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Anonymous 1m
firrrrreeeeeeeeee
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The Scottsboro Boys were a group of black teenagers living as "hobos", hopping on freight trains going from city to city looking for work. Before an alleged 🤬 and assault tied them together in the public eye for decades, only four knew each other beforehand, and they came from many different backgrounds.

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The story of the Scottsboro Boys began on a Southern Rails Freight train that was carrying about two dozen young workers. A fight broke out when a white teenager stepped on the hand of one of the Scottsboro Boys. A rock throwing match ensued between the Boys and the whites, who were then forced off the train, with the exception of the last white, Orville Gilley, who was pulled back by one of the Boys when the train accelerated to lethal levels. The whites who were kicked off, vengeful and angry, started a false narrative saying they had been attacked by a gang of blacks armed with pistols and knives. The story spread quickly, and a mob quickly assembled to greet the train at the station of Paint Rock, Alabama, armed with pistols. It is there at the train station where the two women, Price and Bates, made the most damning accusations, alleging that they had been victims of a brutal gang 🤬 by the Boys. They are then moved to the town of Scottsboro, for pre-trial detention. They are almost lynched when another mob shows up again, ready to lynch the Boys. However, they are stopped by the Alabama National Guard, sent to protect the suspects.

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Why were there so many trials? And what am I hearing about incompetent counsel?

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Why were there so many trials? And what am I hearing about incompetent counsel?

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The case of the Scottsboro Boys has presented one of the greatest failures of the US Legal System. One particularly prolific member of the Boys, Haywood Patterson, was made to stand trial four times. In the first rounds of trials, eight of the Scottsboro boys were convicted of 🤬 and sentenced to death, with a mistrial being declared in the case of the underage Roy Wright. These convictions were reversed by the Supreme Court due to the state of Alabama failing to provide adequate legal assistance to the Boys. (One of the lawyers was reportedly so drunk he couldn't walk straight on the first day of the trial.)

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Eventually, the cases made its way through the system with the boys eventually  being represented by the Communist Party's ILD and a New York defense attorney named Samuel Leibowitz. Four of the youngest defendants had their charges dropped. However, the five that had been sentenced all thought that they had bought the others' freedom with their time. In the end, they all made it out of the hellholes of Alabama's prisons, one way or another. Four of the five Boys in prison were eventually paroled, while Haywood Patterson escaped. During his time as a fugitive, he managed to find his way to the north and got his book published. Eventually, Patterson was arrested by the FBI in Michigan. However, the Governor of Michigan refused Alabama's extradition request and Patterson lived out the rest of his life in Michigan.