The Scottsboro Boys
The Scottsboro Boys Video Notes
What happened?
Nine black teenage boys from Scottsboro, Alabama were accused of raping two white women. The nine black teenagers were on a train and some of the black teens fought with several white guys. The train was stopped when the conductor found out a fight broke out, and when nine black teenage boys and two white women (Ruby Bates and Victoria Price) got off the train, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price claimed that the black males raped them. At the time, many people were racist against black people and many thought that they actually did the crime. So the nine black teenage boys got an unfair, rushed trial and eight of them were sentenced to the electric chair to die while the youngest one was to spend the rest of his life in prison. But the American Communist Party and many others stepped in and protested that it was unfair, and so they took it up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreed to have another look into the case. One of the white women admitted that they weren’t actually raped by the black males, saying that they were prostitutes and since they couldn’t cross state lines with moral purposes, they tried to protect themselves by falsely accusing the black boys as rapists so they wouldn’t have federal charges against them. There was even more evidence conjured for the black teenagers when the doctor that examined the women said the women held no physical evidence of rape. Also, the black males were in different cars of the train during the time of the supposed rape. The attorneys that were supposed to defend the nine boys were incapable of actually working well, too. One was senile and the other was the town drunk. Thus, the boys were let out one by one, though some escaped and fled the prisons they were once in, and the latest one finally got out of jail after 18 years of imprisonment.
Who was involved?
Nine black teenage boys, two white women (Ruby Bates and Victoria Price), the group of white
What happened?
Nine black teenage boys from Scottsboro, Alabama were accused of raping two white women. The nine black teenagers were on a train and some of the black teens fought with several white guys. The train was stopped when the conductor found out a fight broke out, and when nine black teenage boys and two white women (Ruby Bates and Victoria Price) got off the train, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price claimed that the black males raped them. At the time, many people were racist against black people and many thought that they actually did the crime. So the nine black teenage boys got an unfair, rushed trial and eight of them were sentenced to the electric chair to die while the youngest one was to spend the rest of his life in prison. But the American Communist Party and many others stepped in and protested that it was unfair, and so they took it up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court agreed to have another look into the case. One of the white women admitted that they weren’t actually raped by the black males, saying that they were prostitutes and since they couldn’t cross state lines with moral purposes, they tried to protect themselves by falsely accusing the black boys as rapists so they wouldn’t have federal charges against them. There was even more evidence conjured for the black teenagers when the doctor that examined the women said the women held no physical evidence of rape. Also, the black males were in different cars of the train during the time of the supposed rape. The attorneys that were supposed to defend the nine boys were incapable of actually working well, too. One was senile and the other was the town drunk. Thus, the boys were let out one by one, though some escaped and fled the prisons they were once in, and the latest one finally got out of jail after 18 years of imprisonment.
Who was involved?
Nine black teenage boys, two white women (Ruby Bates and Victoria Price), the group of white