The Scottsboro Boys

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The Scottsboro Boys Alabama of 1931 was mired in the depths of a world wide economic nightmare referred to today as the Great Depression . It ranked near the bottom in education and poverty but it

maintained that old traditional southern pride which had been its mainstay since the antebellum era Race was not an issue , for whites simply believed themselves superior to blacks , denying them basic civil rights and the simple amenities of civilization , such as a drink of water on a hot day , or a bathroom to use when caught away from home . The education afforded blacks was second-class and white attitudes were worse than condescending . Men and women of all races used the railway system to get around , some looking for work and some simply bums . Blacks were not allowed in stores or restaurants in the white part of town . A black man could be jailed or killed for sassing a white man or even looking at a white woman . On March 25 of that year a group of black youths confronted a group of white youths , two of whom were women , dressed in men 's clothing , on the Southern Railway in the heart of Old Dixie . A fight broke out and the whites were ejected from the railroad cars . They reported this incident to white authorities who ed the train stopped in the town of Paint Rock , Alabama (Carter

4 . Nine black youths were arrested and charged with assault . When it came to light that two of the victims of this crime were , in fact , white women , even though dressed as men , the stage was set for tragedy . The prevailing attitudes of white toward blacks coupled with the ubiquitous poverty and ignorance of the rural south guaranteed that the perpetrators , known as the Scottsboro Boys , would be tried , convicted and punished severely

The black youths were taken to the Jackson County seat of Scottsboro Alabama . There they were jailed and Drs . R . R . Bridges and Marvin Lynch examined the two white women victims . Not surprisingly , word spread quickly through both the black and white communities and a mob mentality began to manifest itself among the whites . The Jackson County Sentinel sensationalized the event , with headlines decrying the Revolting Crime ' saying All Negroes Positively Identified by Girls and One White Boy Who Was Held Prisoner With Pistol and Knives While Nine Black Fiends Committed Revolting Crime (Carter

13 . Whites , true to their southern heritage , erupted in a violent display of moral outrage forming a lynch mob cum vigilante posse and tried to storm the jail . The Jackson County sheriff , to his credit , quickly informed the Alabama governor , Benjamin...