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'Scottsboro in Context ____ ______ cy3ocJ jI’ts) V-vCttL V. csu 67-i7 LA.5Zf5(q3) ‘Scottsboro in Context \ 4/4t’I BY EMILY HOFFMAN N V Scottsboro, Alabama, 1931 V Hose’s was not the only case in which “outrage” was falsely invoked. “Of the 12 men lynched during that reign of erhaps the biggest shock of the Scottsboro trials is unspeakable barbarim,” Wells continued, speaking oilier six that they happened at all. The nine black boys falsely weeks in Georgia, “kly one was even charged with an assault PV accused of raping two white girls on V a Memphis- upon a woman. Yet southern apologists justify their savagery bound train might easily have faced summary execution at on the ground that Negroes are lynched only because of their the hands of the lynch mob gathered outside the Scottsboro crimes against women.” Here Wells refers to the insidious jail on Maich 25, 1931, had the sheriff not called Governor myth invented by white southerners to justify—to themselves Benjamin Meek Miller, who broke precedent and called in and to others—their own brutality: the myth that, if given the National Guard. the chance, a black man would always rape a white woman. Though lynching as a punishment had existed since The myth was a political invention, emerging at a particular the American Revolution, it wasn’t until after the Civil historically expeditious moment. As Frederick Douglass ‘,Var that the practice began to be used systematically argued in his 1894 speech “The Lessons of the Hour,” no to brutalize and intimidate black Americans. Before such claim had existed during (or before) the Civil War: emancipation, when blacks were still considered property, most, victims of lynchings were white abolitionists; after the All through the late war, while the slave war and the social upheaval of Reconstrnction, lynching masters of the South were absent from their V became the centerpiece of a campaign of’terror waged by homes in the field of rebellion, with bullets white citizens, with the implicit sanction of legislators in their pockets, treason, in their hearts, broad and the court, against freed black men and women. blades in their blood stained hands, seeking Lynch mobs were composed primarily of working- the life of the nation, with the vile purpose class and poor whites who bitterly resented and feared of perpetuating the enslavement of the negro, economic competition from former slaves. The number their wives,their daughters, their sisters, and of lynchings that took place in the years immediately their mothers were left in the absolute custody following Reconstruction is uncertain, but statistics kept at of these same Negroes, and during all those the time by the NAACP, the Chicago Tribune, and Tuskegee long four years of terrible conflict, when the University suggest that between 1880 and 1930. at feast Negro had every opportunity to commit the 3,000 African Americans faced death at the hands of lynch abominable crime now alleged against him, mobs. On many occasions the killings were mass, carnival- there was never a single instance of such crime like events, “spectacle lynchings,” with hundreds and even reported or charged against him. thousands of white families in attendance, and body parts The power the cannot of the victims divvied up among the crowd as souvenirs. of myth be overstated. “It has cooled In 1899, Massachusetts’s Springfield Republican reported our friends,” wrote Douglass, “It has heated our enemies .. for nearly all have in some measure on the dismemberment of Sam Hose, a man burned to death accepted the charge in front of a crowd of 2,000 in Newman, Georgia. Hose had as true. Its perpetual reiteration in our newspapers and been jailed for killing his white employer, Alfred Cranford. magazines has led men and women to regard us with To the murder charge, however, was added an additional averted eyes, increasing hate and dark suspicion.” James Weldon Johnson, a leader accusation: the rape of Cranford’s wife. According to the of the NAACP, in his 1921 “Memorandum. famous anti-lynch crusader Ida B. Wells, the rape charge Re: Relations between the Crimes of Rape Lynching,” was trumped up to ensure the furor of the mob. “Samuel and explained that “there have been many lynchings where Hose was burned to teach the Negroes that no matter what the victim was not even accused of rape a white man does to them, they must not resist,” Wells but in which cases the lynchers gave rape as a cause.” A case in point is the lynching wrote in an 1899 pamphlet. “Hose, a servant, had killed of Elijah Strickland, a black preacher Cranford, his employer. An example must be made. Ordinary whom Hose was said to have mentioned as accomplice punishment was deemed inadequate. This Negro must be an in his killing of Cranford. Strickland, after refusing burned alive. To make the burning a certainty the charge of to admit to something he had not done, was found outrage was invented, and added to the charge of murder.” hanging from a persimmon tree with a blood- OPPOSITE CHIEF $COTTSBORO BOYS DEFENSE ATTORNEY SAMUEL LEIBOwITZ SPEAkS WITH DEFENDANT HAYW000 PATTERSON, 1933 SETTMANN/CORBIS) T’LJC TTCQ/3D(1 QflVC • .-• ORIGINAL CAPTIOet •SEVERAL THOUSAND PERSONS TODMRQl5D THRU THE STREETS OF WASHINGTON Td THE WHITE HOUSE WHERE THEY PRESENTED A PETITION TO THE PRESIDENT URGING FOR ThE stained piece of paper pinned to his chst on which was The understanding was that in retum for delivering the written, “VVe must protect our Ladies.” The terrible “brutes” (s the .Hintsville Times referred to them) to the irony is that the myth mirrored and masked the truth court, the court would reward the people of the county with a of racialized sexual violence in the South, where white swift conviction and sentence of death. The all-white jury did men continued to rape black women with impunity, as not disappoint. When the first guilty verdict was announced, they had done systematically during the era of slavery. a brass band outside the courthouse erupted into “There’ll Be It is ndt incidental, then, that when Victoria Price and a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” and “Dixie.” Ruby Bates, two poor white women from the mill town Over the next seven years, the Boys would be taken of Huntsville, Alabama, were caught hoboing on the through a series of appeals by their lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, same freight train as nine black boys, they chose to claim a New Yorker employed by the International Labor Defense the boys had raped them in order to avoid punishment. (ILD), a legal arm ofthe Communist Party which took up the The girls were impoverished prostitutes who were known Boys’ cause immediately following their 1931 conviction. In to consort with black men—in other words, “the lowest the 1933 retrial, Bates recanted her accusation and the doctor of the low” in the eyes of the South, as Hollace Ransdall who examined the girls after the alleged incident testified noted in the 1931 ACLU report on the Scottsboro that there had been no physical evidence to support Price’s case. They played the strongest card they had; they charges; despite this, the jury returned another guilty verdict, must have known how readily would they be believed. and the retrials dragged on. In 1937, Liebowitz struck a deal When Governor Miller called in the National Guard to with the state of Alabama, managing to secure the release of protect the Scottsboro Boys, he intended to save the Boys four of the Boys: the two youngest (Eugene Williams and Roy from the lynch mob, not from death. The local newspapers Wright), Olen Montgomery (who was severely nearsighted), shared this sentiment. “If ever there was an excuse for taking and Willie Roberson (who had been seeking treatment for the law it-ito their own hands,” the editor of the Scottsboro a debilitating case of syphilis and gonorrhea when he was Progressive Age wrote, “surely this was one.” Nevertheless, arrested). Between 1943 and 1946 Clarence Norris, Ozie he continued, the people of Jackson County “have saved the Powell, Charlie Weems, and Andy Wright were paroled. good narrae of the county and state by remaining cool and Haywood Patterson was never paroled, but he escaped in allowing the law to take its course.” 194$. In 1976, the state of Alabama pardoned Clarence 20 AMERICAN cONSERVATORY THEATER ACT-SF.ORGI47S.749.2223 1931 7932 7933: 7934 I ““‘1: I IC Strauder v West Virgrnza (1880) and Neal Delaware (1881), oubiesome burden has been lifted from Norris v Alabama gave teeth to the earlier verdicts, proving Alaban Cbattaoga Times, which had reported that the court would not tolerate disobedience And, in fact, cheerily on the mob gathered outside the Scottsboro jail, Governor B;bb Graves of Alabamaresponded to the ruling now conclu41td “There, is no sadder story in the annals of by sending copies of the decision to every solicitor and Amencaz juisprhdence’ than that ofthe Negroes who for the judge in Alabama, reminding them, “Whether we’ like the past six y hve1ivedin the shadow of the electric chair.” decisioti or not, it is the patriotic duty of e’Jery citizen and It is a very different America today than the America the sworn duty of every public officer to accept an& uphold that saw the arrest and indictment, of the Scottsboro them in ktter and inspirit. This decisiOn iani that Boys. That, is beyon’4’;dispute. Segregation and all we must put the names of Negroes in jury boxes in every legal barriers have beeti lifted; black Americans hold county in the State.” Though the composition of juries by the highest positions in every field.
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