Page 14 - Provoke Magazine Vol2

THE SCOTTSBORO BOYS CASE
During the height of the Great Depression, America saw one of the greatest miscarriages of justice. The Scottsboro Boys case is just one horrific example out of our history, in which Black Americans faced a legal system and racist soci- ety that were heavily stacked against them. Nine black teen- agers, aged 13 to 20, were accused in Scottsboro, Alabama of raping two White women. The legal cases that followed covered the gambit as far as corrupt legal systems go: lynch mobs, all-White juries, rushed trials and disruptive mobs. Many believe that the Scottsboro Boys’ cases were the cata- lyst for the American Civil Rights Movement soon to come.
Work was scarce during the Great Depression and many Americans turned to being hobos on freight trains to trav- el around in search of employment. One such freight train traveling between Chattanooga and Memphis, Tennessee on March 25, 1931, would forever change the course of nine innocent lives. A group of White teenagers attempted to push Haywood Patterson off the train claiming, “this is a white man’s train,” causing other Black passengers to fight the white teens off the train. When they reported the inci- dent, the local Sheriff deputized a posse comitatus (mobi- lizing able-bodied males to ‘conserve peace’). The mob met the nine black boys in Paint Rock, Alabama. Their names were: Haywood Patterson, Ozie Powell, Charlie Weems, Andy Wright, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright.
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Just as soon as the boys got off the train, two White women, shouted that the boys had raped them. They were arrested and put on trial in Scottsboro, Alabama. The initial trial lasted only one day. A Doctor testified after physical examinations that the Women could not have been raped. The two women even came out and admitted they had lied and were prostitutes trying to protect themselves from laws against crossing state lines with immoral purposes. The jury persisted though and all but one of the boys, a 12-year- old, were convicted to death for rape.