The Scottsboro Trials Essay

On March 25 1931 a group of nine boys were charged with raping two girls aboard a train traveling from Paint Rock Alabama across the state’s border. The trial of these boys had become collectively known as the Scottsboro case. Several years later Harper Lee wrote her famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird. In this story a young male Tom Robinson is charged with raping a white female. It is by understanding the parallel between Tom Robinson’s case in To Kill a Mockingbird and the Scottsboro case that can be understood that a fair trial was unlikely and that because of Tom Robinson’s race he was presumed guilty before his trial.

On March 25 1931 a group of nine boys were charged with raping two girls on a train traveling from Paint Rock Alabama. Several years later Harper Lee wrote her famous novel How To Kill a Mockingbird. In her story she made a character named Tom Robinson that was charged and accused of raping Mayella Ewell, it is an understanding parallel comparison between Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro case. Both Tom Robinson and the nine other boys race was presumed guilty before their trial. Harper Lee was convinced to making How To Kill a Mockingbird because she was a kid when the Scottsboro trial was happening and made comparison to the nine black boys to Tom Robinson, than Mayella Ewell to Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.

Jessie Kindig the contributor of Scottsboro Boys, Trial and Defense Campaign (1931 - 1937). The suggest blackpast.org to people because the information is correct they've cited their sources. If you would like to support blackpast.org you can shop on Amazon.com/blackpast. They are supported by an grant from Humanities Washington, a statewide non-profit organization. There also supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the state of Washington, and contributions from individuals and foundations.

The boys of the Scottsboro trials were never treated fairly from the beginning. The whole journey was filled with misconception. The journey began on the freight train, there was nine African Americans on a train car and with them, was a group of Caucasian men. It all started with one of the white males stepping on the hand of one of the blacks. Not too long after, the white males threatened the nine boys to leave the train car (Doc). After the nine black males refused their threat, a fight broke out between all of them. All of the members of the white group were thrown off the train, all, but one. The one that was left on the train went and reported the fight to the train conductor.

The scottsboro boys were a group of young black boys on a train. Then they got into a fight with a couple white boys on the train and threw them off . Next two young white woman that were also riding the train said they raped them and sent the boys were sent to court. The central ideas of justice develop throughout the book by when the boys are first put on trial to when the boys are released or died.

During the early nineteen hundreds many people especially in the south were often convicted of crimes for no other reason than their skin color and contrary to many ideas about our court system, we have not always been the most honest and unbiased people. One prime example of this is the case of the Scottsboro Boys and how they were accused of rape and had to go to court numerous times, almost everytime ending in the death sentence. The evidence in the case clearly points towards the innocence of the Scottsboro boys, evidence such as unclear stories from the girls, lack of bruises and marks indicating assault as well as a previous history of prostitution from both of the girls. This evidence helps to prove that Charles Weems and the Scottsboro boys were innocent and wrongly accused and convicted.

Throughout history, it can be seen that the influence of fear far surpasses that of reason in controlling the actions of people, leading to destructive outcomes. In the Scottsboro Boys interracial rape case in Alabama in 1931, several Black teenagers were deemed guilty in every trial, even though during a retrial one of the two white victims admitting to fabricating the rape story. Additionally, in the 1948 case of the “Scottsboro Boys of the North” or the Trenton 6, a jury convicted six Black men who did not even match eyewitness descriptions, sentencing them to death. Such unreasonable decisions were made due to the widespread Jim Crow laws in that era and in fear that society would change in the already unsure future, since it was

The Scottsboro boys were African American teenager that was 'falsely' accused of rape in Alabama in 1931. March 25th, 1931, a lot of people was hoboing on a freight train traveling between Chattanooga in Memphis, Tennessee. A fight began between the Caucasian and African American groups near Lookout Mountain tunnel. Several Caucasian teenagers jumped off the train and reported to the sheriff's that they had been attacked by a group of African American teenagers. At Paint Rock Alabama, the sheriff's stopped and searched the train, arresting the African American teenagers for assault. They also found two young Caucasian women who had accused the teens of rape. A doctor was called and soon examined the women for evidence of rape and for samples of semen. The nine African American teens ranging from ages 13-19 were charged with assault and rape.

According to American history, prejudice is shown through the courtroom’s jury when making decisions to send the alleged African Americans to jail. On March 24, 1931, nine African American lives were jeopardized with the false accusations of rape that further scrutinizes the nation’s controversial look upon justice. Referring to Abigail Thernson and Henry Fetter when talking about The Scottsboro Trials it states, “Represented by unprepared out of date counsel who had no more than a half an hour consult

There are many similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson in the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. “No crime in American history—let alone a crime that never occurred—produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as did an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Southern railroad freight run on March 25, 1931” (Linder 1). The author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, was a young girl during the Scottsboro trial and based the trial of Tom Robinson in her novel off of the Scottsboro trial of 1931. The three main similarities between the Scottsboro trial and the trial of Tom Robinson are the geographic settings, the portrayal of racism, and the specifics of the court

The United States thought their worries on major issues of injustice and racial inequality were stories of the past, yet it never resolved and is present today. One of the most well-known, boy group to face racial injustice and tragedy was The Scottsboro Boys “who were falsely accused of rape by two white women in 1931” (The Mercury News). After more than 80 years, they were officially pardoned in April 2013. In which, “it was long overdue” (The Mercury News) and unfortunate since all of the boys died prior to the pardon. However, with Alabama trying to “repair its own legacy, and correct past injustices,” it is attempting to move forward as a state. In addition, a similar problem of racial injustice, in New York, is the stop-and-frisks law

Victims, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, displayed no signs of gang rape, including bruises, emotional distress, or open wounds. The nine boys were arrested and tried twelve days after the allegation. Because they could not be tried individually nor all together, groups of two and three from the nine were tried at a time. Six out of the nine boys claimed the event of rape never took place while the other three hesitantly agreed that the event took place due to the threats they had received (Linder). Consisting of four trials, the lawsuit resulted in the conviction and death sentences of seven of the boys. Roy Wright and Eugene Williams, the youngest of the convicted boys—at the ages of twelve and thirteen, respectively—were not given death sentences due to their young age and inability to be tried as adults. Months after the conviction, alleged victim Victoria Price admitted to fabricating the dispute to cover her violation of the Mann Act (Linder): a law that prohibits the interstate transportation for the purpose of prostitution (PBS). The Scottsboro Boys’ lawsuit draws similarities to the litigation Atticus defends in the novel. An all-white jury judged each of the four litigations belonging to the case, resulting in an indisputable bias among them all. Bias of an all-white jury parallels to the Robinson v. Ewell dispute due to the faulty conviction of an innocent, African American man. The presence of the all-white jury led to a bias in the results and continued to exist throughout the 1950s and 1960s as all-white juries remained in effect for crimes with African American

This trial did not just impact the life of the boys it impacted the life of others, after this trial they looked at how they did all these cases. As the time went on there became more and more fair trails, less biased jury and judges. But it does still exist, racism in court many years later. But the trial from Scottsboro, Alabama with Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Charles Weems, Eugene Williams, Andy Wright, and Roy Wright all falsely accused of raping Ruby Bates and Victoria Price was a prodigious part of the way they treated trails against African

There were several trials held throughout the case of the Scottsboro Boys. Most of them were unfair and obviously conducted with the odds stacked against the boys. The testimonies given by the two girls often did not match up. Victoria Price spent the most time on the stand, and on the rare occasion that Ruby Bates testified, most of what she said was disregarded because it contradicted or changed Price’s story. It was concluded that anything Bates said was no good because she was dimwitted and could not keep her story straight.

The Scottsboro Boys case that occurred in the 1930s, generated local, national, and international interest in the treatment of African Americans in the American south. Never had a crime produced so many trials and convictions as the Scottsboro Boys case in all of American history. The cases created celebrities out of anonymities and wasted innocent young lives. On one fateful day in April 1931, 9 African American boys, ages 12-19, were riding a freight train from Chattanooga to Memphis. A series of events occurred, resulting in a group of white males being forced off the train. They immediately went to the county sheriff who then formulated a posse comitatus to search the train and arrest the African Americans. Upon arriving in Paint Rock, Alabama the boys were surrounded and arrested for assault of the white males, however when two white females walked off of the train, they accused the nine boys of rape. The boys were quickly whisked away to be verbally abused in front of an all-white jury. Little did the boys know that the next six years of their lives would be wasted in isolation. This controversial circumstance of the 1930’s brought many social and legal issues to light. It showed the barbarous treatment of African Americans. While the Scottsboro Boys were seen as a threat to the Alabaman white culture, racial tensions in 1930’s Alabama affected them, due to the fact that the plaintiff were white females, there was a lack of evidence against the Scottsboro Boys yet