90 years since false accusations of "Scottsboro Boys" rape case
March 25, 2021 marks the 90th anniversary of the day that nine Black men allegedly raped two white women on a train in Alabama. They were falsely accused and convicted in 1931. In 2013, pardons were granted to the men know as the “Scottsboro Boys.”
Police officers break up an attempt to picket the Capitol grounds in Washington, Nov. 7, 1932, by a group demanding freedom for seven African-Americans sentenced to death in Scottsboro, Ala., whose case was before the U.S. Supreme Court. (AP Photo)
This November 22, 2013 Associated Press story, “Ala. board approves pardons for 'Scottsboro Boys,’ ” by Phillip Rawls reported the news of the pardons and explains the history of the case.
Alabama's parole board wrote a new ending for the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" rape case Thursday by approving posthumous pardons more than 80 years after the arrests.
The board made the unanimous decision during a hearing in Montgomery for three black men whose convictions were never overturned in a case that came to symbolize racial injustice in the Deep South in the 1930s.
"Today, the Scottsboro Boys have finally received justice," Gov. Robert Bentley said.
Nine black males were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in northeast Alabama in 1931. The men were convicted by all-white juries, and all but the youngest defendant was sentenced to death.
Pictured in this March 31, 1933 photo some of the 12 men of Morgan County, Decatur, Ala. chosen for the jury in the retrial of Heywood Patterson, one of the nine African American teenagers, known as the Scottsboro Boys, previously convicted of attacking two white girls who were riding on a freight train. (AP Photo)
The state senator who got a law enacted to permit posthumous pardons said the Scottsboro Boys' lives were ruined by a justice system that ignored evidence, and that it was time to right a wrong.
"It is a promising reminder of how far we have come as a state since those regretful days in our past," Republican Sen. Arthur Orr of Decatur said.
The founder of the Scottsboro Boys Museum in Scottsboro, Shelia Washington, said the pardons "give the history books a new ending not guilty."
The Scottsboro Boys case became a symbol of the tragedies wrought by racial injustice. Their appeals resulted in U.S. Supreme Court rulings that criminal defendants are entitled to effective counsel and that blacks can't be systematically excluded from criminal juries.
These are the twelve Morgan Country Alabama men, chosen to weigh the evidence in the trial of 19-year-old Heywood Patterson and first of seven to face re-trial in the Scottsboro attack case. The jury is shown at Decatur, Ala., April, 2,1933 where the case is being tried. (AP Photo)
The case inspired songs, books and films. A Broadway musical was staged in 2010, the same year a museum dedicated to the case opened in Scottsboro.
Five of the men's convictions were overturned in 1937 after one of the alleged victims recanted her story. One defendant, Clarence Norris, received a pardon before his death in 1976. At the time, he was the only Scottsboro Boy known to be alive. Nothing was done for the others because state law did not permit posthumous pardons.
In April, the Alabama Legislature passed Orr's bill to allow the parole board to issue posthumous pardons for old cases where the convictions involved racial discrimination.
In this April 3, 1933 photo, Judge James E. Horton leans over to listen to the testimony of Dr. R. R. Bridges, a Scottsboro, Ala. physician, in the Decatur, Ala. courtroom for the first of the retrials of eight of the nine Scottsboro Black youths previously condemned to death for attacks on two white girls, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. He said that he had found only superficial bruises and scratches when he examined Mrs. Price shortly after she was alleged to have been attacked aboard a train enroute to Chattanooga. (AP Photo)
The three Scottsboro Boys considered by the parole board on Thursday were Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems and Andy Wright.
The board said the other five Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams and Roy Wright weren't eligible under the new law because their convictions were overturned on appeal and the charges dropped.
Washington said some of the Scottsboro Boys changed their names and started new lives. The museum, working with students and faculty members at the University of Alabama, has found the graves of four of the nine. Washington said the next goal is to find all the graves and erect historical markers.
"They didn't know how much they meant in history while they were alive," she said.
Some of the prisoners, being re-tried on charges of attacking two white girls on a train in Scottsboro, Ala., two years ago, are shown under heavy armed guard going into the Decatur, Ala. courtroom on April 6, 1933. (AP Photo)
A part of the crowd of 10,000 persons who jammed the courthouse square in the little town of Scottsboro, Alabama, April 6, 1933, on the opening of the trials of nine Black youths accused of attacking two white girls near Sevenson, Ala., March 24, 1931. (AP Photo)