1. The Scottsboro Trials
* Tessa Barton *
* Lauren Beck *
* Evan Bolland *
* TJ Deckenbach *
* Maddy DiGiovanni *
* Elliot Vorel *
* Aaron Wright *

2. Scottsboro Trials: An Overview
What were the Scottsboro trials? In 1931, Victoria Price
and Ruby Bates of Madison County, AL, were
allegedly raped by twelve negroes. The story of the
legal case has become a crucial part of Alabama’s
history.
MD

3. History of the Case
 March 24th
, 1931: Victoria Price and Ruby Bates boarded
freight train to TN; met seven white boys
 12 negroes boarded; led by Charlie Weems, who carried
a pistol
 After forcing white boys off train, six negroes allegedly
raped Ms. Price, and six, Ms. Bates
 White gang telegraphed nearest station; nine negro boys
were arrested, three had left earlier
 No charges made until after Scottsboro boys taken into
custody; questionable charges
MD

4. Excerpts From Scottsboro Trials:
 Judge Horton’s instructions to the Jury, “Take the
evidence, sift it out , and find the truths and untruths and
render your verdict. It will not be easy to keep your
minds solely on the evidence. Much prejudice has crept
into it has come not only from far away, but from here at
home as well.”
 Ory Dobbins, an eye witness said, “I saw one of the girls
setting up on the end of the gon fixing to jump off.”
 Dallas Ramsey was asked, “The day or afternoon of the
account referred to you say you saw those girls about six
o’ clock in the morning in the jungles?” He answered,
“Yes sir.”
LB

5. More Excerpts:
 Victoria price, an alleged rape victim claimed, “I never
was in Chattanooga but one time in my life. . . I never
was at any negro’s house in my life.”
 Ruby Bates, another alleged rape victim was asked,
“You mean Lester Carter and Gilly left the gondola in
which you were in and went into the next gondola where
the fight was between the white boys and the negros?”
She replied, “Yes sir.”
LB

6. 1. Two white women falsely accused the nine young black men—Olen
Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Ozzie Powell, Willie
Roberson, Charlie Weems, Eugene Williams, and brothers Andy and
Roy Wright—of rape
2. Eight of the 9 young men were sentenced to death, but the youngest,
13 year old Roy Wright, was sentenced to life in prison
3. The juries were all white.
4. It began in March 25,1931, when a fight broke out between black and
white passengers on a freight train going through Jackson county.
5. The trials lasted 7 years.
6. The case may have ended way earlier if it weren't for an intervention
from the International Labor Defense (ILD).
7. The first trials lasted 4 days in early April of 2001. This attracted many
angry whites, and the Alabama national guard was sent to prevent a
lynching.
8. They had a lot of support from ILD lawyers who quickly won the trust of
the defendants and there families.
9. The ILD was a communist group, which made the case even more
controversial.
10.The ILD pleaded there case in front of the Alabama supreme court, but
the convictions were upheld.
Things to Keep in Mind
AW

7. The Trials
TB
• “Roy Wright 13, Eugene Williams 13, Andy Wright 17,
Haywood Patterson 17, Olin Montgomery 17, Willie
Roberson 17, Ozzie Powell 16, Charles Weems 21,
Clarence Norris 21[all accused of raping the girls]”
• “The nine [boys], who were charged with attacking two
white girls, one an admitted town prostitute, Ruby Bates
and Victoria Price, immediately pleaded not guilty to the 20
indictments [prostitution] against them…”
• “An all white court room of Judge E.A. Hawkins convicted
8 of the boys, declaring a mistrial in the case of 13 year old

8. The Trials
• “[The Boys] were tried in three groups, the eight were
sentenced to death on the same day-April 9,1931.”
• “Finally [after many petitions] on November 8,1932,
Judge Hawkins set new trials for all since boys for the
March 1933 term of the Scottsboro Court.”
• “Despite this [motions for a change of venue], a lily-white
jury was picked to try Haywood Patterson, the first of nine
young men to be brought to trial”
TB

9. The Trials
“Three months later, the court
once again overturned the guilty
verdicts and ordered new trials,
ruling in Patterson v. Alabama
and Norris v. Alabama that the
defendants were denied a fair
trial because African Americans
had been systematically
excluded from Jackson County
jury rolls. The landmark
decision paved the way for the
integration of juries across the
nation.
Above: The defendants in the Scottboro
trial and their lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz,
at a Decatur jail. Standing, left to right:
Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris,
Willie Roberson (front), Andrew Wright
(partially obscured), Ozie Powell,
Eugene Williams, Charley Weems, and
Roy Wright. Haywood Patterson is
seated next to Leibowitz.
TB

10. Racism In and Out of Courts
“Many local newspapers had made their
conclusions about the defendants before the
trials began. One headline read: "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."”

11. NAACP
“The NAACP, which might have been expected
to rush to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys,
did not. Rape was a politically explosive charge
in the South, and the NAACP was concerned
about damage to its effectiveness that might
result if it turned out some or all of the Boys were
guilty.”

12. Communist Party
“Instead, it was the Communist Party that moved
aggressively to make the Scottsboro case their
own. The Party saw the case as providing a
great recruiting tool among southern blacks and
northern liberals.”

13. Eye Witnesses
 “The prosecution's only eyewitness to the crime was a
farmer named Ory Dobbins who said he saw the
defendants grab Price and Bates as they were about to
leap from the train. The credibility of the farmer's
testimony was seriously damaged by Leibowitz on cross,
when he asked how it was that Dobbins could even be
sure, given the speed of the train and his considerable
distance from it, that it was a woman that he saw.
Dobbins answered, "She was wearing women's clothes."
Everyone who had followed the case knew that Bates and
Price both were wearing overalls. "Are you sure it wasn't
overalls or a coat?," Judge Horton asked. "No sir, a
dress," Dobbins said.”

14.  “Lester Carter, the twenty-three-year-old traveling companion
of Bates and Price, was one of the defense's most
spectacular witnesses. Carter, who Price had denied having
known until the day of the alleged crime, testified that he had
met Bates, Price, and Prices' boyfriend Jack Tiller in a
Huntsville hobo jungle the night before he would travel with
the two girls to Chattanooga. He told the jury that the night
the four were together in the hobo jungle, and while he began
making love to Ruby Bates while Price did the same with
Tiller. Carter testified that two days later, on the return trip to
Hunstville from Chattanooga, he jumped off the freight train
when fighting broke out between blacks and the
outnumbered whites.”

15. Climax
 “The appearance of the defense's final and most dramatic witness, Ruby
Bates, might have been taken from the script of a hokey Hollywood movie. In
the months before the trial, Bates' whereabouts were a mystery. Leibowitz
announced that he was resting his case, then approached the bench and
asked for a short recess. Minutes later National Guardsmen open the back
doors of the courtroom, and-- to the astonished gasps of spectators and the
dismay of Knight-- in walked Ruby Bates. Under direct examination, Bates
said a troubled conscience and the advice of famous New York minister Harry
Emerson Fosdick prompted her to return to Alabama to tell the truth about
what happened on March 25, 1931. Bates said that there was no rape, that
none of the defendants touched her or even spoke to her, and that the
accusations of rape were made after Price told her "to frame up a story" to
avoid morals charges. On cross-examination, Knight ripped into Bates,
confronting her both with her conflicting testimony in the first trials and
accusations that her new versions of events had been bought with new clothes
and other Communist Party gifts. He demanded to know whether he hadn't
told her months before in his office that he would "punish anyone who made
her swear falsely" and that he "did not want to burn any person that wasn't
guilty." "I think you did," Bates answered.”

16. Trial Conclusion
“Seven of the nine Scottsboro Boys had been held in jail for over six years without
trial by the time jury selection began in the third trial of Clarence Norris on
Monday, July 12, 1937. Trying to beat the hundred degree heat, Judge Callahan
rushed the trial even more than usual, and by Wednesday morning the prosecution
had a death sentence. Andy Wright's trial was next; he got ninety-nine years. On
Saturday, July 24 at eleven o'clock, Charlie Weem's jury returned and gave him
seventy-five years. Moments later, Ozie Powell was brought into court and the
new prosecutor, Thomas Lawson, announced that the state was dropping rape
charges against Powell and that he was pleading guilty to assaulting a deputy.
Then came the big news. Lawson announced that 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. Leibowitz led the four from the
jail to an awaiting car, and with an escort of state troopers they were driven to the
Tennessee border. Free of Alabama, but not of the label "Scottsboro Boy" or from
the wounds inflicted by six years in prison, they went on with their separate lives:
to marriage, to alcoholism, to jobs, to fatherhood, to hope, to disillusionment, to
disease, or to suicide.”

17. More About the Scottsboro Boys
 In 1931, two white women got raped by 9 black people on a
train in Paint Rock, Alabama. This began the largest fight in the
20th
century. This fight gave birth to the Civil Rights Movement.
 Haywood Patterson is tried, convicted and sentenced to death,
on April 6-7 1931.
 On April 8-9, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Urillie Robertson,
Eugene Williams, and Andy Wright are also tried, convicted and
sentenced to death.
 On April 19, 1931, Roy Wright, age 13, ends in a hang jury
when eleven jurors seek a death sentence and one votes for
life imprisonment.
TD

18. Background
 On January 5, 1932, a letter from Ruby Bates to a boyfriend
states that she wasn’t raped.
 On March 24, 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the
convictions of 7 of the defendants granting Eugene Williams a
new trial because he was a juvenile at the time of conviction.
 On April 6, Ruby Bates appears as a surprise witness for the
defendant, denying that any rape occurred and testifying that
she was with Victoria Price the whole train ride.
 Dr. Bridges admits that they showed few physical signs of have
been forcibly raped by six men, as she claimed.
 On April 9th
, Patterson is found guilty and sentenced to death by
electric chair.
TD

19. After:
o “Patterson was convicted of
rape for a fourth time in
January 1936, but this time
his sentence was set at 75
years in prison.”
o “Following the verdict,
another of the defendants,
Ozzie Powell, was shot in
the head after attacking a
deputy sheriff in an apparent
escape attempt.”
Left to right: Ozzie Powell,
Willie Roberson, Clarence
Norris, and Andy Wright.
MD

20. The long, complicated issue
of the Scottsboro Trials
is key in Alabama’s past.
Learning more about the
Trials provides
interesting background
information for To Kill a
Mockingbird.