Scottsboro Boys Research Paper

In 1931 two white women were riding the train along with the other men (the blacks and whites). When the fight broke out the blacks had won and let the white men off the train, however when the white men got off the train, they reported the incident to the local sheriff and that’s when the train stopped in Scottsboro, Alabama and everyone on the train was arrested. That’s how it all started in Scottsboro, Alabama and it was just the beginning of the case. The two women on the train Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were about to be in serious trouble because Ruby Bates was a minor and in that time it was a federal crime to take a minor across state lines for the reason of prostitution. The only way they could get of trouble in their situation was to say the black men raped them. In the time of 1931 rape was sanctioned by death. Usually they would’ve responded by a lynching, which was when they hung someone who was suspected of a crime, but for this case the citizens of Scottsboro wanted to hold a trial instead. The trial wasn’t fair at all because the outcome had been decided before the trial even

Albert Einstein said, “The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Society has a way of making people do things that they know are wrong. The non-fictional plaintiffs, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, and the fictional character, Mayella Ewell accused black men of a rape that never occurred. Society had a role in victimizing these girls in both a fictional and non-fictional setting. They were also impacted by society in such a way that made them accuse men of something they know did not happen.

On March 25 1931 a group of nine boys were charged with raping two girls on a train traveling from Paint Rock Alabama. Several years later Harper Lee wrote her famous novel How To Kill a Mockingbird. In her story she made a character named Tom Robinson that was charged and accused of raping Mayella Ewell, it is an understanding parallel comparison between Tom Robinson and the Scottsboro case. Both Tom Robinson and the nine other boys race was presumed guilty before their trial. Harper Lee was convinced to making How To Kill a Mockingbird because she was a kid when the Scottsboro trial was happening and made comparison to the nine black boys to Tom Robinson, than Mayella Ewell to Victoria Price and Ruby Bates.

In 1930’s Maycomb Alabama, a young woman is stirring up a sleepy town by accusing an African American man of rape. Mayella Ewell, a poor white woman has wrongly accused Tom Robinson of sexually assaulting her in her own home. Her testimony, as well as her fathers’, have gaping holes in them. Their stories do not coincide, and it is even implied that Mayella’s father may have been sexually abusing her.(DBQ Mayella page 15 Chapters 18 and 20) The lack of sufficient evidence and Tom Robinson’s claim that Mayella had made advances toward him should have been enough for the jury to find Tom not guilty, but unfortunately, that was not the case. Instead, the jury believed Mayella’s deceitful testimony, and Tom was sent to jail, which ultimately led to his death. Mayella used her position in society to manipulate the court, and dispose of the only evidence of her mistake. Mayella Ewell is powerful as defined by class, gender, and especially race.

There were several trials held throughout the case of the Scottsboro Boys. Most of them were unfair and obviously conducted with the odds stacked against the boys. The testimonies given by the two girls often did not match up. Victoria Price spent the most time on the stand, and on the rare occasion that Ruby Bates testified, most of what she said was disregarded because it contradicted or changed Price’s story. It was concluded that anything Bates said was no good because she was dimwitted and could not keep her story straight.

During the early nineteen hundreds many people especially in the south were often convicted of crimes for no other reason than their skin color and contrary to many ideas about our court system, we have not always been the most honest and unbiased people. One prime example of this is the case of the Scottsboro Boys and how they were accused of rape and had to go to court numerous times, almost everytime ending in the death sentence. The evidence in the case clearly points towards the innocence of the Scottsboro boys, evidence such as unclear stories from the girls, lack of bruises and marks indicating assault as well as a previous history of prostitution from both of the girls. This evidence helps to prove that Charles Weems and the Scottsboro boys were innocent and wrongly accused and convicted.

The Scottsboro Boys were a group of nine boys who were wrongfully sentenced from 1931-1937 and not proven innocent until 1977 to a tedious life of trials and prison, tribulations and death. Everything started when the nine boys set off on a southern railroads train heading towards Memphis from Chattanooga, looking for honest work. They started a little scuffle with the white teenagers in the train until eventually a white boy called the conductor, who in turn called the police. Despite the whites having just as much to do with the fight as the blacks. The police arrested every black teenager they could find, and not a single white was bothered. The nine boys they found were deemed the name: The Scottsboro Boys. After they were hauled off to prison, two girls Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, falsely accused the boys of raping them. This is what started the trials, and highlights how prejudiced people were at the time.

The Scottsboro boys arrest and subsequent trials reflect the social, political, and racial divisions in America based on how everything revolved around and connected with the trials. The social aspect was demonstrated by the trial because the Caucasian women who claimed they were raped, did it to avoid the consequences of the Mann Act (outlawed travel for prostitution and human trafficking). The Mann Act itself represents the moral progressive reforms that were written by the influence of progressive thoughts during that time period. The economical struggle can be seen as man and women are riding trains to just about anywhere with jobs and women were in such financial situations that they had to sell sex to basically survive. The political

the prisoners were lucky enough to escape the being lynched when they were moved into Scottsboro. In this trial, nine young, black boys were charged with the rape of two white girls while on a train. This case was a major source of controversy in the 1930’s. “Despite testimony by doctors who had examined the women that no rape had occurred, the all- white jury convicted the nine, and all but the youngest, who was 12 years old were sentenced to death” (“Scottsboro”). The boys’ lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, did not even get assigned to the case until the first day of the trial. “If he could show a jury that these nine boys were innocent, as the record indicated, the jury would surely free them. To Leibowitz, that was simple!” (Chalmers 35). However, it was not that simple. Many white citizens would not change their minds about

In the year 1931, all nine of the Scottsboro boys Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, Willie Roberson, and Roy Wright are arrested and tried on charges of assault from fighting white boys on a train. Along with accusations made by Victoria Price and Ruby Bates that the boys raped them. Their trial begins April 6, 1931. All of the boys except for Roy Wright are tired and convicted, with the result of the death sentence, Roy Wright’s trial ends in a mistrial. Later the NAACP and International Labor Defense, fight to represent the boys. Even though there was no proof that the boys committed these crimes they

Debra Barker wrote in (“Trials of the Century”), “When the deputy sheriff of Scottsboro, Ala., charged the young men with raping two white girls, who later admitted lying to hide their prostitution” (44). To expand on this, Roberta Baxter’s expresses in her ebook Harper Lee that “Medical evidence presented during the trial indicated that the women were not raped” (1). These quotes provide pertinent information that the Scottsboro boys did not rape the women, but were wrongly and falsely convicted. With this information present, the trials were still occurring and the men were still sent to jail. This furthering the idea that racial prejudice effected the outcome of a

Throughout these times of hardship in the south, many African Americans were wrongfully accused in our court systems all over the south. One case that sticks out above all of the rest of this time, was the trials of the Scottsboro Boys. This case involved nine young African American teenagers who were all accused of rape by two other young white girls. March 25, 1931 was the time and Scottsboro, Alabama was the setting. Here two girls Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, accused nine other black boys of rapping them after a fight with a white gang erupted among the blacks on board the train headed towards Scottsboro. Theses boys were damned from the very beginning merely because they were of black descent. In the police station that night, Miss Price pointed out six of the nine guys that supposedly raped her. As for the other three boys, the guard reportedly replied, “If those six had miss Price, it stands to reason that the others had Miss Bates”(Linder 1). This guard was pushed to believe the other three guilty from the racism already established within him. A crowd of several hundred men, hoping for a good old-fashioned lynching,

To Kill a Mockingbird written by Harper Lee is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, that offers a view of life through a young girl’s eyes. The novel is focused on two main themes which are racism and discrimination.

Tom Robinson was accused of rape and convicted after the jury disregarded evidence that proved he was an innocent man. Robinson was a free black man with a wife and kids. Mayella Ewell claimed that Robinson forced his way into her house, raped her, and beat her. It was determined that her injuries were caused by a left handed person, thus proving Robinson’s innocence as his left arm had been crippled in an accident as a young boy. Despite Robinson clearly not being the culprit, his darker pigmented skin led the jury to convict him.

“To Kill a Mockingbird “was one novel that I read in my literature class in junior high school .The novel “To Kill a Mockingbird was one novel that was written by a novelist named Nelle Harper Lee. Lee was from a small town called Monroeville, AL The novel was inspired by the racist attitudes observed as a child in Monroeville, AL ”To Kill a Mockingbird”