Scottsboro Boys Trial.

Essay by xxtheblondexxHigh School, 12th gradeA+, November 2003

download word file, 3 pages 4.7

The Scottsboro Trial

No crime in American history, produced as many trials, convictions, reversals, and retrials as "The Scottsboro Boys" trial. The irony of it is... the crime never occurred.

The case was about an alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on a Railroad freight on March 25,1931.

On March 24, 1931, two mill girls named Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, dressed in overalls, hoboed a freight train to Chattanooga, Tennessee. According to Victoria the two girls were going to stay in the home of Ms. Callie Brochie, who lived, several blocks down Market Street. Victoria later says that after their sleep at Ms. Brochie's they left out the next morning to look for jobs in the mills. Finding no job's, they decided to head back to Huntsville, where they lived. They jumped onto the first freight train heading toward Huntsville and noticed there were seven white, male teenagers also on the train.

So they started conversing with them. Later on twelve black teenagers hoboed onto the train. The boys were known, as the "The Scottsboro Boys," They were Clarence Norris, Charlie Weems, Haywood Patterson, Olen Montgomery, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams and Andy Wright. The other three were unknown. According to Victoria's story, the black teenagers boarded the train waiving around pistols in the air and fought all the white teenagers off the train. After that they went over to Victoria Price and Ruby Bates and raped them. Apparently, when the white teenagers were forced off the train they went and got the Station Master and when the train got to Paint Rock, Alabama, the black teenagers were accused of raping Ruby Bates and Victoria Price and taken to jail.

On March 25, the Scottsboro Boys were arrested on charges of assault...