The Scottsboro Trials were a set of trials where nine black boys named Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson, Eugene Williams, Andrew Wright and Leroy Wright were accused of on March 25th, of raping two white women Ruby Bates and Victoria Price. These women were pressured to accuse the nine men. The white men that pressured the women told the conductor to stop at the next town so they could get the police. The police arrested the Scottsboro Boys and they were brought to trial. Eight out of nine of them were sentenced to death. The youngest, Leroy Wright was only twelve so he was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. The American Communist Party, (CP) and the International Labor Defense …show more content…
That is so sick! They acted that way, because they were black. So they sent the case to the United States Supreme Court! They revoked the sentence but it was six years until the last boy was freed.They had spent years in prison! They had beaten the Jim Crow Laws. The Scottsboro Boys were innocent young men. Charlie Weems suffered from severe eye infection. Leroy Wright was not so fortunate. After being in jail he got married, but he was so depressed he shot his wife and then himself. Some of the Scottsboro boys were very much affected by the incident, some were not. Charlie Weems was released in 1943, and moved to Atlanta, starting a laundry business. Clarence Norris wrote a book about the the whole trial, which is available to buy today. Andrew Wright was accused of raping a thirteen-year-old girl in New York, which turned out to be false. Ozie Powell was shot in the head, became mentally challenged. Clarence Norris said that he was never the same again. Olen Montgomery wanted to be a musician, but, it just never happened. He got really drunk, and ended up living in Georgia. Eugene Williams just moved to Saint Louis like the incident never happened. Willie Roberson movded to New York and also tried to forget the whole experience that happened in …show more content…
The defense team against the boys was very biased and contributed sketchy evidence. Court is not something to be messed around with. Taking a lie and bringing it to court is a very daring thing to do. This event took place in Scottsboro, a city located in Alabama, part of the Deep South. If the boys had hopped a train up in the North, none of this would have ever happened. If they even went to court in the North, they probably would have gotten a more fair trial. The trials were very prejudiced like most places in the South. Unfortunately, these boys were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some people look at this at the wrong angle. They say: “The Scottsboro boys were jumping trains, which is illegal.” Did they miss the part where they spent over five years in prison for something they didn’t do? I think that they’ve done their time for jumping
In September 1983, an 11 year old female by the name of Sabrina Buie was found dead in a soybean field in Robeson County. She was beaten very bad, She was also raped and suffocated. As days passed , police got noticed that two teenagers could be a prime suspect for the crime. Their names were Henry Lee McCollum age 19, and Leon Brown, who are 15. They also were step brothers.
Ian Cabarcas Mrs. Teuscher English 10 October 19 2014 Mississippi Trial: 1955 The author, Chris Crowe, wrote a historical fiction novel titled, Mississippi Trial 1955, which took place in Greenwood, MISS. In the story, Hiram Hilburn goes to spend summer vacation with his Grandfather in Greenwood, Mississippi. The main story of the book is the murder of Emmett Till, and the trial that occurs after. Father and son relationships are a huge theme in this book.
Charles Weems was arrested in March 1931 at the age of nineteen, making him the oldest of the Scottsboro Boys. He was convicted of rape first in 1931, then again in a second trial in 1937. In prison, Weems suffered from tuberculosis and was stabbed by a prison guard who had mistaken him for Andy Wright. He was finally released in 1943.
The judge rushed into trial and days later sentenced him to death. Andy Wright was tried next and got sentenced to ninety-nine years ("The Trials of “the Scottsboro Boys."). Charlie Ween was sentenced seventy-five years. Ozie Powell was brought into court, but he had a new prosecutor. This new prosecutor was Thomas Lawson, and he dropped the rape charges from Ozie Powell and the four defendants who had not been tried yet:
The Scottsboro trials was heard of everywhere. Everyone knew about it, so the people of the south couldn't do their version of justice without everyone everywhere getting extremely upset. If it had been up to just the south the nine boys would have been found guilty in the first trial and sentenced to death, but because it was so public they couldn't just sentence them to death. For example one of the trials had to be re done because the nine boys didn't have proper defense. So they brought in a guy from the north named Samuel Leibowitz.
The Scottsboro Trials and To Kill a Mockingbird In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the famous father named Atticus says “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it (Judith 2). This quote is said during a time of intense racism. “Not long after Obama took office, the National Urban League released its 2009 State of Black America report. The findings showed that racial inequities continued in employment, housing, health care, education, criminal justice, and other areas” (Buckley 1). This essay will primarily focus on the criminal justice area of this when discussing the Scottsboro trials and comparing the trials to the famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
The forefathers of the United States built this country on the ideals of freedom and equality for all people. Unfortunately, the fight for equality and freedom did not end with the revolutionary war. The fight has continued throughout the decades. Many of these issues were fought in the courtroom. Auburn University created an online Alabama Encyclopedia, there, the following quote stated, “Scottsboro became an international cause celebre that dramatically encapsulated the American south troubled post reconstruction history of legal and extralegal racial violence, the social and political upheaval of the great depression, and the lingering cultural divide between the north and south.”
There are two different stories of the events leading to the Scottsboro Trials. The true story, through the eyes and thoughts of the accused African-American boys, was that they were riding on a train and they got into a fight with two other white boys. However, two white women stated that the African-American boys raped them (Anderson). The case then went to court. The boys were given unqualified lawyers, and after the jury heard both sides of the story, they came to a decision.
In the early 1890’s the Supreme Court ruled that segregation was legal. This means that blacks and whites used different restaurants, hotels theatres, and hotels. Blacks were considered inferior to white people and got less money from the government. The black schools and hospitals were considerably subpar to the white public places. Jim Crows laws in the South allowed this type of segregation and inequity to occur.
In the book Blood Done Sign My Name Timothy B. Tyson explains a time period where people didn’t accept African-Americans as equal members to society. Tyson explains how inequality effected many African-Americans lives during this time. Tyson grew up in Oxford, North Carolina where he was the son of a Methodist Preacher who believed that everyone was equal. Tyson’s father faced many consequences for believing that everyone was equal, at one of his sermon’s he invited a very well know African American speaker, this raised a lot of questions about what Tim’s fathers beliefs were and if they were acceptable. Tim’s father was a very well respected man from African Americans and whites he made sure to show up to the funeral of Henry Marrow where he was one of the only white people.
Scottsboro Boys- The scottsboro were 9 young black boys. They were falsely accused of raping 2 white woman on board a train near Scottsboro, Alabama 1931. They were convicted and actually facing execution. The case
Bates spoke with the sheriff after she exited the train and accused nine black men of raping her and her friend, Victoria Price. During that time period in the South, an accusation of rape would have almost always led to the death penalty. It was also common for blacks who were accused of rape to be hanged before even going to trial (Aretha 15-16). The trials of the Scottsboro Boys are a key piece of history of the United States legal system because “No crime in
In the 1930s, African American men were believed to have strong sexual desires towards white women so extreme that they couldn’t even control themselves, that whenever they saw white women they would rape them right then and there. The Tragedy of the nine Scottsboro Boys was rumored as “Negros are going to beat up the whites”. When the train got to Jackson County on March 25, 1931, dozens of armed white men rounded up with ropes and weapons in order to beat the nine black youths, and during the time of this chaos, two white women raised their voices, claiming that they had been raped by the nine scottsborro boys. At that time in Alabama, whenever black people saw a group of white men, they feared and knew they were in a lot of trouble due to the fact that Alabama was one of the most aggressive and violent states towards African Americans.
Therefore, if one was colored the trial wouldn’t be in their favor. The trials either would end in the conviction of death or the least likely, time in prison. In the Scottsboro Case and the book To Kill a Mockingbird the victims lived hard lives and were influenced by others. Aside from that the physical evidence was weak as well as the testimonies. The Scottsboro Case was the only crime in American History to produce many trials, convictions, and retrials as the alleged rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on March 25, 1931 (Linder).
Can a crime really be famous if it never occurred? Victoria Price and Ruby Bates filed charges against nine young black men on March 25, 1931 for raping them on a freight train from Chattanooga to Memphis. This trial divided the town. The whole process took over two decades.