have to wait long for justice, however. The Scottsboro boys were tried for rape 12 days after their arrest. They were represented by a drunk real estate attorney and a senile 70-year-old attorney who had not tried a case in decades. Outside the courthouse were crowds of up to 10,000 angry white people. The defendants were tried in four trials, in all of which virtually no cross-examination was conducted and no defense closing argument was given. The white juries convicted all of the defendants and sentenced all but one to death (11 of the 12 jurors voted for death for 12-year-old Roy Wright, so his trial ended in a mistrial; the jury had no problem giving a death sentence to 13-year-old Eugene Williams.)
The case gained national attention during the trials. It was not, surprisingly, the NAACP that came to the rescue. Instead, it was the American Communist Party, which labelled the trial a "murderous frameup." By the time the NAACP sent celebrated lawyer Clarence Darrow to Alabama in an effort to take over the men's defense, the Scottsboro defendants had already accepted assistance from the International Labor Defense, the Communist Party's legal arm. The ILD provided appellate attorneys, and, later, trial attorneys to the Scottsboro boys.
The Scottsboro defendants' cases were reversed by the United States Supreme Court in the landmark decision of Powell v. Alabama. In a precursor to Gideon v. Wainwright (which held that indigent criminal defendants are entitled to counsel at the state's expense), the Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment includes a defendant's right to the effective assistance of counsel. The Court noted that the Scottsboro defendants were illiterate, that they were prevented from contacting family members or attorneys, that their unpaid attorneys first met them on the day of trial and were totally unprepared to defend them, and that thus the defendants were convicted in violation of the Constitution.
The second set of trials took place in Decatur, Alabama, and the defendants had prepared and talented counsel, including the brilliant trial attorney Samuel Leibowitz (who worked on the case without pay or compensation for expenses for four years). The first trial was that of Haywood Patterson, who, despite his vigorous defense, was convicted in five minutes and sentenced to death. However, the trial judge, the courageous James Horton, reversed the jury's decision, based on his belief that Patterson was innocent.
The State was not deterred. It applied pressure to have another judge assigned to the cases. As a result, Patterson was retried, as was codefendant Clarence Norris, in front of a more, shall we say, ideological judge, William Callahan, who saw his job as the "debunking" of the Scottsboro cases. He wanted them off of the front pages, and out of the eyesight of the public. He set three days as the time limit for each trial. Additionally, he bent over backwards to favor the prosecution. He even failed to give the jury a form with which to find the defendants not guilty until the prosecution, fearing a reversal, urged him to. Not surprisingly Patterson and Norris were convicted and sentenced to death. The trials of the other Scottsboro defendants were delayed pending Patterson's and Norris' appeals
Those appeals led to another important Supreme Court decision (after oral arguments by Leibowitz), Norris v. Alabama, in which the Court reversed the convictions on the ground that the absence of African-Americans in the jury pool violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. (No black person had ever been called for jury duty in Jackson County, Alabama in the prior 75 years; the jury commissioner opined that this was because no black person qualified as a juror; the Supreme Court had a problem with this explanation.)
Patterson was tried yet again and convicted yet again. However, the jury sentenced him to life - the first life sentence ever given to a black man convicted of raping a white woman in Alabama. Norris was retried, and again sentenced to death. Defendants Andy Wright and Charlie Weems were tried next, and convicted, but sentenced to 99 and 75 years respectively. The charges against the rest of the Scottsboro boys were dropped.
The remaining Scottsboro prisoners were eventually paroled, except for Patterson, who escaped. Patterson was arrested by the FBI in 1950, but Michigan's governor, G. Mennen Williams, refused to extradite him to Alabama.
It is well known now by all who have reviewed the records that the Scottsboro defendants were innocent, and that there was no rape. Indeed, Ruby Bates ultimately recanted, admitting that the story of rape was a lie. In 1976, George Wallace, then-governor of Alabama, pardoned Clarence Norris, the last of the defendants to still be on Alabama parole. The role that the Scottsboro case has played in history, both legally and socially, has been recognized by the state of Alabama. The suffering of those young men, the courage of such men as Samuel Leibowitz and Judge Horton, and the faith of those who supported them should serve as reminders to us all that progress against the blind prejudices that exist in our society is not easy, is painful, and is often slow, but is possible providing that we are willing to make the necessary sacrifices - just like Samuel Leibowitz, the Communist Party members, Judge Horton, and the Supreme Court were willing to make 80 years ago.