A Reasonable Doubt
March 27, the opening day, was warm and clear in Decatur. Before 7 A.M. a large and cheerful crowd had gathered outside the two-story yellow brick courthouse. Even the announcement that there would be a half-day’s delay in the proceedings did not seem to dispel the spectators’ good nature. Throughout the morning they sunned lazily on the wide lawn or gossiped around the two courthouse statues, one honoring justice and the other paying tribute to those Confederate soldiers “who gave their lives for a just cause—State’s Rights.” There was some talk about the trial, but mostly the relaxed crowd discussed the Depression. Three and a half years after the crash of , these Alabamians- like most Americans—were optimistically looking to Mr. Roosevelt and his New Deal for relief. For as the cotton mills and railroad shops had closed or curtailed their operations, hard times had come to Decatur. The spring foliage and flowers camouflaged, but they could not conceal, the empty, dilapidated stores downtown and the peeling paint on the outlying houses.
Samuel Leibowitz had been apprehensive when he first arrived in Decatur. He was keenly aware that he and his fellow
Bates, Ruby (–)
Key American participant in the notorious Scottsboro case.Name variations: Ruby Schut. Born in Huntsville, Alabama, in ; died in Yakima, Washington, on October 27, ; had two brothers; married Elmer Schut.
Perhaps more than any other single event in the s, the Scottsboro case of Alabama made clear to the American public the full extent of racial injustice in those Southern states whose legal and social systems were based on de jure segregation. Two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, accused nine "black boys" ranging in age from 13 to 21 of raping both of them while the "boys" were traveling as hoboes in March on the Chattanooga-to-Huntsville freight train. Tried without adequate legal counsel, all nine were convicted of rape on the basis of shaky testimony by Price and Bates. The Scottsboro case became a national controversy, as independent liberals, the American Communist Party, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) regarded the convictions as an outrageous miscarriage of justice. The sentencing exacerbated the issue, when all but one received death sentences.
Behind the scenes, the defenders of the Scotts
Newsletter
The Scottsboro Trial: A Timeline
March In the depths of the Depression, a fight breaks out between white and black young men who are riding as hoboes on a Southern Railroad freight train. The train is stopped by an angry posse in Paint Rock, Alabama, and nine black youths are arrested for assault. Rape charges are added, following accusations from two white women who have also come off the train, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates. The accused are taken to Scottsboro, Alabama, the Jackson County seat. The women are examined by Drs. R. R. Bridges and Marvin Lynch.
News of the incident spreads quickly; the Jackson County Sentinel, printed that evening, decries the "revolting crime." White outrage erupts over the allegations, and a lynch mob gathers at the Scottsboro jail, prompting the sheriff to call Alabama Governor Benjamin Meeks Miller. Governor Miller in turn calls in the National Guard to protect the jail and its prisoners.
March A grand jury indicts all nine "Scottsboro Boys."
April Before Judge A. E. Hawkins, Clarence Norris and Charlie W
Newsletter
The Scottsboro Accusers
Victoria Price ( - ):
"I didn't lie in Scottsboro. I didn't lie in Decatur and I ain't lied here. I've told the truth all the way through and I'm a' gonna go on fighting 'til my dying day or 'til justice is done."
-- after her lawsuit against NBC,
On March 25, , Victoria Price and Ruby Bates were travelling in men's overalls, hoboing aboard a Southern Railroad freight train, when it was met by a heavily-armed posse in Paint Rock, Alabama. The posse sought the black teenagers who had thrown a group of white boys off the train. When the two white women said they had been raped by the black youths, the town, the women and the group of black young men and boys became part of the tragic episode in American history known as Scottsboro.
Price grew up in a poor part of Huntsville, Alabama and worked in local cotton mills, when there was work. During the Depression, the mills only employed Price and Bates for five or six days a month. On some of the other days, Price trespassed on the rails, travelling in search of work. She w
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