C. Also, because the Scottsboro Boys were African-American, the country immediately assumed that they were at fault. Concurrently with that time period, African-Americans were believed to be foul, poor, uneducated, and of the lowest class. Prone to these assumptions, the country promptly condemned them and outraged themselves that they had allowed it to happen to white women.…
According to Smalarz and Wells (2014), the leading cause of wrongful convictions is eyewitness misidentification. Smalarz and Wells described a unique case where a rape victim, JT, had the opportunity to correctly identify her attacker. JT’s lawyer had received reports of her attacker bragging about getting away with the rape while he was in prison for another crime. The victim, JT, incorrectly identified the attacker, she actually choose the same person she choose in her first line up after the assault. The information JT’s lawyer presented her had essential information on the case and to convict the culprit but, the timing of the information was received too late.…
In the year 1931, all nine of the Scottsboro boys Haywood Patterson, Charles Weems, Clarence Norris, Andy Wright, Ozzie Powell, Olen Montgomery, Eugene Williams, Willie Roberson, and Roy Wright are arrested and tried on charges of assault from fighting white boys on a train. Along with accusations made by Victoria Price and Ruby Bates that the boys raped them. Their trial begins April 6, 1931. All of the boys except for Roy Wright are tired and convicted, with the result of the death sentence, Roy Wright’s trial ends in a mistrial. Later the NAACP and International Labor Defense, fight to represent the boys. Even though there was no proof that the boys committed these crimes they were still tried as if they did. Even when Ruby Bates admits that she was not raped the trial still continued, and the punishment or convictions were still upheld. Instead of the boys trial going along the lines of todays court mantra of “being innocent until proven guilty” it seems that they were found guilty whether or not they were innocent. The boys suffered from intuitional discrimination because they were black boys accused of committing crimes against white girls. In a time when this type of crime was treated with more severity, than it would be if both parties were the same race.…
"I do not want a verdict based on racial prejudice or a religious creed. I want a verdict based on the merits of this case. On that evidence, gentlemen, there can be but one verdict, and that verdict is death-- death in the electric chair for raping Victoria Price. . . . "…
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…
Undoubtedly these two trials have many similarities despite one of the trials being mainly a focal point for achievement in the literary world. An identical example between these trials are the historical culture in abundance with many of the families included in the trial, an example being the Ewells compare to be utterly consistent with the two young prosecutors in the way they live their life. Another of these many similarities includes the bizarre assumption by the jury that the accused were already virtually guilty before the trial had even begun due to the mainstream’s coarse view of African Americans and how African Americans are nothing better than a common house animal, punished at the dominant being’s will. This point is shown, beyond doubt, when one of the women prosecuting the Scottsboro Boys, Ruby Bates admits that neither herself nor her friend Victoria Price were every raped in anyway by any of the nine accused African Americans. Even after this incriminating confession, the series of trials continue .…
In 1896 the Supreme Court upheld a racial segregation laws based upon the statement ‘separate but equal’ making a legal distinction and separation between races. In 1954 the US Supreme Court ordered the removal of the segregation act at schools and universities, in order to bring about equality between races, but there were those who couldn’t accept the changes and still promoted segregation in schools. For many states such as Mississippi this was ignored and it wasn’t until the acts of Meredith that the first steps in the eventual elimination of all racial segregation in the state’s public schools and universities occurred but this wasn’t faced with barricades from those who opposed him. When African American student Meredith applies to an all-white segregated university segregationist Barnett does all in his power to prevent it, in order to sustain the white supremacist movement. Prior to this Barnett was known to imprison civil rights protesters, and for his actions he gained quite a following and was considered popular amongst those of similar beliefs. His followers created a jingle in support of his actions…
White racism and intimidation was a very significant factor that slowed the civil rights movement. This is evident in the South in which the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council were lynching blacks quite frequently. Additionally, after the ruling of Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896) of ‘separate but equal’, segregation was made legal, therefore southerners took it so far that Supreme Court rulings in favour of blacks were completely defied, such as in the Little Rock Crisis where Governor Faubus stopped black students from entering the high school despite previous rulings from Brown II (1955). This intimidation from supremacist groups and resistance from state government and general citizens slowed progress significantly because blacks were now afraid to campaign for fear of being lynched meaning that any effort made by blacks for equality was often negated by this strong resistance in the South. However, the resistance also had a positive effect on civil rights progress, such as in the Birmingham Movement 1963 in which the violence encouraged by Chief of Police Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor actually caused nationwide media attention which increased white sympathy and therefore made progress easier for blacks. Therefore racism in the South was a major obstacle before the 1950’s because any de jure change never resulted in de facto, however, after this point, campaigners targeted overtly racist places for their campaigns which was very advantageous for progress, meaning…
The rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a freight train on March 25, 1931 was the most controversial trial eve . Over the course of the two decades that followed, the struggle for justice of the "Scottsboro Boys," as the black teens were called, made celebrities out of anonymities, launched and ended careers, wasted lives, produced heroes, opened southern juries to blacks, exacerbated sectional strife, and divided America's political left.…
The Scottsboro Trials, which tried and unfairly convicted nine innocent black youths of raping two white females (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica), was a milestone in the African-American civil rights movement, primarily because of the way racism influenced the outcome of the trials. Firstly, the protests held against the convictions mobilized the movement for equal rights. This was illustrated on May 8th, 1933, ten years after the last notable African-American March on Washington, when upwards of 4,000 people marched in Washington, D.C. in a bid for freedom for the Scottsboro Boys (Simpson). This example proves that the outcome of the Scottsboro trials led to demonstrations that protested inequality and encouraged equal rights for all American citizens.…
The book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and the book Mississippi Trial, 1955 by Chris Crowe are two different books surround by the same ideas. To Kill a Mockingbird was a book about a girl named Scout, whose dad, Atticus, is a lawyer, who tried to win a case defending an innocent black man. Atticus did not win the case and Scout started to learn about injustice and what went on at that time in the South. Mississippi Trial, 1955 was about a boy named Hiram, who lived in the South with his grandpa because his parents were too busy working. His grandpa represented the South in the book and Hiram’s dad represented the North, and Hiram had a stronger relationship with his grandpa and did not really like his dad at the time. After a trial involving…
“George Stinney, a fourteen-year-old black boy, was executed by the State of South Carolina on June 16, 1944” (Stevenson 157). George was arrested for the murder of two young white girls because he saw the day they were murdered. “The girls had approached them while they were playing outside and asked where they could find flowers” (Stevenson 157). It was claimed by the sheriff that George confessed to the murders although no signed statement was presented. His family was told to leave the town or else. Fourteen-year-old George was left alone to face an all-white jury that sentenced him to death. This was a young kid who was “Small even for his age” (Stevenson 158). This is wrong and “Years later, rumors surfaced that a white man from a prominent family confessed on his deathbed to killing the girls” (Stevenson 159). All because George was a young, poor, African American who did not have the proper representation to appeal the ruling, was dead 81 days after being approached by two young girls. This was the past and there are a few things we can do today to help those who are put in these kind of…
Racism held a strong presence and very little progress of racial equality was gained after Ossian Sweet acquittal. As modern America becomes modernized, “the real villains” are “the average people,” (319) As individuals we play a part in the reaction of others and by our acts of desperation to been seen as equal lead to deaths of both blacks and whites. Negros advance through the years and the momentum of civil rights moreover are recognized and somewhat adhered to. There was still much work to be done in the fight against racial tolerance. Ossian and his wife were not allowed to enter the front gates of the cemetery where his child was buried. Sweet won his case, but The NAACP later lost their battle in Supreme Court regarding residential…
When Civil Rights activists began to protest and exhibit civil disobedience, conservatives would depict their actions as criminal rather than political and would accuse federal courts of “excessive ‘lenience’ toward lawlessness, thereby contributing to the spread of crime” (Alexander 41). This shift away from explicitly racist rhetoric toward more neutral terms only continued as the Civil Rights Movement passed and as blatant racism became politically…
Like with the Tom Robinson case, a colored male accused of raping a girl, the community labeled him guilty even though all evidence pointed to her abusive, drunk father. Also, the people were questioning why Atticus was his lawyer just because he was a colored male. They even harassed Atticus for being the lawyer of Tom…