The Scottsboro Boys: Due Process on a Freight Train
Alabama
Nine Black teenagers were pulled from a freight train near Scottsboro, Alabama, on March twenty-fifth, nineteen thirty-one. Their ages ranged from thirteen to nineteen. Within two weeks, eight of the nine had been convicted by all-white juries and sentenced to death. The ninth, Roy Wright, was granted a mistrial after the jury could not agree on his sentence, split between death and life imprisonment despite his young age. The entire process moved faster than most people today would believe a capital case could move.
The accusations came from two white women who had also been riding the train without authorization. One of them, Ruby Bates, later recanted her testimony. The other, Victoria Price, did not. The facts of what happened on that train have never been settled to the satisfaction of historians who have studied them. What is settled is that the convictions were secured by juries from which Black men were systematically excluded, and with legal representation so inadequate that it was effectively none.
The cases went to the Supreme Court twice. In Powell versus Alabama, decided in nineteen thirty-two, the Court held that defendants in capital cases have a right to adequate legal counsel. In Norris versus Alabama, decided in nineteen thirty-five, the Court held that the systematic exclusion of Black jurors from juries violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee. Both rulings changed American criminal procedure in ways that extended far beyond Alabama.
The Communist Party-affiliated International Labor Defense took on the case early, providing legal resources that the NAACP initially declined to match. The case became international: protests in Europe, petitions from artists and intellectuals, a global argument about what American justice meant in practice.
The last living Scottsboro defendant, Clarence Norris, was pardoned by the state of Alabama in nineteen seventy-six. The Jackson County Courthouse in Scottsboro, where the original trials were held, still stands.
