Scottsboro Trial

• Overview   * Black teenagers were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Scottsboro, Alabama in 1931   * It sparked international uproar and produced two landmark U.S. Supreme Court verdicts
• People Involved   * Boys     * Charlie Weems     * Ozie Powell     * Clarence Norris     * Andrew Wright     * Leroy Wright     * Olen Montgomery     * Willie Robinson     * Haywood Patterson     * Eugene Williams   * Girls     * Rudy Bates     * Victoria Prince
• Trials   * April 1931     * all white, all male jury     * Sentenced 8 boys to death     * Leroy Wright       * Had a hung jury     * Mistrial was declared   * June 1931     * Alabama Supreme Court     * The International Labor Defense had a national campaign to help free the boys     * Upheld convictions for seven of the boys     * Granted Eugene Williams a new trial
• Powell vs. Alabama   * November 1932   * Had been denied the right to legal counsel     * Violated the right of the 14th amendment   * Decatur, Alabama     * Ruby Bated testified for the defense     * The death penalty was recommended for Haywood Patterson       * Suspended penalty and given a new trial
• Norris vs. Alabama   * January 1935   * Patterson     * 75 years in prison     * The day after the verdict, Powell was shot in the head after attacking the deputy sheriff with a knife       * Both survived   * Norris     * Death sentence was overruled     * Given a life sentence
• Legacy   * Weems, Andrew Wright, Norris, and Powell got out on parole   * Patterson escaped, but got picked up by the FBI in Detroit   * Helped fuel the civil rights movement

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