Scottsboro Boys Trials

The Incident and First Trial

On the evening of March 25, 1931, a fight broke out between two groups of young men, one black and one white, that had been traveling on the Southern Railway between Chattanooga and Memphis in Tennessee. Afterwards, a posse of white men searched the train and discovered Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, two white women who claimed to have been raped by the African American boys. Subsequently, the posse arrested Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Charlie Weems, Eugene Williams, Andrew Wright, and Roy Wright near Paint Rock, Alabama. The boys were held at a jail in nearby Scottsboro.

Retired defense attorney Milo Moody and Chattanooga real estate attorney Stephen Roddy defended the Scottsboro Boys in trials conducted at breakneck speed by Judge A. E. Hawkins. The evidence against the Scottsboro Boys ranged from circumstantial to misrepresentations of the truth. Moody and Roddy lacked the time to mount a proper defense; they found themselves unable to locate witnesses other than the defendants. Between April 6 and 9, 1931, eight of the nine defendants were convicted by all-white juries. Montgomery, Norris, Patterson, Powell, Roberson, Weems, Williams, and Andrew Wright all had been sentenced to death by electrocution. One trial would begin as soon as the previous trial went into deliberations. Only Roy Wright, who was 12 years old at the time of the alleged incident, was spared by a mistrial; the jury was hung 11–1 in favor of the death sentence.

Word quickly spread about the Scottsboro Boys and the rape story, and a lynch mob gathered at the jail, demanding the youths be surrendered. Sheriff Matt Wann ultimately called in the National Guard to protect the jail.

Reversed Convictions and Subsequent Trials

The plight of the Scottsboro Boys came to the attention of the legal arm of the American Communist Party, the International Labor Defense, which took over the case and immediately moved for new trials for all nine young men. The Alabama Supreme Court found that there were no procedural errors and upheld the death sentences of seven of the Scottsboro Boys; 13-year-old Williams was granted a new trial because of his age. This decision was appealed to the U.S. Supreme [Page 1897]Court, which heard arguments in the case on October 10, 1932. Lawyers for the Scottsboro Boys argued that their clients had not received due process or a sufficient defense by their unprepared original attorneys and that African Americans had been excluded without exception from the juries. In its ruling in Powell v. Alabama (1932), the U.S. Supreme Court concurred, reversed the convictions, and ordered that the cases be retried.

During Patterson's second trial, Bates admitted on the stand that she and Price had fabricated their rape claims; the medical examiner confirmed her story. Defense attorney Samuel Leibowitz was also successful at getting the posse witnesses to admit that they never saw the Scottsboro Boys with Bates and Price. The jury, however, found Patterson guilty and sentenced him to death again, but Judge James E. Horton set aside that verdict and ordered a third trial for Patterson.

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