Sara writes: The Scottsboro Trials took place in 1931 in Alabama during a time when poverty and racism ran high and morale was low. Two girls accused a group of 12 "Negro" boys of sexually assaulting them. The boys, probably innocent but never given a fair trial, were doomed. Their trials were being held in a town which "Negroes" were considered useless; one woman referred to them as "black fiends." And so the fate of 9 confused young men was placed into the hands of a white jury and judge.

On March 24, 1931, 2 mill girls, Victoria Price (21) and Ruby Bates (17) from Hunstville in Madison County, northern Alabama jumped aboard a train heading to Chattanooga Tennessee. The girls arrived late at night and spent the night with Mrs. Callie Brochie. The next day they set out to find employment in the mills, but were unsuccessful. On this evening (3/25/31) they boarded ("hoboed") a train back home. They jumped in a box which contained 7 white boys. Victoria claimed that she and Ruby both interacted [need a more specific word] with the boys. However, approximately half way to Hunstville twelve negros climbed aboard and forced the white boys to jump from the speeding train. One boy Orvil Gilley was afraid to jump and was allowed to stay on. Victoria then testified that six of the boys raped her and the other six raped Ruby.

The leader of this group appeared to be Charlie Weems; this was assumed because he carried a pistol, but the first attacker was Clarence Norris. Three of Ruby's attackers jumped from the train before they reached Paint Rock and the rest of the attackers were captured by a posse. The posse had received a telegram from Stevenson, where the white boys informed authorities of the situation.

"The International Labor Defense, which had representatives on the scene at the time of the trial in Scottsboro, and whose attorney, George Chamlee, of Chattanooga, later made investigations of various phases of the case not brought out at the trial, claims that when the two girls were taken from the train at Paint Rock, they made no charges against the negroes, until after they were taken into custody." The boys were quickly split into three groups, each group would be tried individually. Judge Hawkins presided and Steven Roddy was appointed defense attorney- although he executed his position very poorly. During the months between April and December, the NAACP as well as the International Labor Defense battled for the right to represent the Scottsboro boys, but were denied.

Dr. Bridges and Dr. M.H. Lynch testified "both girls had had recent sexual intercourse, but there were no lacerations, tears, or other signs of rough handling; that they were not hysterical when brought to the doctor's office at first, but became so later." A witness for the defense was Lester Carter. Lester was a convicted convict but also Ruby Bates' boyfriend. Ruby Bates began visiting him while he was in jail and after jail they met and engaged in sexual intercourse. Lester was also recalled that he and Ruby had sexual intercourse on one of their first meetings in person and he also told the jury that he had once witnessed Ruby and Victoria flirting with a group of negroes when they were suppose to be waiting for him and Victoria's partner.

During the first trial Clarence Norris and Charlie Weems were tried and less than two hours after court was called into session a verdict for the death penalty was reached. In the second case five of the remaining boys were tried. In this trial it was found that Willie Robeson was suffering from a bad case of venereal disease and this would make it nearly impossible [for him] to have sexual intercourse. The jury was not sympathetic to his excuse and once again the jury came back with the verdict - death penalty. The last trial was of the youngest boy who was only 14 years of age. This jury could not reach a verdict for this young man's trial.

"After Judge Horton set aside Haywood Patterson's death sentence and guilty verdict in June, 1933, prosecutors applied pressure to have the Scottsboro cases transferred to another judge. Their efforts were successful, and the next round of trials began in late 1933 in the Decatur courtroom of Judge William Callahan." The whole court experience was pushed along as fast it could legally be pushed. There was a mob of 8,000-10,000 people outside the courtroom and, although it was claimed that these people just wanted justice, they had ill intentions. Haywood Patterson is quoted as saying "The courtroom was one big smiling white face"; clearly these boys were not given a trial by their peers. "I am speaking with feeling, and I know it, because I am feeling it. I absolutely have no patience with the mob spirit, and that spirit that would charge the guilt or innocense of any being without knowing of their guilt or innocense." Judge James Horton addressing court after hearing reports of plans for a lynching; however, his words speak differently from his actions. The boys, after convicted, were given just barely the 90 days which is required by law to appeal, after these 90 days they were to be put to their deaths. Their appeals and cries for help were left unanswered. In this town, as well as the rest of the country, bigots and their prejudices tainted the judicial system at the expense of a group of young black men.

Ruby, but heavily influenced by Victoria, were two girls who had nothing to lose by placing such accusations on a group of boys. They were from a poor mill town and employment opportunities were declining as the mills began to lose productivity. Hollace Ransdall was able to make more progress with the truth in this case than any other individual and her findings explain Victoria's actions. According to Ransdall the results of these trials, tainted with corruption, was an excellent example of the prejudice faults within our judicial system during this time. Ransdall also reports on the words of hate which the locals used to depict the accused boys. Ransdall's view on Victoria is: "Having been in direct contact from the cradle with the institution of prostitution as a sideline necessary to make the meager wages of a mill worker pay the rent and buy the groceries, she has no feeling of revulsion against promiscuous sexual intercourse such as women of easier lives might suffer."

The charges of rape brought against the Scottsboro boys were in my opinion completely phony. Victoria and Ruby were both sexually experienced girls who did not have much going for them in life. They used this opportunity to gain popularity, attention, and perhaps to take a hiatus from their prostituting. Ruby, although spineless during the trials, later confessed that she and Victoria were lying; clearly they accusations were false. The evidence provided throughout the case was taken from Victoria. The other two witnesses, Ruby and Orvil Gilley, were considered weak and were not questioned more than once. However, random people, such as Dallas Ramsey and Ory Doobins, were used as witnesses because these individuals claimed to witness the crime as the train passed by their homesteads.

May reports: Contrary to lack of prejudice expressed in the "riding the rails" letters is the story of the Scottsboro Boys and their trials. The Scottsboro boys were subject to much prejudice during their trials and were even almost lynched the day of their accusations. As explained in previous chapters, people in the Great Depression rode the rails for many different reasons. On March 25, 1931, about two-dozen young whites and blacks rode the Southern Railroad's Chattanooga to Memphis freight train. Among them were four black teenagers from Chattanooga looking for jobs in Memphis and five black teens rom various parts of Georgia. Two males and two females dressed in overalls were returning to Huntsville after unsuccessful unsuccessfully searching for jobs in the cotton mills of Chattanooga.

A black youth named Haywood Patterson was hanging on to the train car's side when a white youth who was walking across the top stepped on his hand. Since Patterson had friends on the train, a fight broke out between the white and black youths. The group of black youths outnumbered the whites. The blacks succeeded in throwing all but one white youth off the train. When the train started accelerating to dangerous speeds, Patterson pulled this white youth named Orville Gilley back on the train. Meanwhile, the other whites who had been thrown off the train went to the stationmaster to report the alleged assault by the gang of blacks. The stationmaster wired for the train to be stopped at Paint Rock. When the train stopped, armed white men rounded up all of the nine black youths who were on the train and sent them to a Scottsboro jail.

THE CHARGES: The women who were on the train were two white millworkers from Huntsville, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. One of these girls told one of the posse members that a gang of twelve blacks with pistols and knives had raped them. Price stuck to her story of the black teens raping her until her dying day in 1982. Bates, on the other hand, recanted her story of the raping in the second trial of Haywood Patterson. She appeared as a surprise witness for the defense in this trial. She wrote a letter to her boyfriend, Earl Streetman, stating, "those Negroes did not touch meâ "I hope you will believe meâ I wish those Negroes are not burnt on account of me." Bates said that Price convinced her to make the false accusation to avoid being brought up on charges of their own for vagrancy or Mann Act (crossing state lines for immoral purposes). Bates later actively joined the International Labor Defense campaign for release of the Scottsboro Boys.

REPRESENTATION: The boys' first defense lawyers were the incompetent Stephen Roddy and Milo Moody. Their work (or lack of) for the defense of the boys was one of the reasons why the first trial ended with a guilty verdict. The first trial lasted a few days. After the next string of trials, the NAACP and the Communist Party's ILD battled for the right to represent the Scottsboro boys. The NAACP would have been expected to get involved at first but rape was a serious crime in the South. The logic of reasoning for not getting involved was that if the boys were found guilty, the NAACP's reputation would be damaged. Later, the NAACP realized that the boys were probably innocent and wanted to hire Clarence Darrow to represent them. However, by the time the NAACP acted on this, the Communist Party had already decided to get involved. Through its legal arm, the International Labor Defense (ILD), the Communist Party pronounced the case against the boys a "murderous frame-up." The ILD convinced the boys to let their lawyers represent them. The Communists were not very popular in the South so in order to assure that the Party's reputation would not influence the boys' trial, they hired someone with no connections or sympathies with the Party. Democrat Samuel Liebowitz, a New York criminal attorney, was hired as the lead defense attorney. Joseph Brodsky, the ILD's chief attorney, was hired as his assistant. The state hired Thomas Knight Jr. to work the prosecution. Knight was ruthless to the defense witnesses and often yelled at them and pointed his finger in their faces.

THE EVIDENCE: In my opinion, the prosecution's strongest evidence were their witnesses who lied on the stand. Victoria Price was not an easy cross-examination witness for the defense. She was evasive, sarcastic, and used ignorance and "bad" memory on the stand. The fact that she was a good liar didn't help the defense either. Orville Gilley was the state's star witness. Patterson had saved Gilley from being thrown off the train but this did not help in his defense. Gilley and Price had been sexual partners. Knight admitted to sending money to Gilley's grandmother and other parts of his family. Gilley was described as a charming and entertaining witness. "Gilley said that the rapes only stopped when he convinced one of the blacks that if they didn't get off Price they would soon kill her." Liebowitz called Gilley "a dirty, filthy liar." He argued that it was implausible that Gilley would sit by and witness the gang rape without making an effort to go forward in the train to notify the engineer or a conductor." Another important piece of evidence is the semen that was found in both Price and Bates' vaginas. It was not proven whose this was but it made for good evidence on behalf of the prosecution. The defense claimed that the semen could have belonged to a man that Price slept with two days prior. The semen probably belonged to Gilley whom Price slept with the night before in a hobo jungle. Dr. R. R. Bridges was the prosecution witness who turned out to be, in the minds of many, the best witness for the defense. While Bridges and his assistant found semen in the vaginas of both women, they found little evidence to support their contention that they had been the victims of a violent assault. "The prosecution used the testimony of Bridges in the first Scottsboro trials to prove that Bates and Price had intercourse in the two days before they were examined-- presumably, they hoped the jury would surmise, about two hours before their examination."

In my opinion, the Scottsboro Boys had no chance for a fair trial, especially in the South in the 1930's. Not only did people want to lynch them before even hearing their story but there were problems with blacks being in jury rolls: "On February 15, 1935, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in the Patterson and Norris cases. Liebowitz argued that the convictions should be overturned because Alabama excluded blacks from its jury rolls in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution. The names of blacks that appeared on the jury rolls introduced in Judge Callahan's courtroom were, Liebowitz told the justices, forged sometime after the start of Patterson's trial. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes asked Liebowitz if he could prove that allegation. Liebowitz had a page bring in the actual jury rolls and a magnifying glass. Hughes looked at the rolls, then passed it to the next seated justice, who then passed it to the next. Looks of disgust appeared on their faces. Six weeks later the Supreme Court announced their decision in Norris vs. Alabama, unanimously holding that the Alabama system of jury selection unconstitutional and reversing the convictions of Norris and Patterson. Liebowitz said, "I am thrilled beyond words."

Jamie writes: On March 25, 1931 the lives of these nine black youths, who were riding the train to Memphis in search of jobs, were suddenly disrupted. It began because a group of white youths reported being assaulted by a gang of blacks on that train. When the train was stopped all the black youths on the train were rounded up and, as the boys were being detained, two girls, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, accused them of rape. The boys were then arraigned for the rapes of these two women. The initial trials were based entirely around Price's and Bate's testimonies, which was really the only evidence the prosecution had. But with the incompetent defense these boys had, it was enough to bring a sentence to death for them all.

The Communist Party came to the boys aid when no one else would. Everywhere else but in Alabama it was obvious to people that the boys had not received a fair trial and that there were serious holes in the prosecution's case. So the communist party backed the boys and found a great lawyer with an amazing reputation to defend them, Liebowitz. The US Supreme court awarded the boys new trials in that they had not been awarded competent representation, to which everyone is entitled. Winning most all of his cases before this trial, Liebowitz came in and ripped the prosecution's case apart. He showed discrepencies in Price's testimony and proved that the medical exam did not suggest rape, rather sexual activity a few days prior to March 25. Then he had testimony supporting the medical evidence from a man Price had been traveling with. And finally and most surprisingly Ruby Bates appeared as the defense's last witness stating that her accusations had been a lie that Price concocted and that the rape never happened. But still, the jury came back with a guilty verdict. The Judge overseeing the case was horrified by the overwhelming evidence proving the boys innocence and so threw out the jury's verdict and set another trial date.

After several trials and appeals the prosecution grew weary of all the time and money it was spending on convicted these boys, so "all charges were being dropped against the remaining four defendants: Willie Roberson, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, and Roy Wright. He said that after 'careful consideration' every prosecutor was 'convinced' that Roberson and Montgomery were 'not guilty'. Wright and Williams, regardless of their guilty or innocence, were twelve and thirteen at the time and, in view of the jail time they had already served, justice required that they also be released." The five who remained were eventually sentenced to 75+ years in prison instead of the death penalty, and all were released on parole or escaped.

Alabama at this time was still obviously a horribly racist society. The innocence was never presumed for any of the boys and even after Liebowitz basically proved their innocence, it was still ignored. The only difference between this trial and the mob lynchings in the past was that there was the illusion of a trial. It is amazing how a society can get away with that. Everybody knew that these boys should never have been found guilty and that the second trial should have hands-down produced a not guilty verdict. Even the state of Michigan itself, when Patterson escaped form an Alabama jail, refused to extradite, maybe attempting to serve him some justice that he didnt receive in Alabama.