Nine black teenagers were accused of raping two white women on a train in 1931 in northern Alabama. They were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in the town of Scottsboro in little more than two weeks. The Scottsboro Boys case rapidly captured public attention and became a lightning rod for fundamental issues of social justice including racial discrimination, class oppression, and legal fairness. Involving years of appeals, the Scottsboro trials resulted in two landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings and were a vortex for the sometimes-competing interests of the American Communist Party, the NAACP, and the young men themselves. The cases resulted in a damning portrayal of southern justice and corresponding social mores in several national and international media outlets, and in a spirited defense of the judicial system and prevailing cultural norms in other news reports, particularly in the South. Here, Acker details the alleged crimes, their legal aftermath, and their immediate and enduring social significance as evidenced in media portrayals and other forms of popular culture. Using extensive media reports, including contemporaneous newspaper accounts and interpretations of the proceedings, as well as the sallies of champions of various organizations and social causes, the author illustrates the role of the media in the cases and the effect the cases had on society at the time. In addition to tracing the history of the cases and their media portrayal, the book explores the legacy of the Scottsboro trials and appeals. It examines several issues relevant to the cases that, even today, have enduring significance to law and popular perceptions of justice, including capital punishment, racial discrimination, innocence, the composition and functioning of trial juries, the quality of legal counsel for indigents, evidentiary issues in rape cases, and media interactions with the courts. More than a true crime tale, this book takes readers through the crime but also illustrates its enduring legacy.

How one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in the United States continues to haunt the nation’s racial psyche In 1931, nine black youths were charged with raping two white women in Scottsboro, Alabama. Despite meager and contradictory evidence, all nine were found guilty and eight of the defendants were sentenced to death—making Scottsboro one of the worst travesties of justice to take place in the post-Reconstruction South. Remembering Scottsboro explores how this case has embedded itself into the fabric of American memory and become a lens for perceptions of race, class, sexual politics, and justice. James Miller draws upon the archives of the Communist International and NAACP, contemporary journalistic accounts, as well as poetry, drama, fiction, and film, to document the impact of Scottsboro on American culture. The book reveals how the Communist Party, NAACP, and media shaped early images of Scottsboro; looks at how the case influenced authors including Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and Harper Lee; shows how politicians and Hollywood filmmakers invoked the case in the ensuing decades; and examines the defiant, sensitive, and savvy correspondence of Haywood Patterson—one of the accused, who fled the Alabama justice system. Miller considers how Scottsboro persists as a point of reference in contemporary American life and suggests that the Civil Rights movement begins much earlier than the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955. Remembering Scottsboro demonstrates how one compelling, provocative, and tragic case still haunts the American racial imagination.

What is the picture of inequality? Is it race, gender, ethnicity, age, or place? Time and time again, our American history gives us the answer to that age-old question. In 1933, attorney Samuel Leibowitz argued that it was disparity in the jury pool and the innocence of nine. Sadly, the horrible malignancy of racism continues to exist and is the primary root of many prejudices and inequalities in our country today. This powerful historical narrative paints an amazing picture of the color line and the incredible bravery of people who took a stand for justice. The author resurrects the voices and the infamous case of the Scottsboro Nine. Their unmasked stories unfold against the backdrop of an economically depressed town, energized with an inferno of bigotry and violence. This groundbreaking research presents the courage of fearless men who rattled Americas conscience by challenging decades of discrimination and injustices within Alabamas legal system. On the other hand, the book reveals the sentiment of those who embraced the Old Souths ideology of inequality and exclusiveness, which put at risk the lives of nine innocent victims, young men who changed Americas judicial system. Fiat justitia rual coelomthis is Latin for Let justice be done though the heavens may fall. These are words that my grandfather, Judge James E. Horton, learned at his mothers knee. It seems he followed those wise words as he set aside the verdict and death sentence and ordered a new trial for Haywood Patterson. Though his decision cost him the next election, there were never any regrets. John Temple Graves, a Birmingham columnist, wrote of him, He does the right thing as he sees it, with no particular sense of the scene about him, but with an enormous sense of right-doing, ancestors gone and example-bound descendants to come. His social conscience is vertical rather than horizontal. We are the beneficiaries of his vertical conscience and I hope we will all strive to live by his example (Kathy Horton Garrett, Judge Hortons granddaughter).

Scottsboro tells the riveting story of one of this country's most famous and controversial court cases and a tragic and revealing chapter in the history of the American South. In 1931, two white girls claimed they were savagely raped by nine young black men aboard a freight train moving across northeastern Alabama. The young men-ranging in age from twelve to nineteen-were quickly tried, and eight were sentenced to death. The age of the defendants, the stunning rapidity of their trials, and the harsh sentences they received sparked waves of protest and attracted national attention during the 1930s. Originally published in 1970,Scottsboro triggered a new interest in the case, sparking two film documentaries, several Hollywood docudramas, two autobiographies, and numerous popular and scholarly articles on the case. In his new introduction, Dan T. Carter looks back more than thirty-five years after he first wrote about the case, asking what we have learned that is new about it and what relevance the story of Scottsboro still has in the twenty-first century.

In 1931, nine black teenagers were arrested in Alabama. The young men were accused of crimes they did not commit, including rape. This unjust arrest led to years of imprisonment and trials for the young men, who were known as the Scottsboro Boys. The Scottsboro Boys examines their legacy and how their trials shaped the criminal justice system. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Core Library is an imprint of Abdo Publishing, a division of ABDO.

This is a collection of letters written by the nine African American defendants in the infamous March 1931 Scottsboro, Alabama, rape case. Though most of the defendants were barely literate and all were teenagers when incarcerated, over the course of almost two decades in prison they learned the rudiments of effective letter writing and in doing so forcefully expressed a wide range of perspectives on the falsity of the charges against them as their incarceration became a cause celebre both in the United States and internationally. Central to this book is the chronologically structured presentation of letters (1931-1950), including some correspondence from attorneys and members of Scottsboro support committees. The original grammar, syntax and vernacular of the defendants are maintained in a desire to preserve the authenticity of these letters.

Red, Black, White is the first narrative history of the American communist movement in the South since Robin D. G. Kelley's groundbreaking Hammer and Hoe and the first to explore its key figures and actions beyond the 1930s. Written from the perspective of the district 17 (CPUSA) Reds who worked primarily in Alabama, it acquaints a new generation with the impact of the Great Depression on postwar black and white, young and old, urban and rural Americans. After the Scottsboro story broke on March 25, 1931, it was open season for old-fashioned lynchings, legal (courtroom) lynchings, and mob murder. In Alabama alone, twenty black men were known to have been murdered, and countless others, women included, were beaten, disabled, jailed, “disappeared,” or had their lives otherwise ruined between March 1931 and September 1935. In this collective biography, Mary Stanton—a noted chronicler of the left and of social justice movements in the South—explores the resources available to Depression-era Reds before the advent of the New Deal or the modern civil rights movement. What emerges from this narrative is a meaningful criterion by which to evaluate the Reds’ accomplishments. Through seven cases of the CPUSA (district 17) activity in the South, Stanton covers tortured notions of loyalty and betrayal, the cult of white southern womanhood, Christianity in all its iterations, and the scapegoating of African Americans, Jews, and communists. Yet this still is a story of how these groups fought back, and fought together, for social justice and change in a fractured region.