Scottsboro Case. The Scottsboro Case, a cause célèbre in modern American race relations, began in April of 1931 with a brawl between whites and blacks riding a freight train through northern Alabama. When Jackson County officials stopped the train near Scottsboro, two white women— Victoria Price and Ruby Bates—accused nine black teenagers of raping them.

A Scottsboro jury quickly convicted eight of the nine boys and sentenced them to death. The U.S. Communist party took up the case, mobilizing mass protests across America and in Europe and mounting an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Powell v. Alabama (1932), the Supreme Court ordered a new trial on the grounds that defendants in capital cases were entitled to more than a pro forma defense. (The two attorneys for the nine youths had been given less than thirty minutes to prepare their case; one was drunk, the other senile).

In a 1933 retrial, Ruby Bates recanted her accusation, and new evidence strongly contradicted Victoria Price. The jury nevertheless convicted. When the presiding judge James Edwin Horton ordered yet another trial, state officials removed him from the case, found a more amenable judge, and pushed through convictions and death sentences for two defendants, Haywood Patterson and Clarence Morris.

In Norris v. Alabama (1934), the Supreme Court ruled that the two defendants had been denied a fair trial because of Alabama's systematic exclusion of African Americans from its jury rolls. In 1937, with the Communist party no longer in the case, the defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz brokered a deal whereby four of the defendants were released and state prosecutors tacitly promised that the others would be paroled once publicity had died down. Not for thirteen years, however, did Alabama release the last of the Scottsboro defendants.
See also New Deal Era, The; Racism; Rape; Segregation, Racial; South, The.

Bibliography

Dan T. Carter , Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, rev. ed., 1979.
James Goodman , Stories of Scottsboro, 1994.

Dan T. Carter

SCOTTSBORO CASE

SCOTTSBORO CASE. On 25 March 1931 nine black teenagers, after having fought with some white youths on a freight train traveling through northern Alabama, were apprehended. Also on the train were two young white women who accused the black youths of rape. Within two weeks the accused were put on trial in Scottsboro, Alabama, and eight of the nine were convicted and sentenced to death for rape. The ninth was sentenced to life imprisonment. From 1931 to 1937, during a series of appeals and new trials, the case grew to an international cause célèbre as the International Labor Defense (ILD) and the Communist Party of the U.S.A. spearheaded efforts to free "the Scottsboro boys." In 1932 the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that the defendants had been denied adequate counsel (Powell v. Alabama), and the following year Alabama judge James Edwin Horton ordered a new trial because of insufficient evidence. In 1935 the Supreme Court again ruled in favor of the defendants by overturning the convictions on the grounds that Alabama had systematically excluded blacks from jury service (Norris v. Alabama).

But white public opinion in Alabama had solidified against the Scottsboro youths and their backers, and each successful appeal was followed by retrial and reconviction. Finally, in 1937, defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz and the nonpartisan Scottsboro Defense Committee arranged a compromise whereby four of the defendants were released and five were given sentences ranging from twenty

years to life. Four of the five defendants serving prison sentences were released on parole from 1943 to 1950. The fifth escaped prison in 1948 and fled to Michigan. In 1966 Judge Horton revealed theretofore confidential information that conclusively proved the innocence of the nine defendants.

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.

Dan T.Carter/c. p.

See alsoAlabama ; Race Relations .

Scottsboro Case In 1931 nine black youths were indicted at Scottsboro, Ala., on charges of having raped two white women in a freight car passing through Alabama. In a series of trials the youths were found guilty and sentenced to death or to prison terms of 75 to 99 years. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed convictions twice on procedural grounds (that the youths' right to counsel had been infringed and that no blacks had served on the grand or trial jury). At the second trial one of the women recanted her previous testimony. The Alabama trial judge set aside the guilty verdict as contrary to the weight of the evidence and ordered a new trial. In 1937 charges against five were dropped and the state agreed to consider parole for the others. Two were paroled in 1944, one in 1951. When the fourth escaped (1948) to Michigan, the state refused to return him to Alabama. In 1976, Alabama pardoned Clarence Norris, who had broken parole and fled the state in 1946. The belief that the case against the "Scottsboro boys" was unproved and that the verdicts were the result of racism caused 1930s liberals and radicals to come to the defense of the youths. The fact that Communists used the case for propaganda further complicated the affair.

Bibliography: See H. Patterson and E. Conrad, Scottsboro Boy (1950, repr. 1969); A. K. Chalmers, They Shall Be Free (1951); D. T. Carter, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South (1969); J. Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (1994).

Scottsboro Case, cause célèbre concerning nine black men charged with the rape of two white girls on a freight train in Alabama. The first trial in Scottsboro, Ala. (1931), resulted in death sentences for eight of the men, and after liberals and radicals came to their aid, charging that the verdict was the result of racial prejudice, the decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared (1932) that the defendants' right to counsel had been infringed. Despite the recantation of one of the girls, one of the men was again sentenced to death, and the case once more came before the Supreme Court, which in 1935 decided that there must be a retrial, since the constitutional rights of the defendants had been violated by the illegal exclusion of blacks from jury service. Four of the defendants were subsequently convicted, receiving sentences equivalent to life imprisonment, and the court, although refusing a retrial for them, dropped the rape charges against the five other defendants. The case has frequently figured in literature, and has been the subject of the plays Scottsboro Limited (1932), by Langston Hughes, and They Shall Not Die (1934), by John Wexley.

Scottsboro Case (USA) In April 1931 nine Black youths were accused by two White girls of multiple rape on a train near Scottsboro, Alabama. They were found guilty and sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment. The sensational case highlighted race relations in Alabama and across the USA. In the initial trial, the two lawyers assigned to defend the nine accused had been given less than an hour to prepare their case, with one of them being drunk. After two interventions by the US Supreme Court and a series of retrials by the state of Alabama, verdicts of not proven were reluctantly accepted by the state, which paroled all the boys. In 1946, fifteen years after their imprisonment, the last of the accused were released from prison.

Scottsboro case (1931) A US legal case in which nine black youths were falsely accused by two white girls of multiple rape on a train near Scottsboro, Alabama. They were found guilty and sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment. The sensational case highlighted race relations in Alabama and across the USA. The intervention of the Supreme Court and a series of retrials returned a verdict of not proven and all the Scottsboro boys were released in the years 1937–50.