Scottsboro cases
The Scottsboro cases refer to a series of legal proceedings that began in 1931 involving nine African American men, known as the "Scottsboro boys," who were accused of raping two white women in Alabama. The arrests occurred on March 25, following an altercation on a freight train. Despite the defendants' claims of innocence and inadequate legal representation, they were quickly convicted by all-white juries and sentenced to death. The cases garnered national attention and prompted involvement from civil rights organizations, particularly the NAACP and the American Communist Party, who sought to appeal the convictions.
The U.S. Supreme Court intervened, ruling in Powell v. Alabama (1932) that the defendants had been denied their right to adequate legal counsel, leading to new trials. Subsequent trials continued to reveal systemic injustices, including racial bias in jury selection. Over the years, several of the defendants faced multiple trials and harsh sentencing, with some ultimately being released, while others, like Haywood Patterson, spent over a decade in prison for a crime they did not commit. The Scottsboro cases highlighted significant racial inequalities in the American legal system and led to landmark decisions that reinforced the rights to effective legal counsel and fair trial procedures.
Scottsboro cases
The Event: Celebrated cases arising from the arrest, on false charges of rape, of nine young African American men who were subsequently convicted by all-white juries and subjected to years of incarceration
Date: March 25, 1931-July, 1937
Place: Alabama
Significance: The Scottsboro cases showed the racist nature of justice in the American South and led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s establishment of new rules concerning lawyers and juries.
On March 25, 1931, Alabama authorities arrested nine young black men, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Charlie Weems, Eugene Williams, Andrew Wright, and Leroy Wright, and charged them with raping two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price. The alleged rape took place on top of a boxcar on a freight train moving rapidly through Jackson County in northeastern Alabama. The “Scottsboro boys,” as the nine African Americans were called, denied having seen the girls on the train, but within five days an all-white grand jury indicted them for rape, and a week later, April 6, the first defendants were brought to trial before an all-white jury.
The Initial Trials
After two days of testimony, largely from Price and Bates, the jury found Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems guilty of rape and sentenced them to death. The court-appointed defense attorney, who appeared to be quite drunk during the proceedings, did not bother to cross-examine witnesses and asked few questions of anyone. The next day, another all-white jury convicted Haywood Patterson on the basis of the same testimony and sentenced him to death. He had the same inept lawyer as did the first two defendants.
On April 8 and 9, four more of the accused, including fifteen-year-old Eugene Williams, sat in the Scottsboro courthouse and heard similar evidence and the same verdict: death by the electric chair. The final trial took place on the afternoon of April 9 but ended in a mistrial for the thirteen-year-old Leroy Wright. Several members of the jury rejected the prosecution’s demand for a life sentence for the youngest of the accused, wanting Leroy to die instead. After the mistrial he was released and not retried. In short, in three days of legal proceedings, eight of the nine defendants were sentenced to death after quick trials before all-white juries and with inadequate legal representation.
The Appeals
The convictions made newspaper headlines across the country and caught the attention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The group quickly sent a team of lawyers to Alabama to appeal the verdicts in state and federal courts. The American Communist Party also dispatched a prominent lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, to Scottsboro (it hoped to use the case to build its membership in the African American community). The NAACP and the Communist Party fought for months over who would have chief responsibility for the appeals. Finally, Leibowitz took full charge of the case. The Alabama Supreme Court denied the appeals of all the convicted men except Eugene Williams. The court ordered his release because he was a juvenile at the time of his conviction. The appeal to the federal courts had much greater success, however, and in November, 1932, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered new trials for all seven of the “boys” now sitting on death row. The Court ruled in this case, Powell v. Alabama (1932), that none of the defendants had been provided with an adequate lawyer, so they had been denied their right to due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Second Series of Trials
During a second series of trials in March, 1933, in Decatur, Alabama, a safer distance from the scene of the alleged crime, but also before all-white juries, Haywood Patterson and Clarence Norris were found guilty again and sentenced to death. This happened even though one of the supposed victims, Ruby Bates, reversed her earlier testimony and denied that any rape had taken place. The trial judge, however, in an unusual move, set aside the conviction of Patterson and ordered a third trial for him. At that new trial in December, the jury heard from Price one more time but not from Bates, who by this time was attending Communist Party rallies in the North calling for the immediate release of the Scottsboro boys. The third all-white jury convicted Patterson a third time and ordered his execution. A few days later, at Norris’s second trial, he also was sentenced to the electric chair. Testimony from a farmer who claimed to have witnessed the event from his hayloft about a quarter of a mile away from the fast-moving train helped make the state’s case.
In the new round of appeals the Alabama supreme court upheld the new convictions, and the prisoners remained on death row. They continued to be abused by vicious guards and wardens. In 1935 the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in once more and reversed the convictions of Norris and Patterson. The Court held in Norris v. Alabama (1935) that neither defendant had received a fair trial because of a “long-continued, unvarying and wholesale exclusion of Negroes from jury service” on the part of the state of Alabama. A short time later, the first black man in the state’s history was placed on the Jackson County grand jury, and the defendants were quickly reindicted.
In January, 1936, Haywood Patterson stood trial for a fourth time. The same witnesses presented the same testimony, but this time the jury recommended a seventy-five-year sentence rather than electrocution, and Patterson was returned to the state prison. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld this conviction, and the U.S. Supreme Court this time found no reason for reversal. In July, 1937, Clarence Norris was tried for a third time, convicted, and sentenced to death. Andy Wright and Charlie Weems got ninety-nine years and seventy-five years respectively. In a major surprise, the state dropped all charges against Eugene Williams, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, and Roy Wright. After six years on death row, they were released.
Aftermath
A year later, Alabama governor Bibb Graves reduced Norris’s death sentence to life imprisonment but denied pardons to the remaining Scottsboro defendants despite promises he had previously made to lawyers for the NAACP. Not until 1943 did a new governor release Charlie Weems, followed the next year by Norris and Andrew Wright. Both men immediately violated their paroles by leaving the state. Norris was hunted down and returned to prison in 1944. Two years later he got a second parole; Ozie Powell was also released. Andy Wright was returned by Georgia authorities and sent back to prison. In 1948, Haywood Patterson escaped from Kilby State Prison and headed to Detroit. The FBI tracked him down as a parole violator, but Michigan governor G. Mennen Williams refused to extradite him to Alabama. Patterson died four years later after spending more than seventeen years in prison for a crime he never committed. The last surviving “Scottsboro boy,” Clarence Norris, received a pardon from Alabama governor George Wallace in October, 1976. Norris died in quiet obscurity in 1989.
The Scottsboro cases demonstrated the great biases and inequalities in American law, especially for African Americans in the South. Nine defendants suffered greatly because of biased juries, inadequate lawyers, and the disregard for the basic constitutional rights of black Americans. Still, the U.S. Supreme Court made two key decisions in the cases that helped affirm these basic rights in the future. Powell v. Alabama and Norris v. Alabama established the right to effective council in death-penalty cases and the guarantee of an unbiased jury.
Bibliography
Carter, Dan T. Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South. Rev. ed. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.
Goodman, James E. Stories of Scottsboro. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.
Horne, Gerald. “Powell v. Alabama”: The Scottsboro Boys and American Justice. New York: Franklin Watts, 1997.
Miller, Loren. The Petitioners: The Story of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Negro. New York: Pantheon Books, 1966.
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Guide to the Papers of the NAACP, Part 6: The Scottsboro Case, 1931-1950. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1986.
Record, Wilson. Race and Radicalism: The NAACP and the Communist Party in Conflict. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1964.