The Scottsboro Boys in Their Own Words

February 1, 2014

The 1931 trial of nine black teenagers (Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Haywood Patterson, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Chas Weems, Eugene Williams, Andy Wright, and Roy Wright, who was aged 12) labeled the "Scottsboro boys" is one that remains in our historical memory, both questioning and defining civil rights in Depression America. The boys and two white women were arrested in Alabama on charges of hoboing on a freight train. The arrest quickly turned into a falsified rape case against the boys, who had not known one another before the event. Kinshasa (African American studies, John Jay Coll. of Criminal Justice, CUNY; Emigration vs. Assimilation: The Debate in the African American Press) has remarkably given the case a new perspective by presenting selections of correspondence, culled from numerous archival sources, relating to the case from its beginnings in 1931 through the final prisoner release in 1950. Kinshasa's annotations throughout keep readers oriented as they follow the unusually quick trial, the VERDICT condemning the boys to death, and their almost 20 years in jail before the charges were dropped. The letters, mostly between the boys and their defense team but including supporting correspondence defending the boys, are transcribed with their original grammar, spelling, and colloquialisms intact. The psychological stress upon the defendants is palpable. VERDICT Strongly recommended as a document of African American, civil rights, and legal history.--Cicely Douglas, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., FL

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2014
During the Depression, nine black youths were among hundreds riding the rails as vagrants in search of work when they were arrested near Scottsboro, Alabama, in March 1931. Charged with raping two young white women, who were also vagrants, the Scottsboro Nine were found guilty and scheduled for execution. It took 45 years for the eventual release, pardon, or parole of all but one (Haywood Patterson escaped from prison) as the NAACP and the International Labor Defense of the Communist Party fought through the courts and the national and international press. They also fought each other over defense strategy. Though many of the Scottsboro Nine were illiterate at the time of their arrest, the letters collected here show their intellectual development as they grew from youth caught up in the usual mistreatment of blacks in the rural South to men part of an international cause c'l'bre. The Scottsboro Boys corresponded with family, attorneys, and supporters as they struggled to maintain faith in the midst of a horrendous human saga of racism, prison brutality, and injustice.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)