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The Scottsboro Boys.

The Scottsboro Boys. By, Caitlynne Schomburg. And the story begins.

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The Scottsboro Boys.

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  1. The Scottsboro Boys. By, Caitlynne Schomburg

  2. And the story begins... • IN MANY ways, the story of the Scottsboro Boys is a terrible tragedy--as the title of Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman's Oscar-nominated documentary acknowledges. In 1931, nine young Black men, aged 13 to 19, were dragged off a train in northeastern Alabama, accused of raping two white women, put on trial and railroaded to the death house.

  3. Continue… • The nine didn't stand a chance at justice in the racist South--where an accusation of a Black man raping a white woman was an automatic death sentence, carried out in prison or, more often, by a lynch mob.

  4. Scottsboro • Still, the story of the Scottsboro Boys is so much more than a tragedy. It is also the story of how ordinary people fought back and won. They challenged a seemingly all-powerful racist Southern state and ultimately gained freedom for the Scottsboro Boys. • Unfortunately, that part of the story is distorted in Anker and Goodman's documentary. Their film, which aired on PBS's "American Heritage" series in early April, does a good job of portraying the racist system that the Scottsboro Boys were up against.

  5. Once again.. • It describes the series of trials in the case, tearing apart the testimony of the alleged victims and exposing how prosecutors exploited hatred for political gain, with one declaring that he planned to "ride their Black asses into the governor's mansion." But this documentary shouldn't be considered the last word on Scottsboro.

  6. In the end… • In the end, Anker and Goodman conclude that neither protest nor courtroom efforts saved the Scottsboro Boys. Only the passing of time and the fading of the case from the news, they claim, gave Alabama authorities the room to back down and eventually free the nine.

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