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The Scottsboro Trials

By: Christina Chen and John Angeline. The Scottsboro Trials. Background Information:. A group of about two dozen teenagers were riding the Southern Railroad’s Chattanooga to Memphis freight train on March 25, 1931 A stone throwing fight broke out between the two racial groups

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The Scottsboro Trials

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  1. By: Christina Chen and John Angeline The Scottsboro Trials

  2. Background Information: • A group of about two dozen teenagers were riding the Southern Railroad’s Chattanooga to Memphis freight train on March 25, 1931 • A stone throwing fight broke out between the two racial groups • The blacks eventually succeeded in forcing all but one of the members of the whites, Orville Gilley, off of the train. • The white people reported to the stationmaster that they were assaulted by the gang of blacks on the train • The train was stopped and searched. Nine captured blacks were tied up and taken to the Scottsboro jail. • Two female mill workers also on the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, claimed that they had been raped by the group of blacks.

  3. Examples, Anecdotes, and Historical Docs. • Headlines before the trial already stated “ALL NEGROES POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED BY GIRLS AND ONE WHITEBOY WHO WAS HELD PRISONER WITH PISTOL AND KNIVES WHILE NINE BLACK FIENDS COMMITTED REVOLTING CRIME.” The South gave them no chance. • Meanwhile, people in the North support- ed their cause and fought for their freedom, saying “The Scottsboro Boys Must Not Die!”

  4. Haywood Patterson with his lawyer

  5. Five Facts About The Scottsboro Trials • The first lawyers the Scottsboro boys were given were a man who showed up drunk on the first day of the trial and another who had not defended anyone in court in decades. • The NAACP initially refused to defend the nine boys at trial. • Defense of the boys was taken by the legal branch of the Communist Party. • The Scottsboro boys were found guilty in the first trial, when they were represented by the two incompetent lawyers, but their convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court. • Despite the fact that in the second trial, Ruby Bates (one of the two girls who accused the nine boys of rape) confessed that she and Victoria Price were lying, the jury still found Haywood Patterson (one of the nine boys) guilty.

  6. How The Scottsboro Trials Relate To TKAM The situation in To Kill A Mockingbird is most likely very similar to the Scottsboro trials: an group of African-Americans are falsely accused of a serious crime in the south, where they have little to no chance of being found not guilty, even though there is almost no evidence against them.

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