Scottsboro Boys Research Paper

In 1931, nine black teenage males were convicted of raping two white females on a freight train in Tennessee. It was traveling from Chattanooga to Memphis; however, the case was initiated in Scottsboro, Alabama. Thus, the nine defendants became known as the Scottsboro Boys. In the initial court hearing, eight of the nine boys were issued the death sentence. As the author indicates, this case was a strong illustration of the intense prejudice towards black men and women in the early 1900s, and it demonstrates whose word prevailed when it involved black versus white.
First off, there are the facts of the case. The boys’ ages ranged from 12 years old to 19 years old. Four of them (Patterson, Williams, and the Wright brothers) were hoping to find logging work near the Missouri River. The other youths were unacquainted with the four named. The two females, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, were Huntsville natives that were hoping to find a job in the cotton mills in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After a confrontation with the black group, they were forced off the train and filed a
There were two official hearings before the US Supreme Court, and in both, the original decisions from the Alabama Courts were reversed. All of the Scottsboro Boys, besides Haywood Patterson, were eventually released from prison. Patterson, on the contrary, took matters into his own hands when he escaped in 1948 and fled to Detroit, Michigan.
In conclusion, the Scottsboro Boys’ case stimulated a great change in the way interracial cases are treated. It established that people may not be excluded from juries on the basis of race and that criminal defendants are entitled to effective assistance of counsel. The nine Scottsboro Boys, despite being accused by two white women, were able to break the racial boundary and prompt a permanent change on the way blacks are treated across