Abstract
The movie Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, directed by Daniel Anker and Barak Goodman, was a documentary film based on a true story of the wrongful conviction of nine black boys (the Scottsboro Boys) for the rape of two women on a train. Directed by Daniel Anker, Barak Goodman, the movie follows the narrative that began on March 25, 1931 on a train that had set out from Chattanooga, Tennessee, with both African Americans as well as white homeless people who were travelling in search of work. The paper will explore the societal, political and economic environment at the time when this incident occurred and how the prevalent racial biases in the Southern states, particularly Alabama, where the incident took place, influenced the decisions of the judicial system. The paper will also seek to establish how the overturning of the verdict by a Southern court judge in favour of African Americans set a precedent for ensuring that all defendants, regardless of race receive due process, a jury of their peers and a fair trial.
Trouble erupted as the train was about to pull into the station at Alabama, a predominantly white and anti-black neighbourhood. The white and black passengers on the train began fighting and when the train actually came to a stop, it was assumed that the young black boys would get into trouble for having beaten up the white men .
However, in a surprising and unexpected twist, as the groups of white men raided the train, looking for the black culprits who had started all the trouble in the first place, they discovered two young white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, in one of the carriages who claimed that they had been raped by the black boys who had been on the train. Understandably, this enraged the mob that had begun gathering near the station. The nine boys accused of the crime were forcibly taken off the train, tied up and then taken to the Jackson County Jail on a flatbed truck.
One of the nine boys, the 19-year old Clarence Norris narrates that after the boys had been booked and taken inside the jail, the increasingly violent mob, carrying sticks, ropes and anything else that they could lay their hands onto, began gathering and demanded that either the sheriff should let the boys out or they would invade the prison themselves and give them the punishment that they deserve. The sheriff however, warned anyone from doing so and eventually the National Guard had to be called in for the prisoners’ safety.
I believe in order to completely grasp the severity of the crime that the black boys had been accused of, it is important to understand the social and economic climate at that time. The Great Depression had taken its worst toll on Alabama, where wages were at an all-time low and racial crimes at an all-time high; simply put, Alabama was one of the most cruel and biased places for the black community.
Also, the Scottsboro Boys, Charlie Weems, Clarence Norris, Eugene Williams, Willie Roberson, Olin Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Ozie Powell, and brothers Andy and Roy Wright were depicted as belonging to very poor households, a few of them struggling with diseases. The important point was that all of them had been on the train that day since they were looking for a job to support themselves and their families.
As the movie progresses, the viewer can almost see the parallels between the accused and the accusers. Both Price and Bates, although white, had also suffered as a result of the economic recession that had hit the world. They had almost no money, were paid extremely low wages and were forced into prostitution to support themselves. Therefore, neither one of the women fit the bill of a Sothern dame: poised, elegant or whose character is beyond reproach.
The trial which commenced at the Scottsboro Court lasted only three days. The plaintiffs testified that the nine boys had raped them in the train while the defendants ended up pleading their own innocence and blaming the other eight. Given that the accused had spent only a few minutes with their lawyer who was not even a criminal defence attorney but a real estate one, all nine were pronounced guilty by the court. The only question that remained was whether the youngest, the 13-year old Roy should also get the death penalty like the others, or be treated with more leniency and sentenced to life imprisonment because of he was a minor. In the words of Norris, as soon as the verdict was announced, there was jubilation everywhere .
The Scottsboro Boys, now convicted rapists were then transported to the Kilby prison until their turn came at the electric chair. Confused and scared, the boys had lost all hope when the Communist Party activists took over their defence and promised to bring their plight to everyone’s attention.
The Party was looking for one controversial event that would allow them to rally the masses against the white supremacy and the plight of the African American community in United States. International protests and those at the Capitol building finally had a positive outcome for the black boys. The Supreme Court overturned their guilty verdict since it was established that the inadequacy of counsel that the defendants received had violated their rights of getting a fair trial.
Such an overturn, specifically in a state where racial bias against blacks was so prevalent, was unprecedented and unexpected. Leaving no stones unturned to get the boys off, the Party hired Samuel L. Leibowitz, a well-known criminal lawyer before the retrial began in Decatur with the Attorney General Thomas Knight and presided over by Judge Horton. Despite the fact that medical evidence proved rape to have been unlikely and that Bates retracted her earlier testimony and admitted that she had lied since Price had threatened her that they would both end up in jail if she didn’t lie on the stand, the jury came back with the guilty verdict for Patterson (Leibowitz had managed to get all nine boys tried separately) again.
The media and popular opinion blamed the defence attorney’s brusque and crude cross-questioning of Price as one of the primary reasons why the jury was antagonised against the boys. They saw the lawyer as an outsider who was trying to attack and insult ‘Southern womanhood’. In a completely unexpected turn of events, on the appeal of Leibowitz and his own conscience, Judge Horton overturned the verdict; he ended up saving the lives of the boys but it also spelled the end of his judicial career.
Refusing to give up, there was a third trial with the same result and a fourth one. However, by that time, the people and the lawyers and judges had grown so tired of the prolonged trial and the inconsistencies in evidence suggested that the boys could be innocent. After almost 12 years, one by one all the boys were released on parole except Patterson. Even after their release, the boys failed to make a life for themselves except Norris .
After he received an official pardon from Governor Wallace, Norris declared that he wished the others (all of whom had either died or disappeared into obscurity, were with him and that the prevalent bias and prejudice against blacks is what had caused nine innocent boys (he clarifies that they were innocent of the crime they had been accused of), their youth, future and a normal life.
References
TheSimpleTheTruth2. (2014, April 22). The Scottsboro Boys Trials (Full Movie)1931 to 1937. Retrieved April 3, 2016, from Youtube.
