Biography of scottsboro boys

The case of nine young African American men accused of the rape of two white women in the town of Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931, was a milestone in the emergence of a national civil rights movement. It was also an important milestone for the rights of criminal defendants, establishing for the first time that defendants facing the death penalty are constitutionally entitled to appointed counsel if they cannot afford one, and that the right to counsel includes the right to effective representation.

With angry white mobs milling outside a courthouse deep in the Jim Crow South, justice was skewed from day one of the trial. The so-called 'Scottsboro boys' – ranging in age from 12 to 19 – were entitled to an attorney under Alabama lag because the charges carried a death sentence, but none came forward until the morning of trial, which occurred six days after the arraignment. Two attorneys then offered to represent the defendants for the first time – a Tennessee real estate lawyer unfamil

•

Who Were the Scottsboro Boys?

By the early 1930s, with the nation mired in the Great nedstämdhet, many unemployed Americans would try and hitch rides aboard freight trains to move around the country searching for work.

On March 25, 1931, after a kamp broke out on a Southern Railroad freight train in Jackson County, Alabama, police arrested nine Black youths, ranging in age from 13 to 19, on a minor charge. But when deputies questioned two white women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, they accused the boys of raping them while onboard the train.

The nine teenagers—Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris, brothers Andrew and Leroy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson and Eugene Williams—were transferred to the local county seat, Scottsboro, to await trial.

Only four of them had known each other before their arrest. As news spread of the alleged rape (a highly inflammatory charge given the Jim Crow laws in the South), an angry white mob surrounded the jail,

•

The case of the Scottsboro Boys, which lasted more than 80 years, helped to spur the Civil Rights Movement. The perseverance of the Scottsboro Boys and the attorneys and community leaders who supported their case helped to inspire several prominent activists and organizers. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by white author Harper Lee, is also loosely based on this case.

On March 25, 1931, nine African American teenagers were accused of raping two white women aboard a Southern Railroad freight train in northern Alabama. Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Willie Roberson, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Eugene Williams, Charley Weems and Roy Wright were searching for work when a racially-charged fight broke out between passengers. The fight is said to have started when a young white man stepped on the hand of one of the Scottsboro Boys. The young white men who were fighting were forced to exit the train. Enraged, they conjured a story of how the bla